very sympathy which makes the choice of a subject such a difficult task. The topic that is uppermost in the minds of others may be farthest from his mind, or what is most engaging his may just then be farthest from theirs. They would not violate the compact of mutual accord, and he must not. Besides all this, the position of the preacher has changed very much in the last one or two generations. In the good old times of blessed tradition, if not of memory, the preacher was supposed to possess most of the piety and all of the learning of the parish. He was regarded as a superior being, living in the world as a condescension to ordinary mortals. It would have created little surprise if a chariot of fire had come for him almost any day, and carried him to heaven as it did Elijah. Whatever he said was not on his own authority, but as the accredited agent of the skies. Neither himself nor the people would have dared to contradict or question the message which he had no responsibility for nor in, except to deliver. Such a strange condition of affairs grew out of the belief in a distant God, who must needs have his agents and representatives to declare his will and utter warnings, and administer what few spiritual affairs there were in a very secular and unregenerate world. All this has changed in these later years. The pulpit has no monopoly of the learning nor of the piety. The agencies that have promoted general intelligence have toned down this presumption of the pulpit.

But, as I began to say, it was Thursday morning. The subject for the sermon was yet unknown, and the fruitless search and eager, feverish thinking had become a dull and hopeless despair. The sermon should be well under way by this time. The inevitable Sunday morning would come, and the fatal eleven o'clock. The choir would sing two pieces, and after that the congregation would sing two hymns, and then the hymn-books would be rattled back into the book-racks, and then the people would sit down, and — and then- At the thought of it all the despair became an agony. That is one of the many, many times when a preacher thinks that he has made a mistake in his calling; he never ought to have been a preacher, anyway; has always suspected it, and now he knows it; and he fondly recalls the time when he used to work by the month,

and had no responsibility but to do his work as well as he could, and draw his wages when they were due. And he thinks, too, of the many members of his congregation who have just such positions now, and how happy they must be, and how he would like to change places with them. And sometimes he wishes he could just take them all right into his confidence, and tell them how weak and impotent he feels, and how incapable to instruct and inspire and strengthen and comfort them, and how poor his work seems to him after he has done his very best. But he knows that he cannot tell them all this. So he goes on with his task week after week, and hides the pain of self-distrust, and keeps striving, though he never attains his ideal. And he would give up with a broken heart, but he meets now and then a word of commendation or a look or nod of approval which makes him feel as the mown grass must feel when the sweet summer rain comes out of heaven to give it fresh courage and renew its drooping heart.

But as I began to say at least twice before-it was Thursday morning, and the sermon not begun, and things were getting desperate, when some one-it does not matter who-came into the study, and placed on the desk, where the sermon would not begin, a small wine-glass full of pansies. They were just common pansies, if pansies may ever be called "just common." Some of them were creamy white with blue centres; some of them were blue with dashes of white; one of them was a solid purple, so deep-hued that you couldn't be sure it wasn't jet-black; and all of them had yellow hearts such as pansies always have.

There was the least bit of fragrance about them,―for the flowers that have the most delicate breath are the most reluctant to breathe for you, but just enough to seem like a sweet memory of which you are not quite sure, and to recall some summer morning, when, half-waking, you have heard birds singing far away, and in that delicious moment couldn't tell and didn't care whether it really was the morning and the birds, or whether you were dreaming and it was the echo of some song the angels were singing to the stars.

And now a very strange thing began,— something so strange that it is most difficult to tell and maybe is too difficult to believe,

but which is all true just the same, whether it is believed or not. Those flowers began to have somehow an indefinable attraction, which soon became a subtle and resistless fascination. They did not change their appearance as flowers, nor even move; and yet they seemed more and different than flowers. One might have said they were suddenly possessed of a soul or a spirit if one only knew what a soul or a spirit is.

But, anyway, it was very strange, as the sequel will show; and, what it was or how it was, the flowers kept that secret to themselves. They seemed to take possession of the entire room. They did this in quiet, unobtrusive way, and yet with an air of assurance and undisguised confidence, as though it were the most natural thing possible and everybody was expected to understand it and govern himself accordingly. It is hardly necessary to say that the struggle for a sermon became utterly hopeless. From that moment it was simply doomed. The last hope died right there.

