general relented, and granted his pardon. He ordered a messenger to take a fleet horse to convey to the doomed man the news of pardon, and bade him to ride hard and to impress into the service fresh horses by the way, that he might reach the condemned man before the morning for the execution. The messenger reached him with the glad tidings, and he was saved. So I bear, as the messenger of God, the tidings of a full and free pardon to lost souls.

II. But the Gospel does more than save, it makes you rich.

The richest man on earth is the Christian. Yet you don't know how rich you are. When I was in Denver Friar's Hill was pointed out to me. In the days of mining excitement George Friar had come from the East and settled on that hill, his good wife accompanying him to take care of him. He was too indolent to go down into the placer mines and so they were very poor. But one day he picked up a piece of stone that had attracted his attention by its weight. He took it to a mining expert, who pronounced it the richest silver ore in the world. He then fenced about his claim and in a year was worth a million dollars. He had lived long right over the richest silver mine in the world without knowing it.

So with the Christian. You do not know how rich you are. There is the deed for your wealth in the sure Word of God, in this Epistle to the Corinthians. Hear it: "For all things are

All is yours,-New York is yours, and New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, and New England, and all the United States, and all America, and Europe, and Africa, and Asia, and Australia. All things are yours-Dr. Deems, your pastor, and I, Paul and Apollos and Cephas, as your servants. All is yours by reversion. It is all Christ's, and you are His heir. Death toohave you counted that? Even Death is your servant. Jesus conquered it

for you. It opens for you the gates to the land of light and joy. All is yours -present and to come-and Christ and God too. That is your inheritance, and it includes a kingdom, too, with its crown and scepter and throne,—for you shall be kings and priests unto God. A kingdom! Not one in this great city has it! And yet in bringing the good tidings of the Gospel I am come to offer all this to you.

III. But the Gospel does more—it makes you the children of God.

Good parents, a noble ancestrywhat a glorious thing! I remember a Christian mother! She was taken from me when I was only eleven years old. But she shaped my life, and her memory is the most precious of memories. The Gospel makes you the children of God. The Apostle John says: "Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God. "

A poor peasant woman who had known Prince Albert in his earlier years, afterward when he was traveling incognito introduced to him an aged Christian mother in the Highlands of Scotland as the daughter of a King, of the King of kings, and the Prince acknowledged her title to royal dignity. The humblest Christian is a son or daughter of the Lord Almighty, the King of kings. And I am come to offer to every one of you this dignity and to bid you rejoice in it.

IV. What else can the religion of the Gospel do for you? When life's weary journey is over it takes you home.

There are beautiful residences, very palaces here in your city, but our home is not in these. This world is not our home. We are pilgrims and strangers. Heaven is called by various names in this Bible-Paradise, the New Jerusalem, the city that hath foundationsbut the sweetest name of all is home, my Father's house. Said Jesus : "In my Father's house are many mansions. I go to prepare a place for you."

In the days of the civil war two great armies were fronting each other. In the Southern army a band struck up "Dixie," and the host joined in it. The North did not respond to that. That was followed by the Northern army in "The Star-Spangled Banner. " The South did not respond to that. Then a drummer-boy stepped out between the armies and began to sing “Home, Sweet Home. " That touched and melted and united the two armies, and there went up to heaven a mighty vol. ume of song. That song of home

touches a responsive chord in every heart.

This Gospel of Christ opens to you the home above, and when the brief life is over here it takes you home to the everlasting habitations.

I have come to-day as Christ's messenger to bring you the good tidings of great joy. May God graciously grant that you may receive the Gospel and go from this time and this place rejoicing in the salvation and riches and sonship and heavenly home that it freely offers to all peoples.

I. The Republic of God.

1. OUR NATIONAL HISTORY A SACRED LESSON.

Psalm alio. 1-3: "We have heard with our ears, O God! Our fathers have told us what work thou didst in their days, in the times of old. How thou didst drive out the heathen with thy hand, and plantedst them; how thou didst afflict the people, and cast them out. For they got not the land in possession by their own sword, neither did their own arm save them; but thy right hand, and thine arm, and the light of thy countenance, because thou hadst a favor unto them.

