Some people say that another revolution is coming in our own age and our own country. It is possible. There are signs of it. There has been a tremendous increase of luxury among the rich in the present generation. There has been a great increase of suffering among the poor in certain sections of our coantry. It was a startling fact that nearly six millions of people in 1896 cast a vote of practical discontent with the present social and commercial order. It may be that we are on the eve of a great overturning. I do not know. I am not a prophet, nor the son of a prophet. But I know that there is one thing that can make a revolution needless, one thing that is infinitely better than any revolution; and that is a real revival of religion-the religion that has already founded the hospital and the asylum and the free school, the religion that has broken the fetters of the slave, and lifted womanhood out of bondage and degradation, and put the arm of its protection around the helplessness and innocence of childhood, the religion that proves its faith by its works, and links the preaching of the fatherhood of God to the practice of the brotherhood of man. That religion is true Christianity, with plenty of salt in it which has not lost its savor. I believe that we are even now in the beginning of a renaissance of such religion, greater than the world has seen since the days of the Reformation. I believe that there is a rising tide of desire to find the true meaning of Christ's teaching, to feel the true power of Christ's life, to interpret the true significance of Christ's sacrifice, for the redemption of mankind. I believe that never before were there so many young men of culture, of intelligence, of character, passionately in earnest to find the way of making their religion speak, not in word only, but in power. I call you to-day, my brethren, to take your part, not with the idle, the frivolous, the faithless, the selfish, the gilded youth, but with the earnest, the manly, the devout, the devoted, the golden youth. I summon you to do your share in the renaissance of religion, for your own sake, for your fellow men's sake, for your country's sake. On this fair Sunday, when all around us tells of bright hope and glorious promise, let the vision of our country, with her perils, with her opportunities, with her temptations, with her splendid powers, with her threatening sins, rise before our souls. What needs she more, in this hour, than the cleansing, saving, conserving influence of right religion? What better service could we render her than to set our lives to the tune of these words of Christ, and be indeed the salt of our country, and through her growing power, of the whole earth? Ah, bright will be the day, and full of glory, when the bells of every church, of every schoolhouse. of every college, of every university, ring with the music of this mes sage, and find their echo in the hearts of the youth of America. That will be the chime of a new age. "Ring in the valiant man and free, The larger heart, the kindlier hand; § 87 THE PERFECT MANHOOD By Henry Ward Beecher (Preached in the chapel of the West Point Military Academy, Sunday morning, June 13, 1869, before the graduating class.) "Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man."-EPH. iv. 13. The apostle, in the preceding verses, has been speaking of the variety of instruments employed in the promulgation of the Gospel. "He gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers." He then states, generally, the object for which they were given-"For the perfecting of the saints; for the work of the ministry; for the edifying of the body of Christ"-the general services of the church. And then, in the passage which I have selected, more particularly he declares, "Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man." All churches, all ordinances, all doctrines, all sorts of moral teachers, are ordained for the sake of making perfect men; and Christianity may be said to be, in a general way, the art of being whole men, in distinction from partial men, and make-believe men. It is not enough to say that Christianity tends to make men better. It does that; but on the way to something higher. Its aim is to develop a perfect manhood. "Till we all come unto a perfect man." And that manhood can never be reached except in Christ Jesus. This is not merely saying that men need divine help in all upward striving-which is strictly true; but it is teaching that human. HENRY WARD BEECHER. Born at Litchfield, Conn., June 24, 1813; died at Brooklyn N. Y., March 8, 1887; graduated from Amherst College in 1834; studied Theology at Lane Seminary; settled as Presbyterian minister at Lawrenceburg, Ind., 1837; moved shortly thereafter to Indiana, where he preached until 1847; pastor of Plymouth Church (Congregational), Brooklyn, N. Y., 1847 nature, developed perfectly, becomes divine. We hold a nature in common with the divine nature. When we can work out from it the accidental, the transient, the local, that which is left is strictly divineit is like Christ. No man can be divine in scope and degree; but in kind he may. Every oak-tree in the nursery is like the oak-tree of a hundred years. Not in size, but in nature, it is just as much an oak-tree as the biggest. We are not of the divine magnitude, nor of the divine. scope, nor of the divine power; but we are of the divine nature. We have common natures-God and we; and these, not by figure, but really. One must not confound, then, Christianity and religion. Religion is the specific of which Christianity is the generic. The one is simply worship. The other is character. Religion is a partialism—a very noble partialism; but it is the employment of only one part of our nature, namely, that which relates to the divine and the invisible. Christianity, on the other hand, including this, and using it, takes in all the other faculties as well, and seeks, not to make men do right things, this and that, but to create a manhood in men. It would develop perfectly every power of the body, every faculty of the mind, and round out the whole into a perfect man. Religion did not attempt to do that. It does not attempt to do it. Religion teaches men to pray, to worship, to awe, to venerate, to be obedient: but Christianity teaches men to be men all through, doing this, and doing all the other things besides. Religion would frame a just man. Christ would make a whole man. Religion would save a man. Christ would make him worth saving. The noble religion of the Hebrew trained men for an earthly commonwealth. Christ brought in immortality, and trained men for an earthly commonwealth, in order that they might become