or the other merely as dead lumber: it is our business not to be swept this way or that merely by passionate feeling and prejudice. It is our business to understand and to take sides for God and man. And we can do this only through thought, through reading, through study.

To carry this matter a little farther, the world is perpetually making mistakes, blundering in dealing with the greatest problems of life, merely for lack of knowing the history of the past. They are perpetually trying over experiments that have been tried a thousand times and proved to be impracticable, merely because they do not know that they have been tried. Congresses and legislatures are perpetually attempting things that cannot be done, merely because they do not know that they cannot be done, which they might know by reading, by studying the attempts of mankind in the past.

We need, then, to read for the sake of placing ourselves in relation to the past efforts of man in the matter of civilization, knowing where we are and which direction we are to take, in order to be sure that we are in the forward movement, and not merely wandering aimlessly about or travelling towards the rear.

Then, I think, business men ought to read for the sake of getting into the ideal side of their business. Note the principle I have in mind right here. The difference between the artisan and the artist is that the artisan is engaged in mere drudgery, a round of toil, so much labor and sweat for so much bread; while the artist mingles thought with his labor, so lifts it out of the region of drudgery and makes it a delight. The difference between the drudgery in your business and the artist's delight in that business is merely the difference of knowing and appreciating and entering into the ideal side of your labor. Take a lawyer, for example, or a physician, or a banker, or a merchant: each one of these professions or businesses has a history, and that history is full of romance, and by comprehending that history one sees that it has been something more than a mere effort

of a man engaged in this department of activity to earn a few dollars with which he may feed the hunger of his body. This particular business has been a part of the world's attempt to civilize itself; and the moment you enter into this realm of thought, the ideal side of your business, and see the relations which they sustain to the welfare of mankind, that moment you are not merely a lawyer grubbing over a particular case, or a banker trying to get such and such a per cent., or a merchant merely selling so many yards of cloth or so many pounds of coffee,- you are a part of the civilizing effort of mankind. You are in a world of romance and beauty and wonder; and you are lifted out of the mere drudgery of your profession, and become a part of the larger, pulsing life of mankind.

There is another reason for reading; and this one is merely for delight, merely for rest, merely for pleasure and for play. And this is not a matter of slight importance. Most of us are engaged in such ceaseless toil and activity that we need to let loose the mere play side of our being, in order that we may keep ourselves sane and healthy and strong. The late Professor Baird of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, one of the most famous scientific men of his time, was accustomed every night, before he went to bed, to read some mere story of adventure,— perhaps in the New York Ledger, no matter what,- anything that would merely release the mental activities from the strain of the day's toil and give him delight, recreation, rest,- let him down, so to speak, that his nerves might lose their tension, and he be able to sleep. I feel the greatest gratitude for hundreds of writers of stories that are mere stories with no moral in them whatsoever. I want no moral in a book when I am reading it for that purpose: I want merely to rest and play. I prefer to take my morals by themselves. Let me have my story simply for a story, simply as a part of this ideal, imaginative world in which I love so many times to escape from the real. I must not stop to dwell longer on that, because there are other things which I wish to say of more practical importance.

One other grand reason for reading is that we should learn to become citizens of the world's thought. This world in which we are living to-day is a comparatively narrow world, full of remarkable things as it is. Try to conceive, if you can, try to conceive every book in the whole world blotted out of existence, all the monuments and records of the past wiped away. What a small, narrow, petty little world this would be! For the most of us, those of us who have read only a little, are inhabitants not merely of Boston, not merely of Massachusetts, not merely of the United States territorially considered, not merely of this planet with what it at present contains. We are inhabitants of a hundred worlds of beauty and glory that we have entered through the reading of a book. You have read Walter Scott's stories, for example; and so you live in medieval Scotland, you are at home on the heather and by the lakes, you are present at the contests of the old medieval warriors, you tread unchallenged the halls of the old castles, are present at the feasts, and listen to the stories of the wandering minstrels. And so you are at home in this thought-world that you have entered merely by reading a book in your library. It is this higher world that is the eternal thing, and in which we deal with the things that are eternal. Shakspere, for example, has created a world more lasting than this planet, in its special features, on which we live. The courses of rivers change, the mountains are worn away, the features of a continent may become renewed. But the world that Shakspere has created remains forever, age after age, the same; and, if we will, we may enter into that world, be taken into the private confidence of these noblest of all time. Here is society! I suppose it is true that, if all these great men of the past were living, most of us would not be able to attain a personal acquaintance with them. Our lives are too full, too busy. Perhaps, if we should meet them, there would be something in their personal contact that would repel us, or, at any rate, they might not be drawn to us if we were to them. But now all this marvellous society of the great and the good is freely.