(b) In the loyal pride of its citizens. Acts xvi. 28: "I was free born." Acts xxi. 29: "A citizen of no mean city."

(c) In a true religion.

Deut. iv. 7: "What nation is there so great, who hath God so nigh unto them?"

(d) In free, just, and enlightened institutions. "Old Glory" is the Flag of Freedom.

Psalm lx. 4: "Thou hast given a banner to them that fear thee, that it may be displayed because of the truth."

4. GOD FAITHFUL TO THE NATION. (a) He remembers to preserve us.

Jer. xxix. 11: "I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you an expected end."

(b) He prospers public work carried on in a devout spirit.

Neh. ii. 20: "The God of heaven he will prosper us; therefore we his servants will arise and build. (c) He helps a right patriotism.

Neh. vi. 9: "They all made us afraid, saying, Their hands shall be weakened from the work, that it be not done. Now, therefore, O God, strengthen my hands. "

5. GOD IS ACTUALLY RULING NOW. (a) Showing us a winning example of helpful sympathy.

Psalm xxxv. 10: "All my bones shall say, Lord, who is like unto thee, which deliverest the poor from him that is too strong for him; yea, the poor and the needy from him that spoileth him?" (b) Not lazy if we are.

Amos iii. 6: "Shall there be evil in the city, and shall not the Lord do somewhat?" (Margin).

(c) Meaning that at last all men shall acknowledge that He rules.

Psalm lxxxiii. 18: "That men may know that thou, whose name alone is Jehovah, art the Most High over all the earth."

Dan. iv. 17: "That the living may know that the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will, and setteth up over it the basest of men.

Phil. iii. 20: "For our citizenship is in heaven" (Revised).

A Christian's citizenship is lighted up and ennobled by the highest moral relations, responsibilities, and purposes, being part of his eternal life.

2. SACREDNESS OF POLITICAL DUTY. Rom. xiii. 1: "The powers that be are ordained of God. "

1 Peter ii. 13: "Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake."

Titus iii. 1: "Put them in mind to be subject to principalities and powers, to obey magistrates, to be ready to every good work."

IV. What to Do About It.

1. GOD CALLS FOR ACTIVE CITIZENSHIP.

Amos v. 15: "Hate the evil and love the good, and establish judgment in the gate.

2. THE "CITIZENS' UNION."

Neh. iv. 19, 20: "The work is great and large, and we are separated upon the wall, one far from the other. In what place therefore ye hear the sound of the trumpet, resort ye thither unto us: our God shall fight for us. "

3. MUTUAL ENCOURAGEMENT FOR CIVIC REFORM.

Neh. ii. 17, 18: 'Come and let us build up the wall of Jerusalem, that we be no more a reproach. . . . So they strengthened their hands for this good work."

THE GREATEST THOUGHTS. BY BISHOP H. W. WARREN, D.D., LL. D., IN BROADWAY M. E. CHURCH, BALTIMORE, MD.

For this cause 1 bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.Eph. iii. 14.

ABOVE all others, the greatest man who ever lived, and in comparison with whom all other great men sink into insignificance, was St. Paul. The Methodist Church is said to have only two saints, and they are St. Paul and St. John.

The greatest thoughts ever put into speech are in St. Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians. By and by God is going to hold an exposition-not a Columbian exposition, but one of far greater importance to us-when we will be called up to be judged. What kind of an exhibit will we make? is the profoundest thought and anxiety of our whole being. Faith, to Christians, means self-surrender of body and soul to God, and that needs strength of the inner man. If Christ is in you by faith, your wife will soon know it; even your horse or dog will know it. How different is God's love from that of men! Men's love comes to-day and is gone to morrow, while God's love is like a flowing river that knows no drought. So great was His love for man that He set up a cross with a living Victim to demonstrate it.

POWER IN CHRIST. BY THOMAS PARRY, D.D. [PRESBY

TERIAN], WILKINSBURG, PA.

All power is given to me in heaven and on earth; go ye therefore and teach all nations-Matt. xxviii. 18-19.

