The rising faith is faith in the abundant glory, beauty, wonder of the life which now is. Better believe in this while it is ours than overmuch in any life beyond. Were this life such a failure as the theologians have fancied it, I, for one, should hardly care to venture on another. But because this is so unspeakably divine, I have no fear for what may be beyond.

I know not where His islands lift
Their fronded palms in air;

I only know I cannot drift

Beyond His love and care.

But time would fail me if I should attempt to speak of all the elements that make up the rising faith. For I should have to speak of the new faith in matter, once and still so flouted and despised, now seen to be the haunt of mystery and the home of thought; of the new faith in human nature, in the full range of all its appetites and passions, as not only made, but also meant by the Eternal; in reason as the only basis of authority; in truth as always better than the fairest falsity; in character as the only name given under heaven by which we can be saved. Such are a few of the more salient aspects of the rising faith. Beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of Him that cometh: the Son of Man, the Humanity of the future which is to find this faith upon the earth, and hand it on, more beautiful and bright, to later generations. Let us go forth to meet it with hilarity and song-nay, rather with bowed heads, silent with awe, and wonder, and thanksgiving. Blessed are the eyes that see the things which we see, and the

ears that hear the things which we hear. For I say unto you that many prophets and kings have desired to see the things that we see, and have not seen them, and to hear the things that we hear and have not heard them.

Here ends another year of our associated life as minister and people.* This rising faith which I have spoken of to-day has ever been my theme since we returned, amid the autumn splendors, to this place of thought and aspiration. And now we are going forth again upon our various quests. As you go, preach; not lengthy sermons like to this, but brief and pointed ones, now of unspoken behavior and anon of seasonable speech. Preach everywhere this rising faith which I have preached to you. Witness a good confession. Do not emasculate it, feigning that it is only a little different from the faith of the majority. For it is very different from theirs. Do not apologize for it. It needs no apologies. It is worthy of all praise, all honor, all assertion. What are we that, by so little merit of our own, we have been chosen to declare this message of the most high God unto his people? See that you do declare it without any vagueness or equivocation. And, through these days of absence from each other, let us gather up our strength to serve it with a larger mind, a stouter will, a holier consecration.

*This sermon was the last before the summer vacation.

FATE AND FREEDOM.

WE do well to celebrate the freedom of the individual, the power he has over his own life to mould and fashion it. Upon this head it has always seemed to me that life is wiser than philosophy; that the assertion of the freedom of the will means something all-important; that though every statement of the doctrine may be false, the statements all mean something infinitely truer than any statement of the doctrine of necessity, unless it be some very recent one. John Stuart Mill has a great name as a moral necessarian, but we have his word for it that the popular doctrine of the freedom of the will is infinitely truer than that doctrine of necessity which represents man as the creature of circumstances. Actions are necessary, but what is most concerned in making them so is the character of the individual. What he is determines what he will choose.

I have celebrated freedom a great many times, and never half so well as it deserves, but to-day I mean to celebrate fate or fortune, or whatever it is that gives to life its character of continual sur

prise, which is the incalculable factor in all our plannings and doings, which gives to its beloved while they sleep. I should hate to be a puppet, or think my fellow-creatures puppets; but I should hate still worse to feel that I had the management of my life entirely in my own hands; that there was not at every point divine coöperation; that my little task and care were not taken up by a Supreme Intelligence and fitted in with his immutable designs. And more than to feel that all men are puppets I should hate to feel that all of them together have the world at large, society and civilization, in their safe-keeping; that some common reason, soul, intelligence, does not conspire with them, or, if need be, against them all, to further their development and bring in the heavenly kingdom upon earth. But what I like best to feel, and what I can not help feeling, is that all our freedom rests upon a ground of fate; that there are limits everywhere; that the true freedom only comes with the intelligence that perceives these limits, and the courage that accepts them. For, once accepted, they are feet and wings, and give to us the freedom of all cities, and through the highest altitudes a right of way. "I said, I will water my garden-bed, and lo! my brook became a river, and my river a sea. is not easy to divine exactly what sort of a device in hydraulics the man was thinking of who used this metaphor, but the metaphor will answer to convey the intimation that many things turn out quite different from our anticipations, and that the beginnings of many mighty and far-reach

Ecclesiasticus xxiv. 31.

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