This gave the man a feeling of abject despair, but it seemed to gratify the flowers. Could it be, then, that they came bent on malevolence, and was it in their hearts to rejoice in human misery? And all these years we have thought them the symbols of guileless innocence and holy joy, and have strewn them before the feet of brides and put them on the coffins of our dead! At last we have found them out. They belong to the darkness out of which they come and into which they return. They are too malevolent. Let us hate flowers. Then the Pansies looked grieved, and said, "You judge us without knowing all," and in their voice as they spoke there was a reproachful, tremulous cadence, which made you feel that you were the meanest man in the world, and wanted to go out and ask everybody and everything to forgive you, and swear to them all that you would never, never again think ill of anything or anybody in all the world. "We wanted," the flowers kept on saying in the same soft, beseeching tones,-"we wanted you to give up the search for that other subject. It was so intended. We, too, were sad when you were distressed; but we were gladder than we were sad, because we understand the law that suffering leadeth ever the just soul into joy and peace."

"That sounds very well," the man replied,

"and may be true enough as a general prop‐ osition, but it isn't pertinent to the case in hand. Here it is Thursday, and Sunday will soon come, and I must have a sermon; and you know perfectly well that I can't get out one of those old ones and make it do duty again. It would bore those who remembered it, and would be imposing on the confidence of those who did not; and, besides"

"We had thought," interrupted the flowers, without waiting for the man to finish his impatient speech,-"we had thought you would divine our meaning before this and understand why we came. We are your subject. We want you to preach about

"About you, indeed!" retorted the man. "About flowers! Services at eleven o'clock. The subject of the reverend doctor's sermon will be 'Pansies.' How would that read in the Saturday papers? They would call us the leaders of Pansy Christianity."

"They who call names," quietly replied the flowers, "pass soon out of sight, and are remembered without pleasure and forgotten without pain."

"Besides," continued the man, "flowers are not a suitable theme for the pulpit. Life is not a thing with most people that has an analogy in flowers. It is struggle, and trial, and temptation, and disappointment, and pain. People will be there who are in distress, who are harassed by doubts and fears, whose hearts are sore with unspoken griefs. Some will be there who are weak and exhausted with long and heroic resistance of evil, whose strength is almost gone. These must find help and courage, or they will be beaten in the fight. Some will be there who are sick at heart of the endless weary monotony of life, and who see no meaning in it all, and are fast growing bitter and rebellious. And others will be there who are becoming indifferent and selfish and callous, and living lives without sympathy or helpfulness for the world. All these ought to find in the Sunday service comfort and hope and strength and spiritual quickening. What can a man say that will be of value to them if he talks about just flowers?

"Some of them would get up and leave the church, and others would wish they had gone where they could hear real preaching,

with gestures and loud voice, and themes like the 'Covenant with Abraham,' and the 'Fall of Sodom and Gomorrah,' and 'The Apostolic Succession,' and things like that." "In that last sentence," answered the flowers, "you unwittingly confess a fault from which few preachers are exempt, the desire to attract numbers. The ambition that feeds on the flattery of large congregations defeats itself. What business of yours is it whether many or few say yea or nay? How have you trampled in the dust your most holy calling, when you make it a means for the gratification of personal pride and selfish ambition! You coquet in public with truth, and make secret marriages with pride. Truth wanders up and down, seeking those who will espouse her and forsake all others to cleave only unto her. Him she would make mighty as an army with banners. She would pack the metropolitan church or people the wilderness to hear him.

"Your selection of subjects would be far less difficult if you thought more about what truth would have you speak and less about what the people would be pleased to hear. You vainly imagine that you must parade your wisdom and make a show of knowledge. You assume an authority which you do not possess, and affect an unction to disguise your hypocrisy. You labor with themes that sound learned, and with a display of words seek to conceal your insincerity. The people come to you in vain for help. Hungry souls ask for bread. You give them a stone. The life the people live is made up of common things. You 'invite their attention' to the uncommon. The people live in the present. You delight in the dead and distant past.