FROM the birth of Jesus Christ, "by the power of the Highest," to His resurrection by the power of God, power was manifest in all He did. There was power in His looks; power in His

preaching and teaching; power went with Him as a virtue, and He was made for us a priest, "after the power of an endless life. " In the text the word power as it stands by itself means authority, the power of dominion; but woven in the context it means intrinsic strength, potential energy, something flexible, capable of germinating schemes, combining many possibilities, having adaptation to work in new and varied circumstances. It is an efficiency that pervades and completes Christianity. The Gospel is one of the vehicles of this all-power, and the Church is its organism. By it the Gospel comes "not in word only, but in power. By it power follows the Gospel as fragrance the rose, as light the star, and as prowess or personal magnetism followed the King of men.

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THE FIRST CHRISTIAN CENTURY. BY REV. J. W. HAMILTON, D.D. [M. E.], BINGHAMTON, N. Y. There is neither Jew nor Greek; there is

neither bond nor free; there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.-Gal. iii. 28.

THIS is the first Christian century since Jesus died. There has been much of Christianity in all centuries, but this is the first century of humanities as well as divinities of the Gospel. Christianity was formerly confined to the Church, but now all things are becoming Christianized. Christianity has gotten out of doors. It is everywhere, and the demand is for conduct as well as character. There must be no distinction.

There have been four periods during the century, each distinguisht by a Christian movement forward. The first twenty-five years saw the establishment of Christian missionaries; the second the freeing of slaves; the third the legal emancipation of woman;

and the fourth the disenthralment of the dependent, defective, and derelict classes the recovery of the opprest.

THE BIBLE STANDS FIRM
AGAINST ATTACKS.

BY MOSES D. HOGE, D.D., LL.D. [PRESBYTERIAN SOUTH], RICHMOND,

VA.

If we wonder at the number and the variety of the attacks on the system of truth contained in the Bible, we have equal cause to be grateful for the number and variety of the defenses which have been made of the divine origin of the sacred records. These defenses are not only numerous, but dissimilar and independent of each other. They become cumulative with advancing time. The providence of God is the interpreter of the truth of prophecy, for as the centuries move on the fulfilled predictions of Holy Writ become more and more impressive. The continued triumph of the Gospel over all the forms of opposition; the superiority of its morals as they are contrasted with all other ethical systems; the perfect ideal presented by the life and character of Christ to all the human ideals which are proposed for study and imitation, the confession made by writers of all nationalities and degrees of culture, of all faiths and unbeliefs, by men unlike each other in all the respects in which men can be dissimilar, who after the strictest scrutiny have been unable to find any flaw or blemish in the ineffable purity and beauty of the character of Christ, by men who came to vilify and misrepresent, but who, as they contemplated it, became filled with tender and irrepressible admiration, and ended by admitting that His was the matchless ideal which satisfied both the intellect and the heart. Every new discovery of archeology, every fresh light thrown on the accuracy of the Mosaic records, every disenterred and deciphered inscription which gives confirmation to any part of Biblical history, adds both to the

number and the strength of the everaccumulating evidences of the truth of our holy religion.

If there were a fortress anywhere on earth which had been besieged in every generation for one thousand years by all the engines of destruction without having any break made in its walls; and if, on the contrary, during the intervals between these attacks, its defenders succeeded in erecting new bastions and towers and strengthening the citadel, they could have little cause to fear that a surrender would ever be necessary.

Such is the fortress of our venerable faith.

It is certain that no system was ever proposed to human credence which had such a long and brilliant line of defenders and advocates as the Christian religion.

THE WORLD'S NEED OF CHRISTIANITY.

BY JOHN H. BARROWS, D. D. [PRESBYTERIAN], CHICAGO, ILL.

THE world needs the Christian relig ion. I have given five of the best years of my life to the examination of this question, and I have had oppor tunities, such as no other man ever had, of seeing and knowing the best side of the ethnic religions. I count as my friends Parsees and Hindus, Buddhists and Confucianists, Shintoists and Mohammedans. I know what they say about themselves. I have lookt at their religions on the ideal side, as well as the practical, and I know this That the very best which is in them, the very best which these well-meaning men have shown to us, is a reflex from Christianity, and that what they lack, and the lack is very serious, is what the Christian gospel alone can impart; and I know that beneath the shining examples of the elect few in the non-Christian world there is a vast area of idolatry and pollution and unrest and superstition and cruelty, which can never be healed by the