by Christians of all churches and denominations, and maintained by them with dignity and order, have more to do with reconciling the masses to the Church of Christ than any one other thing -than many days passed in the discussion of differences, than many hundredweights of published arguments, advocating divers overtures and platforms. It would be a visible presentation of the fact of unity. And in this great church the preaching should be done by the best men of all kinds and orders, clerical and lay, who are believers in the divinity of Christ.

Ah! my friends, you will say I have pictured for you an ideal; yet surely not an ideal that cannot be realized. If you have the will to help, if others will have a like will, this ideal could be put into shape and form in a few short years. Think of the wonderful ideal of the people's aspirations toward beauty and utility that was presented in the "White City"; and though it has passed away like the great walls and towers of some mighty city of the clouds, it yet remains a fact in the memory of men. But the ideal of which I have spoken-the ideal of spirituality and religion-is not to be built in lath and plaster, but in iron and stone; and it is to

stand as a common House of the hearts and souls of men forever, the witness of our united belief in our one common Master, Jesus the Christ.

And some such thing as this, my friends, must be done. The classes must be united, even as the separated sects of the Church of Christ must be. Humanity is on its last great trial. One by one it has called forth its reserve forces. First it was the king, then the aristocracy, then the middle classes, that held the reins of power. Now the masses rule. Christianity is the veritable salt and light of the world; without it there could have been no moral development of civilization, perhaps no development at all. With the loss of it humanity will retrograde and fall back into barbarism. It was the lack of moral standards that was the cause of the disintegration of the ancient empires of the world. We have therefore a duty to perform. We must bring the masses back into the churches-into the Church of Christ; for the Church, and nothing less, is the teacher of the doctrines of our Lord. It is to it, and to nothing less, that He has given power to conquer the evils of the world.

And we can bring the masses into the Church,

I am sure, if we will do two things-namely, close up the gap between the classes and the masses, and unite the dissevered sects of Christendom. The work is herculean, but by God's help it cannot fail. Our Lord Himself has said that the gates of hell shall not prevail against His Church; much less, then, shall the weakness and wickedness of men.

IV.

THE EDUCATION OF THE YOUNG.

"The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them."-ISA. xi. 6.

THERE is a passage in Professor Drummond's "Ascent of Man" which is so expressive of the power and value of childhood that I could not but consider it to be inspired were it not that he evidently had in mind, when he wrote it, the prophecy that I have quoted from the Book of Isaiah. It reads: "Love, then, is no necessary ingredient of the sex relation; it is not the outgrowth of passion. Love is love, and has always been love, and has never been anything lower. Whence, then, came it? If neither the husband nor the wife bestowed this gift upon the world, who did? It was a little child. Till this appeared man's affection was non-existent, woman's was frozen. The man did not love the woman, the woman did not love the man. But one day

from its mother's very heart, from a shrine which her husband never visited nor knew was there, which she herself dared scarce acknowledge, a child drew forth the first fresh bud of a love which was not passion, a love which was not selfish, a love which was an incense from its Maker, and whose fragrance from that hour went forth to sanctify the world."

And this statement experience confirms. All experience, I say, confirms the fact that the little child is the great embodiment of the summum bonum of the world; that it is the chief means of its propagation; that it is the best way for the exercise of its power. I have not time, with the objective points I have in mind, to show you how necessary it was that love in its fullness should come into the world as a little child; how imperative it was that that child should be born of a virgin without taint of passion. I have done this on another occasion.

First, I desire to draw your attention to the fact that childhood is the glory of Christendom; that it alone has made peace between the conflicting feelings and interests of men; that it alone has modified and softened the harshness of the hearts of our rough progenitors, as they