"There was one preacher whom all the flowers know about and love to honor. He preached as never man preached before, alas! nor since. And he did not talk about Abrahamic covenants and modes of baptism and creeds and such things, but just about the common things that people knew and could understand.

"He did not spend days seeking for a subject with which to astonish the people or win their applause. He just went right on and made his sermons about the fig-trees, and the vineyards, and the wheat, and the sparrows, and us flowers, too. And, when he went down to the lake where the men were

fishing, he talked to them about their boats and their nets and their last night's catch. And everybody loved to hear him except the preachers; and they hired men to kill him, so they could keep their own congregations. All the flowers know about that preacher, and love him, too."

“Yes,” replied the man, "I have read about that preacher, but still I don't see how a sermon can be made out of flowers. What will be my 'firstly, brethren,' and my secondly and thirdly and finally, and 'a word now in conclusion'?"

"That way of announcing the divisions of a sermon," said the flowers, "is an antique habit which you preachers would let fall into disuse if you were less conventional and more sincere. A sermon should be like a song or a poem, each part natural and necessary to all the rest, and the whole production complete in itself. The process by which it was made does not need to appear, but only the result of the process. It is not necessary to unjoint it in public and click it together again, in order to show that its anatomy is of the approved kind and in good working order."

"Suppose," the man replied, "you get over in this chair, and take the pen and write the sermon yourself."

"That," the flowers answered sadly,—"that you doubtless intended to be very funny; but it is strangely lacking in dignity and remarkably silly."

"What shall I say, then?" asked the man, impatiently.

"Nothing," replied the flowers: "there is nothing you can say while in that petulant mood. Impatience drives truth away, and anger bars the door against her return.

"Peace and holy calm are in the soul where truth dwells. He who would teach men aright must first master his own spirit. How shall the lips speak when the soul stammers?

"How shall the tongue serve righteousness and truth when the heart is in open rebellion against their holy laws? How shall”—

"Oh, spare me, dread angel of reproof," bitterly cried the man. "Make even of me, weak, imperfect me, the voice to utter thy message, the servant to do thy will. See my heart I lay it naked at thy dear feet. Look on its selfish pride, its unholy ambition, its love of applause, its fear of censure and

rebuke. See it stained with treason to thee and thine; see its years of too weak striving against the evil, too fickle devotion to the good.

"Look on it as he whom all the flowers love looked on the guilty heart in that long ago, and, as he forgave, forgive."

The flowers did not answer. They were silent with that hush that is too tender and holy for speech.

It was as if everywhere there was music, yet without singers or songs. It was as one sometimes imagines heaven, where every desire fulfils itself, and the pearly tears of gladness jewel the dimpled smiles of joy. When the man stopped sobbing, the flowers began to speak; but it was now about the sermon. "Tell them," they said, "that the great life they call God is nearer than they think, nearer than they can know. That nothing just happens as they say. Tell them that I came to you by a human hand, prompted by a human heart, but back of that human heart and prompting it was the heart divine. Tell them that every hand that gives a flower is moved by a heart that God moves. Tell them we could not grow but for God, and that, lying in the earth, we are lying in his bosom, and, when we are come to the blossom, we are holden in his hand.

"Tell them we grew and were beautiful when the snow and ice were on the ground and frost was in the air. And some one whose life has been drear and wintry will take fresh heart when he sees that God is God of the winter, too.

"Tell them how many of us grow and wither, uncared for and unseen by mortals, but that we even thus fulfil the divine will. And some one, whose life the great world seems to spurn, will know that in seclusion and loneliness one may still serve God. Tell them that fresh and beautiful we came to you, but are faded now, and will soon be thrown away and forgotten, but God remembers, and that, fresh or faded, we are his.