open to us. We may live with Virgil in ancient Rome, we may trace with him the wanderings of Æneas from the burning of Troy to the founding of the Eternal City. We may wander hand in hand with the poets, as they whisper to us their most secret thoughts: they will tell us their most private emotions, they will lay their hearts and lives bare for our inspection. We may hear the songs of the great singers. All the past of the world is wide open for our entrance, for our enjoyment, for our inspection. And it seems to me that merely for the sake of being men, entering on the inheritance of our manhood, we ought to feel an unrest until we have made ourselves explorers of these wonder-lands. We travel in the modern world whenever we have an opportunity: we love to visit Japan or China or Europe and the islands of the sea. Perhaps we are not able, except now and then, to get a glimpse of these things. But a few pence a little money that we squander in a thousand directions will give us these great worlds for our home.

There is one other reason for reading; and this must be my last this morning. Read for the sake of soul-culture, read for the sake of inspiration, for the sake of moral and spiritual uplifting. If we could have walked the fields of Galilee by the side of Jesus, what toil, what effort, we would have been willing to go through for the sake of this attainment! And yet we can walk the fields of Galilee by the side of Jesus. He will tell us his finest sayings, we may feel the inspiration that comes from the touch of his hand or the gleam of his eye, we may feel deep down in our souls the challenge of his finer manhood, the inspiration of his companionship. I think we ought to make ourselves at home with the few great masters and teachers of the world's moral and spiritual life. Take Seneca, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, the sayings of Jesus, the principal sayings of Gautama, of Confucius, of the great sages, seers, inspirers, of the world. You know there is nothing that so thrills and lifts a man as the touch of human greatness. There is something about this personal contact with a nobler charac

ter which thrills us through, and lifts us until we grow into nobler and higher and grander things than we have be fore attained. And, if we keep the company of men like these until we are saturated with their thought, until their highest and finest ideas have become the standards of our lives, until we look through their eyes and gain glimpses of the higher and finer things that the world has not yet attained, we shall find ourselves gradually wrought over into the likeness of these men. This is pure and simple nature and common sense. The artist who wishes to become great in his profession puts himself into the presence and under the shadow of a master, of one who is great in his profession. By becoming his disciple, he does not enter upon a pledge that he will not exceed him, become greater than he. He is not a slave to his ideas: he does not take it as a bondage. There are a great many of us Unitarians, I think, who are over-afraid of the teaching and influence of Jesus, lest we shall be thought to neglect other teachers. But, when I become a disciple of the Nazarene, it is not that I take his ideas as authority, that I am his slave. I take him as a master merely as an artist might Raphael, recognizing that which is supreme, high, great. I love to sit under the shadow of his presence, to feel the power of his life, to be touched and thrilled by the nobility of his soul, and so lifted up into the likeness of the divine.

Let

Let us, then, friends, use these lights of the mind that God has given us, so that we may discover the way, the footsteps, of the Father, and cast our influence in the direction which shall mean the forward movement of the race. us not simply feel, but let us guide, direct that feeling, that it may become a power of inspiration and impulse to lift up and lead forward the world.

Father, we consecrate to Thee this morning our feeling and our thought. We will try to feel nobly, we will try to think clearly, and so use all the power of passion that is ours as a means for moving forward mankind. Amen.