ere. It is not very long. This
life for which we are so careful--it is not very long; and yet it is so
long, because, long, long after we have passed away out of men's sight
and out of men's memory, the world, with something that we have left
upon it, that we have left within it, will be going on still. It is so
long because, long after the city and the world have passed away, we
shall go on somewhere, somehow, the same beings still, carrying into the
depths of eternity something that this world has done for us that no
other world could do, something of goodness to get now that will be of
value to us a million years hence, that we never could get unless we got
it in the short years of this earthly life. Will you know it? Will you
let Christ teach it to you? Will you let Christ tell you what is the
perfect man? Will you let Him set His simplicity and graciousness close
to your life, and will you feel their power? Oh! be brave, be true, be
pure, be men, be men in the power of Jesus Christ. May God bless you!
May God bless you! Let us pray.

IV. TRUE LIBERTY.

An earnest appeal to all that enter that Liberty. May I read to you a
few words from the eighth chapter of St. John? "Then said Jesus to those
Jews which believed on Him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my
disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make
you free."

Let us not think, my friends, that there is anything strange about the
spectacle which we witnessed this morning. The only strange thing that
there could be about it is that anybody should think that it is strange
that men should turn aside for half an hour from their ordinary business
pursuits, that they should come from the details of life to inquire in
regard to the principles, the everlasting principles and purposes of
life; that they should turn aside from those things which are occupying
them from day to day and make one single hour in the week consecrated to
the service of those great things which underlie all life--surely there
is nothing very strange. There is nothing more absolutely natural. Every
man does it in his own sort of way, in his own choice of time. We have
chosen to do it together, on one day of the week during these few weeks
which the Christian Church has so largely set apart for special thought
and prayer and earnest attempt to approach the God to whom we belong. It
is simply as if the stream turned back again to its fountain, that it
might