"And, oh! tell them," they pleadingly said, “that all things that live long to speak to them of the great One who is everywhere; but our speech is silence, and they do not understand. He knew who lived long ago, but there are none like him now." Then the flowers were silent. They had drooped, and were hanging down over the edge of the

glass; for it was now late into Saturday night. The man was very sad when he saw how fast they were fading; and, when the flowers saw that he was grieved, they said: "It seems strange to us that you should be sad at what nature has ordained. You wrongly call it death. It is the law of life.

"Nature is wise. These forms we wore were but masks. We put them on, and they are beautiful. But we must put them off and let them fade, lest you confound the spirit with the mask it wears. There is no death. What you fear and dread and think is death is the eternal wooing of life with life. Where your tears fall and the shadows seem so deep, there begins the radiant way o'er which the soul, on winged feet, mounts to life supernal. It gave to the earthy form its beauty for an hour, a day. That beauty to the form celestial it gives forever."

When the flowers stopped speaking, the tears were running down the man's cheeks: but they were those tears which one can't quite tell whether they are more of grief or joy, like the April shower when snowflakes and raindrops come out of the same cloud. and the sun shines out to tell the wondering earth that it is not the winter, but the spring.

Then the man said to them: "O, sweet flowers! I will tell the people as well as I can all the things which you have told me, and they won't think it a sermon at all. But, if I could only tell them all you have been to me, and thrill their hearts as you have thrilled mine, they would want me to preach that way all the time.”

Kansas City, Mo.

JOHN E. ROBERTS.

THE GOOD SHEPHERD,

He standeth by the sheep-fold,
His hand upon the door.
And now he swingeth it full wide,
And, leading on before,
He calleth in a tender voice,

"My sheep, come, follow me; And none shall pluck you from my hand Through all eternity."

The way lies part in meadows fair,
By cool and sparkling streams,
Where sunlight filters through the air
And lies in golden gleams
On hill and wood and valley,

To clothe them with delight.
The pilgrims gladly linger here,
Their hearts are brave and light.

We find traces of Universalism in America early in the seventeenth century. Early in the next century it was brought here by the German Baptists, or Dunkers, and a little later by the Moravians. In the last half of the eighteenth century it was advocated by a few Episcopalian and Congregational ministers, by George DeBenneville and others, who, unknown to each other, were the first fruits of that spirit of freer inquiry and larger hope which was to bear fruit in a theological reformation whose momentum has not exhausted itself in building the Universalist church and the broadening of the old theologies. In 1770 John Murray,

often called the father of American Universalism, who had preached in England as a follower of Whitefield, landed at Good Luck, N.J. He there preached in a meetinghouse built by Thomas Potter, an unlettered man, who had come to hold Universalist ideas from his own reasonings upon the character of God and the mission of Christ, and had built the church in the faith that such a gospel would some day be proclaimed within its walls. It was far from being an orthodox or even a religious age. The great revivals of 1740 had been followed by a reaction, which filled many friends of religion with alarm. The French and English Deism of the eighteenth century had influenced some of the leading spirits of the land. There was a spirit of the bitterest animosity between the opposing sects into which the professed friends of religion were divided. Many churches seemed to be upon the verge of extinction. The memoirs, sermons, diaries, and letters of that time are full of evidence as to the low state of morals and religion. Profanity was

a general vice, and in most classes habitual. Intemperance, licentiousness, and the desecration of Sunday seem to have been fearfully prevalent. Calvinism, as a preservative of faith and morals, had seemingly failed; and the "free thinking" of that time seemed to promise no better condition of affairs.

For a few years Murray worked alone; but other teachers soon took up the work, men unknown to and acting independently of each other, and receiving their Universalism from a variety of sources. The revolt against Calvinism, the longing for a better hope, were in the air. Elhanan Winchester, pastor of a Baptist church in Philadelphia, embraced Universalism in 1780, and carried most of his congregation with him. He was the most scholarly of the early leaders of American Universalism. In 1794 Hosea Ballou began to devote his whole time to preaching Universalism as he had conceived it. He was, in the words of an unfriendly critic of his faith, "a born theologian and an intellectual giant." He had a genius for the kind of preaching demanded by the new faith and the average belief and culture of that age; and he was worth to the new movement a host of ordinary re-enforcements. At this time there were from ten