"We are stronger, and are better,
Under manhood's sterner reign:
Still we feel that something sweet
Followed youth, with flying feet,
And will never come again."

-R. H. Stoddard.

"Perplext in faith, but pure in deeds

At last he beat his music out,

There lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me than in half the creeds.

He fought his doubts and gathered strength,
He would not make his judgment blind,

He faced the spectres of the mind
And laid them; thus he came at length,

To find a stronger faith his own;

And power was with him in the night,

Which makes the darkness and the light,

And dwells not in the light alone.

But in the darkness and the cloud,

As over Sinai's peak of old,

While Israel made their gods of gold,

Although the trumpet blew so loud."

-Alfred Tennyson.

A Greylock Pulpit.

LEAVING THE FIRST LOVE.

To the angel of the church in Ephesus write; These things saith He that holdeth the seven stars in His right hand, He that walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks: I know thy works, and thy toil and thy patience, and that thou canst not bear evil men, and didst try them which call themselves apostles, and they are not, and didst find them false; and thou hast patience and didst bear for My name's sake, and hast not grown weary. But I have this against thee that thou didst leave thy first love. Rev. 2:1-4.

What is here written for the church in Ephesus, by implication applies both to individuals in it, and so far as the conditions are the same, to people everywhere. There are natural changes in personality which we may not confound with spiritual changes. Youth is the period of enthusiasm and imagination. The "heyday in the blood" is full of vigor and very heavy burdens happily can not wholly subdue the free fancy and the tendency to play. This period in life may be prematurely shortened by care, but under the best circumstances personality follows a law of change as well as a law of continuity. It is impossible to predict these variations exactly. Some men mature earlier than others. The class valedictorian not infrequently fails to justify the applause of graduation day. Another changes front at the age of forty commanding true success. There are in general three great periods not to be viewed exclusively as the physical, mental and spiritual periods for there is something of each in all. These general terms of body, mind and spirit however describe the time order of our development and the inverse order of our worth. The youngest child begins its mental education when it can see a bright color. The spiritual development begins with filial love, and the ability of the child to understand its mother and to carry the idea of father and mother up to the great and good being whom the child is told, is the parent of all. Nevertheless, speaking generally, the first twenty years of life have a large physical element, the second twenty may have a large mental element and the third twenty may have a large spiritual element.

The slowness or rapidity with which these sides of our nature develop are not matters of chance but law. The individual problem varies in every instance. Speed, activity, fineness of organization, balance of faculty and health, give color to all the phases of our development. Heredity, education and self-culture manifest themselves variously at every stage of our advance.

We learn a great lesson of charity from the complexity and helplessness of humanity. God would be anything but a father and far from wise or good, if he dealt with us by the measure of the same straight line for all, regardless of the endless grades of power. The soul is a kaleidoscope, and every movement of its contents, as affected by birth, surroundings and the soul's power of self-direction, gives new and diverse forms of response to the light. So that we differ not only from others but from ourselves in the unlimited diversity of our experience. We learn not to expect impossibilities of ourselves or others. It is cant to expect a young girl to have the religion of an old man, or to look for the buoyancy of "the boy Jesus," in the aged Zacharias. We cannot demand returns at one period of life which belong to another. In the same period, age and general condition, an unfavorable inheritance is often a relative disparagement or honor according as it masters or is itself mastered. We do not require the same of the same man at different periods. People are indulgent toward youth. Of a man they ask a man's work. It is not always easy to tell what that is, where it begins and ends. He is indeed a bold man who knows his neighbor's duty. He may. He is quite as likely to be wrong as right.

After making all fair allowance for the facts thus far mentioned, we come to face the fact of our personal responsibility. Our power of choice opens or closes the door of welcome to the most important element in our surroundings the Spirit of God. God does not force the door or compel obedience. The center of the spiritual nature, the soul's choice, makes or unmakes God's opportunity of building our character. That love for God which is proved by love for man, has not been a steady, constant, deepening current with most men. It has been an unsteady, inconstant, shallow stream. Men have gained large measure of progress in morality. They hate vice and love virtue. They are industrious. They hate hypocrisy. On a test, they will make large-hearted sacrifices. They are faithful, unweared in labor, diligent in business, nevertheless they have often left their first love and are not "fervent in spirit." There were perhaps some years ago, long periods when your soul moved on a higher plane and commanded a stronger and nobler tone. Then, as ever, there were single days and moods of exaltation due to physical health, but this aside, the grand averages of the soul ranged higher in that day of the first love. It stands against us, because this is true, even after allowing for the changes appointed to every normal development.

Are not there not many whom this describes? How did it come to pass? Has it occurred to you that, once upon a time, you were accustomed to go out and see some poor or afflicted family? It was a pleasure to carry some unostentatious gift, to often kneel in prayer and to leave the Christians peace behind you as you came away. Possibly this now is a rare event with

you. How was it five, ten, fifteen, twenty years ago? Was there within you a strong desire to bring men to Christ? Did you find, when the pressure of other duties relaxed, that the natural drift of your mind was toward your fellowmen? More than that toward some special person did your thought run? As a soul-fisher once you were happy because of your desire to make others happy. Christ was your all. Time passed and some idol usurped the throne of your heart. The longer it held sway the more difficult was restoration.

