Then there is this lesson, that those very elements of decay and death we fear will hinder, to the true soul will not hinder, but help; nay, be vital and essential to the great purpose for which that soul came, and to which it tends.

I know of nothing more fatal, in all outward seeming, than Jewry to Christ, and Ayrshire to Burns, and Fleet Street to Lamb, and Haworth to Charlotte Bronté. If God, in every one of these instances, had revealed to me the conditional as the root of the resulting life, I think I should have besought him every time to alter the decision, and not plant such holy and noble natures in such a dismal soil; while the place I should have chosen, had it been left to me, would probably be as if I had kept the root my friend gave me safely locked in my desk,— never thinking how it is out of the very contest with these antagonisms, that the choicest power and grace must spring: as the farce of saying mass by the scented priests in Rome made Luther say it with a deeper reverence, and more anxious searching for its grace. But, above all, may we not see this greatest lesson, that more profit comes to the

soul, and all related to it, out of separation and darkness and death, in God's good time, than can ever come out of union and light and life? "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but, if it die, it will bring forth much fruit."

I suppose no men that ever lived would be more ready than these apostles to say, "We grant this, if you mean a grain of wheat; but we cannot see it, if you mean the life of a man.' Yet they themselves were to furnish one of the most striking applications of the fact ever found in human history. While the Messiah was with them, they blundered over his sayings, hesitated whether they could go with him, held a divided love, and saw through a glass darkly, as I saw the August flower in the root of June. But when he died and was gone, then he came back to them in all his glory and power. When they had lost him, and darkness and death had taken him seemingly into their heart, then came the resurrection. Every word he had said became radiant with tenderness and truth and love. His deeds caught a new meaning. His life filled before them into an ever-growing wonder; and

he was transfigured for ever, not to three men, but to the universe. Then, as the great memories filled them, their sense grew ever clearer of what their Friend had been; but even that, at last, was lost in the sense of what he was. So they loved him, and labored and lived and died for him; and, when their time came, went singing, with a most glorious and transcendent exultation, into the shadow of death, because his light, shining through the shadow, goldened all the way.

Now, this is where the truth under discussion comes most urgently home to every one of us. The time comes again and again, when we must bury the best we have, and leave it in the soil, sever some precious belonging of life for duty with Lamb; or find sin or circumstance, sever it with Burns. The prime condition of a life ever found, is a life ever lost. But there are times when we all feel poor and bare and sad for our losses, and wonder whether it was not all wrong when the treasure was taken away. I tell you, if we are poor because we stand true to life and duty, we are poor only as the sower is poor, because he has to cast his wheat into the furrow, and then wait for the sheaves of

harvest,

poor as I was poor, because my flower

'root was not treasured where it would remain as it was, but was cast where a life was waiting to receive and re-create it, as true in its way and mighty as the life of the first archangel.

Our poverty, then, is our wealth, and our loss our gain. If our life is as God will, yet is bare, it is only as the granary is bare in June. That very bareness is the prophecy of plenty; and fulness alone in June might bring grave reason to fear, that there might be sparseness and hunger in January. When I sow my good treasure broadcast, as Christ did; when I give myself with what I am giving, — then, as the earth never fails of her harvest, but, in the Old World or the New, will surely bring us our daily bread, so the soul can never fail of her divine returns. Here or yonder, in the full time, comes the full blessing; the flower flashing out glory, the fields laughing with plenty.

"Then who can murmur and misdoubt,

When God's great bounty finds him out?"

And just as I can gather and deepen this faith; as I can realize, though I have never seen, the

beauty of my August,-I shall be ready to plant my root, to let my wheat fall into the ground and die, to give my life. Our great temptation is to hold on to the seed-corn. We are in agony because of the sowing. When the angel comes and takes our treasure, we say we will go too, that we may die also. But the hand so masterful and yet so gentle takes our treasure, and casts it into its grave; and then the hope and love and life of our life is dead.

Dead, did I say? What means this story of the summer? Is not every day proclaiming through all the land, that what was seeming death is unconquerable life? Death has no dominion; death is lost in victory. The resurrection comes while I am going to look at the grave, and weep there, and count my losses and recount my poverty. And then the shining ones tell me the great secret, and send me on my way, lost in wonder and solemn joy.

So it has been with our nation. Our root was buried in the rank soil of decay and death; and many cried out that the noble thing perfected out of a former summer, and watered by the tears and enriched with the blood of the fathers, was clean