but we eagerly long for peace and light to cheer and
illuminate our life; and we have heard there is a land where these are
to be found--a land of repose and joy, full of thoughts that breathe
and words that burn: but we cannot go thither ourselves; we are too
embroiled in daily cares: come, we will elect you, and set you free
from our toils, and you shall go thither for us, and week by week
trade with that land and bring us its treasures and its spoils. Oh,
woe to him who accepts this election, and yet, failing through
idleness to carry on the noble merchandise, appears week by week
empty-handed or with merely counterfeit treasure in his hands! Woe to
him too, if, going to that land, he forgets those who sent him and
spends his time there in selfish enjoyment of the delights of
knowledge! Woe to him if he does not week by week return laden, and
ever more richly laden, and saying, Yes, brothers, I have been to that
land; and it is a land of light and peace and nobleness: but I have
never forgotten you and your needs and the dear bonds of brotherhood;
and look, I have brought back this, and this, and this: take it to
gladden and purify your life!

I esteem it one of the chief rewards of our profession, that it makes
us respect our fellow-men. It makes us continually think of even the
most degraded of them as immortal souls, with magnificent undeveloped
possibilities in them--as possible sons of God, and brethren of
Christ, and heirs of heaven. Some men, by their profession, are
continually tempted to take low views of human nature. But we are
forced to think worthily of it. A minister is no minister who does not
see wonder in the child in the cradle and in the peasant in the field
relations with all time behind and before, and all eternity above and
beneath. Not but that we see the seamy side too--the depths as well as
the heights. We get glimpses of the awful sin of the heart; we are
made to feel the force of corrupt nature's mere inert resistance to
good influences; we have to feel the pain of the slowness of the
movement of goodness, as perhaps no other men do. Yet love and undying
faith in the value of the soul and hope for all men are the
mainsprings of our activity.

For the end we always aim at is to save those who hear us. Think what
that is! What a magnificent life work! It is to fight against sin, to
destroy the works of the devil, to make human souls gentle, noble and
godlike, to help on the progress of the