ough a long life, and as the last gray hour came over their dim sea
of life, "brackish with the salt of human tears," have acknowledged
with infinite bitterness that they have caught nothing. Listen to the
voice of Goethe, "In all my seventy-five years I have not had four
weeks of genuine well-being;" to the confession of our own famous
poet,

My life is in the yellow leaf,
The flowers, the fruits of love are gone;
The worm, the canker, and the grief
Are mine alone.

to the ambitious and successful statesman who says, "Youth is folly,
manhood is struggle, old age regret"; to one of our most brilliant
women of genius in our own generation, wife of a still more brilliant
husband, who cries, "I married for ambition, and I am miserable."
Surely there is some tragic mismanagement of the great business of
living here. Oh, brother, is it true of you, that after all the
painful years happiness is not yours? You have no meat, no food on
which the heart feeds, no green pasture in the soul, no table in the
wilderness, and the last gray day draws near and will find you still
hungering for what life Has never given you.

Learn, then, that Christ knows more about the proper management of
your life than you do. "Cast your net on the right side of the ship,"
speaks that quiet Voice from the shore. And you know what happened.
And it is so still. Just because Christ stands among the common things
of life, He knows most about life, and, above all, He knows where
the golden fruit of happiness is found and where the secret wells of
peace.

And to some of us whom God has called to be fishers of men the issue
is yet more solemn. We have the boat and the nets, all this elaborate
organization of the Church, but have we caught anything this year?
Where is the draft of fishes? Where are the men and women saved by
our triumphant effort? I will make my humble confession this morning,
that for five-and-twenty years I have cast the net, but only lately
have I found the right side of the ship; only lately have I discovered
how easy it is to get the great draft of fishes by simply going to
work in Christ's way. I do not believe in the indifference of the
masses in religion; the indifference is not in the masses, but in the
churches. You will never catch many fish if you stand upon the shore
of cold respectability and wait for them to come; launch out into the
deep and you will find them. Go for them--that is Christ's method.
Compel t