inhabitants of a higher, a heavenly commonwealth. It was because the full development of mankind required more room, and new and higher formative influences, that there was a new dispensation superinduced upon the former one. It is to this view of truth that I shall call your attention to-daynamely, the Christian idea of perfect manhood. Consider what the nature of this manhood must be. In some respects, it is already predetermined by the nature of man. It is not a manhood that is to lie outside of the faculties with which we are already endowed. Grace and the divine Spirit certainly recreate us; but they add nothing. to the organic nature of men. Perfect manhood will require the harmonious development of all the parts of the human mind and body, as God has already made them. And so, a perfect character is in some sense predetermined. Nothing is superfluous in man. No part too much; nothing too little. No appetite is infixed in our constitution but is useful; no passion that is superfluous; no force, or faculty, or func tion, that is not indispensable. The body itself is sacred, whatever men may have thought it necessary to say respecting it. It is to be cherished and to be honored. The great ground instincts of our nature, from which have sprung such infinite mischiefs by their misrule, are nevertheless indispensable conditions of power, and of power in the higher range, too. The social affections, the whole intellectual department, the artistic and the esthetic faculties, the moral and the spiritual sentiments-all these, and each in its rank and degree, are component elements of true Christian manhood. Hear Paul: "I pray God your whole spirit, and soul, and body be preserved blameless, unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." There is breadth for you! Manhood, with him, meant everything that it pleased God to put into the making of a man. Christianity is not a partialism, the outgrowth of any one age or time: it is the utmost possible development of the race of man, embracing in its history all the past, in its intention the whole boundless future. Christianity is not designed to lop off, or to dry up. It is not designed to eliminate the faculties, but to give them expansion and power and training, and to make more of them, not less. For self-denial itself, which is commanded, is but an interior discipline by which the higher faculties keep under the lower. There is what is called crucifying, and there is what is called slaying and destroying; but this language is not to be taken as literal. Our business is not to lessen, but to regulate, not to destroy, but to educate and control, everything that it pleases God to give us. There is to be no such ascetic notion as shall attempt to throw out any part of man's nature, as if he would be better without it than with it. There may be the necessity of obliging some part of our nature to express itself less generously and less freely, as a man may be enforced to limit his pride; but no man should destroy his pride. It may be necessary for a man to bring down somewhat the mountain of his firmness-or obstinacy, rather; but no man is good for anything who has not some particle of obstinacy to use upon occasion. It may be necessary for a man to restrict his vanity; but a man who does not love praise is not a full man. It may be necessary for a man to strengthen himself against an undue sympathy and affection; and yet, a man without affection is not a whole man. There is not a single element that goes into the possession of the human mind which leaves a man more a man when it is taken out, any more than the body is made more a body when a muscle, or nerve, or bone is taken out. There is no faculty nor impulse, there is no part of the mental economy that was not adjusted with just as deliberate a view to final richness, as every single stop in the organ. Every part is indispensable. Every part, however, must come under education, must be coördinated, must be kept in regulated activity, in order that manhood may have infinite variety, sweetness, power, versatility, endurance, and beauty. And one will be struck, in reading the letters of Paul, to see how much he had in mind these four points: First, totality-the whole man; next symmetry-well-proportioned and balanced excellences; then, power-the energetic condition of each several part, and of the completed whole; and lastly, quality, or, as it may be called, beauty of character. A true Hebrew, Paul seems to have had but little of that sensuous love of beauty which characterized the Greek mind. There is little evidence that either art or nature produced on him any considerable esthetic impression. But I know not where we can find among the ancient writers of any nation, evidence of such a love of beauty in moral qualities. It is not enough that any quality should be in action; it must have grace of action; fullness of action; proportionate action; continuity of action. Every single faculty must dress itself in all the excellence of which it is susceptible. Love is commanded; but "let love be without dissimulation." The ten thousand arts which seem to some so witching in love were to be laid aside. It was to be pure as the evening sky in summer. Generosity was inculcated; but it was not enough to be simply generous. "He that giveth, let him do it with simplicity;" not pompously, not ostentatiously, not boastfully. Do not give, as many rich men do, like a hen, that lays her egg, and then cackles. Give with simplicity. And so through the whole catalogue of manly qualities. It is not enough that men should have the qualities--they must have them in strength. These qualities must have grace. They must be beauteous as well as pure and strong. This, then, is the Christian ideal of manhood: the development of man's whole nature into power and activity; the training of every part into subordination and harmony; the enriching of every part, and of the whole, with whatever is sweet and generous and genial and beautiful. A true man after Christ will be the most noble and beautiful thing upon the earth-the freest, the most joyous, the most fruitful in all goodness. There is no picture that was ever painted, there is no statue that was ever carved, there was no work of art ever conceived of, that was half so beautiful as is a living man, thoroughly developed upon the pattern of Christ Jesus. Let us use this brief opening of the word of God, for instruction, for criticism, and for appeal. 1. To live well for the life to come is the surest way of living well for this world. And to live rightly for this world is the surest way of living rightly for the world to come. We are placed in circumstances |