comprehension of the worth of a human spirit. Before his time no one dreamed of it. The many had been sacrificed to the few. The mass of men had been trodden under foot. History had been but a record of struggles and institutions, which breathed nothing so strongly as contempt of the human race.

Jesus was the first philanthropist. He brought with him a new era, the era of philanthropy; and from his time a new spirit has moved over the troubled waters of society, and will move until it has brought order and beauty out of darkness and confusion. The men, whom he trained and into whom he had poured most largely his own spirit, were signs, proofs, that a new kingdom had come. They consecrated themselves to a work at that time without precedent, wholly original, such as had not entered human thought. They left home, possessions, country, went abroad into strange lands, and not only put life in peril, but laid it down, to spread the truth which they had received from their Lord, to make the true God, even the Father, known to his blinded children, to make the Savior known to the sinner, to make life and immortality known to the dying, to give a new impulse to the human soul. We read of the mission of the apostles as if it were a thing of course. The thought perhaps never comes to us, that they entered on a sphere of action until that time wholly unexplored; that not a track had previously marked their path; that the great conception, which inspired them, of converting a world, had never dawned on the sublimest intellect t; that the spiritual love for every human being, which carried them over oceans and through deserts, amid scourgings and fastings and imprisonments and death, was a

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new light from heaven breaking out on earth, a new revelation of the divinity in human nature. Then it was, that man began to yearn for man with a Godlike love. Then a new voice was heard on earth, the voice of prayer for the recovery, pardon, happiness of a world. It was most strange, it was a miracle more worthy of admiration than the raising of the dead, that from Judea, the most exclusive, narrow country under heaven, which hated and scorned all other nations and shrunk from their touch as pollution, should go forth men to proclaim the doctrine of human brotherhood, to give to every human being, however fallen or despised, assurances of God's infinite love, to break down the barriers of nation and rank, to pour out their blood like water in the work of diffusing the spirit of universal love. Thus mightily did the character of Jesus act on the spirits of the men with whom he had lived. Since that time the civilized world has been overwhelmed by floods of barbarians, and ages of darkness have passed. But some rays of this divine light break on us through the thickest darkThe new impulse given by Christianity was never wholly spent. The rude sculpture of the dark ages represented Jesus hanging from his cross; and however this image was abused to purposes of superstition, it still spoke to men of a philanthropy stronger than death, which felt and suffered for every human being; and a softening, humanizing virtue went from it which even the barbarian could not wholly resist. In our own times the character of Jesus is exerting more conspicuously its true and glorious power. We have indeed little cause for boasting. The great features of society are still hard and selfish.

ness.

The worth of a human being is

a mystery still hid from an immense majority, and the most enlightened among us have not looked beneath the surface of this great truth. Still there is at this moment an interest in human nature, a sympathy with human suffering, a sensibility to the abuses and evils which deform society, a faith in man's capacity of progress, a desire of human progress, a desire to carry to every human being the means of rising to a better condition and a higher virtue, such as has never been witnessed before. Amidst the mercenariness which would degrade men into tools, and the ambition which would tread them down in its march toward power, there is still a respect for man as man, a recognition of his rights, a thirst for his elevation, which is the surest proof of a higher comprehension of Jesus Christ, and the surest augury of a happier state of human affairs. Humanity and justice are crying out in more and more piercing tones for the suffering, the enslaved, the ignorant, the poor, the prisoner, the orphan, the long-neglected seaman, the benighted heathen. I do not refer merely to new institutions for humanity, for these are not the most unambiguous proofs of progress. We see in the common consciousness of society, in the general feelings of individuals, traces of a more generous recognition of what man owes to man. The glare of outward distinction is somewhat dimmed. The prejudices of caste and rank are abated. A man is seen to be worth more than his wardrobe or his title. It begins to be understood that a Christian is to be a philanthropist, and that in truth, the essence of Christianity is a spirit of martyrdom in the cause of mankind.

This subject has been brought to my mind at the

present moment, by an event in this vicinity, which has drawn little attention, but which I could not, without self-reproach, suffer to pass unnoticed. Within a few days, a great and good man, a singular example of the philanthropy which Jesus Christ came to breathe into the world, has been taken away; and as it was my happiness to know him more intimately than most among us, I feel as if I were called to bear a testimony to his rare goodness, and to hold up his example as a manifestation of what Christianity can accomplish in the human mind. I refer to the Rev. Noah Worcester, who has been justly called the Apostle of Peace, who finished his course at Brighton during the last week. His great age, for he was almost eighty, and the long, and entire seclusion to which debility had compelled him, have probably made his name a strange one to some who hear me. In truth, it is common in the present age, for eminent men to be forgotten during their lives, if their lives are much prolonged. Society is now a quick-shifting pageant. New actors hurry the old ones from the stage. The former stability of things is strikingly impaired. The authority which gathered round the aged, has declined. The young seize impatiently the prizes of life. The hurried, bustling, tumultuous, feverish Present, swallows up men's thoughts, so that he who retires from active pursuits, is as little known to the rising generation as if he were dead. It is not wonderful then, that Dr Worcester was so far forgotten by his contemporaries. But the future will redress the wrongs of the present; and in the progress of civilization, history will guard more and more sacredly the memories of men, who have advanced before their age, and devoted

themselves to great, but neglected interests of humanity.

Dr Worcester's efforts in relation to war, or in the cause of peace, made him eminently a public man and constitute his chief claim to public consideration; and these were not founded on accidental circumstances or foreign influences, but wholly on the strong and peculiar tendencies of his mind. He was distinguished above all whom I have known by his comprehension and deep feeling of the spirit of Christianity, by the sympathy with which he seized on the character of Jesus Christ as a manifestation of Perfect Love, by the honor in which he held the mild, humble, forgiving, disinterested virtues of our religion. This distinguishing trait of his mind was embodied and brought out in his whole life and conduct. He especially expressed it in his labors for the promotion of Universal Peace on the earth. He was struck, as no other man within my acquaintance has been, with the monstrous incongruity between the spirit of Christianity and the spirit of Christian communities, between Christ's teaching of peace, mercy, forgiveness, and the wars which divide and desolate the church and the world. Every man has particular impressions which rule over and give a hue to his mind. Every man is struck by some evils rather than others. The excellent individual of whom I speak was shocked, heart-smitten, by nothing so much, as by seeing, that man hates man, that man destroys his brother, that man has drenched. the earth with his brother's blood, that man in his insanity has crowned the murderer of his race with the highest honors; and, still worse, that Christian hates Christian, that church wars against church, that differ