impaired. Ordinary pictures can be retouched by common hands. When the landscapes of Claude or the faces and costumes of Titian fade and crack and peel, where is the brush that can restore? Strike one little blow at that exquisitely modelled flask and you may wait for Cellini to come again. Fracture the diamond, and you may expect to find another long ere you can perfectly join the parts. Such ruin was wrought by sin. By so much as the forming of man exceeded the kindling of suns and stars, by so much the reformation of man surpassed the original bringing forth of his nature.

Distinguish between thankfulness and ascription. Mere gratitude is not adoration. It is well to utter the confession that life and health, that the roof over our heads and the food on our table, that the peace of the home and the prosperity of the state have all come from the overflowing kindness of Jehovah. But our faith and love should soar beyond this. ship? Can we not render glory to God without regard to ourselves, but purely for the sake of His own majesty and power!

Can we not wor

Think of some distant personage beyond the seas who has devoted the noblest talents, during a long life, to the attainment of what he believes the truest well-being of millions of our race. To

admire such a man for what he is, though he has done nothing for me personally and knows nothing of my existence is at once truly honoring him, truly ennobling to myself. The raising of our admiration for goodness to infinity, is worship. We are to lift up raptured hearts to One who is strength, and wisdom, and holiness, and mercy and love. We want the joy of the Psalmist who cried; "The Lord reigneth, let the earth rejoice: let the multitude of the isles be glad thereof." We want the awe and self-oblivion of the Revelator as he saw the elders casting down their crowns before the throne, saying "Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power; for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were

created."

Thanksgiving casts its light on earth as well as heaven. Worship looks straight and alone to God. Its mirror is not held up to nature but to divinity, to catch one ray of divine perfection, one gleam of divine light, one spark of celestial purity and to fling that beam of heavenly inspiration over all the lower life.

I

"SOME CLASSIC ENGLISH PREACHERS"

(An essay delivered at the Brooklyn Clerical Club, February 28th, 1916.)

A few weeks ago, while studying the shelves of a library in a New York Hotel, I came on a small volume of E. W. Gosse's, published in the twentieth century, and presenting singularly interesting matter on the biography and the literary character of Jeremy Taylor. Noting that this was the only divine included in that small, immortal company of English Men of Letters-in which Shakespeare and Milton belong, and of Americans only our Whittier-I wondered why I, as a clergyman, should know so little of a name that all the world was interested in. These pages are a result of my inquiries which I venture to bring before the Brooklyn Clerical Club, remembering that a later age must always be profited by consideration of the great men of a former generation; and also that to the end of time, the records and methods of certain