To realize the conscious smile of God, men must have leisure from themselves. Spiritual decadence begins when conscious of a Christian's liberty, the soul becomes careless and rests in the pleasure of things in themselves right, but wrong as competitors with some higher good. Selfindulgence slides subtly into righteous forms of pleasure far removed from vulgarity and having due time and place in God's broad Providence. "The earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof." "All things are yours and ye are Christs and Christ is God's." "Hast thou a broad faith that all things are yours?" It is well. A man may nevertheless have more rights than he can carry. Like the boy who wished to take out a large handful of filberts from the jar and who could take none because he would not release a part of those in his hand and return again for more, so we have Christians who assert their liberty and propose to exercise it with their thought upon enjoyment rather than upon benevolence. True spirituality should assert the same rights, but boldly stand for the higher right of yielding one's rights to promote a higher good. The best way to secure one's rights is to constantly emphasize one's own duty. The surest way to lose one's rights is constantly to be fighting for them.

Some natures are peculiarly sensitive to criticism. They are often too proud to admit it. The Christian life went on smoothly till one day the tempter said; "You are a pretty Christian to take part in a prayer meeting when you have done this or that wrong." Perhaps the case was worse. The tempter possibly said; "I know this or that sin against you and if you continue to speak in religious meetings I will expose you." Here is ample cause for decline if the Christian consents to compromise.

Quite often it is forgotten that spiritual decadence is a slow and insidious process. The way in which men trifle with the truth is a case in point. One who prevaricates has many plausible excuses. He dabbles in petty sophistries. Because the whole truth is not to be spoken at all times and because there is a place for prudence, men go further and break down the soul of honor itself. They yield to what should have been boldly withstood. The razor-edge of conscience has been used to cut harder and harder substances till at last it is ruined. Pride and vanity, the twin mischief makers, both say; don't make a fool of yourself, don't stand in your own light, only yield this time and save yourself from being a laughing stock." The man has reached a summit and now takes a down grade. Who knows how long and terrible will be the process of retracing his journey.

66

After one has fallen from grace and walked in the shadows, still attending to all the forms of his old religious life, discontented with himself, his mind often gropes for some explanation which will at once flatter the inven

tor, and chastise some imaginary offender. Worship is substituted for love and the gift is not withheld from the altar in the interest of reconciliation. A spirit of criticism takes root. Everything is wrong. The air is charged with an electricity which does not seem under control. The wrong is sought not within, but without, not in self but invariably in the other man. Probably some one person is sought for as the scape-goat of condemnation. The soul goes farther and farther from the first love as it wanders in such a search.

Another mode of spiritual decline is found when the soul consents to substitute conditional for unconditional love, the Jewish law of justice for the Christian law of love. Go back to some hour which marked an epoch in your religious history. You were under conviction that your life was not the right sort of life for you to lead. You felt sorry for your transgressions and would do anything to wipe them out again and start anew. A. sincere feeling of penitence for blots upon your record was your predominant mood. You felt that though the past was irreparable, yet there was power and pardon and grace in God to take you as a sinner and by patience, inspiration and love for you to reinforce the higher nature, weaken the power of the lower and finally establish the character which is never to fail. You gave yourself to God. All went well till one day you met a fellow sinner who heaped abuse upon you. Up to this moment you had been fairly successful in the confidence which rests on God's unconditional love toward you. It was your hope and boast. But now is the parting of the ways. This man who has injured you, you wish to punish. He must have the same in kind and degree from you which you received not from God but from him. How are the mighty fallen! A glimpse of love and fifty years of justice. What such a man calls his conscience leaves him at the grave as hard as his unhewn granite headstone. "He hated a liar, but he lost his first love. He was a good Jew, but a poor Christian " should be written over his dust.

A man abides in grace, and grace abides in him, as long as he extends to his brother what he sees himself to need and get from God. "The mercy of God endureth forever" because He never fails to obey all law. He is the law personified. He is happy under the law of sacrifice to make His creatures happy. He knows no first love. He is Himself the first and the last the unconditioned and unconditional love.

But let a man, who has tasted the grace of God, retrace his steps and give to his neighbor not what is best for him, but what the neighbor deserves, let him begin measure for measure and payment in kind and quantity, word for word, blow for blow and where does he stand. He has returned to his native forest and lair. He growls and fights as the wolf. He claims his own original and demonstrates his descent. Are there not plenty of people in the world to-day whose behavior is such that if you were to choose between them and the authropoid ape for ancestry, you would gratefully choose the latter. The alternative is not yet given the opponent of evolution to laugh out of court our animal descent, because Darwin's theory remains to be established. We are however far beyond the stage of hypothesis as regards the physical descent of man from the animal kingdom. There is left in man the manifold proof of his animal origin.