or the Appletons, or the Lippincotts, or the Ticknors was so fresh, or beautiful, or thrilling, or adapted to the times as this very Book from which I preach to-day. I want you to feel that you have in it the best of all treasures. I want you to know that it is to be your counsel while you live, and the only soft pillow under your head when you come to die.

After the battle before Richmond had been over several days, a man was found dead with his hand on the open Bible. The summer insects had taken the flesh from his hand, and there was nothing but the skeleton left; but the skeleton fingers laid on the open page, and on this passage: "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil : thy rod and thy staff they comfort me." Well, the time will come, when all the fine novels we have on our bed-room shelf will not interest us; and all the good histories, and all the exquisite essays, will do us no good. There will be one Book, perhaps its cover worn out, and its leaf yellow with age, under whose flash we shall behold the opening gates of heaven.

EARNESTNESS.

"Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest." -Ecclesiastes ix. 10.

I

WANT to show you that our great need is more earnestness in the spiritual life. In the first place we want more earnestness in the reading of the Bible. How many years is it since you learned the shortest verse in the Bible, at your mother's knee: "Jesus wept." "I have become familiar with the parables and miracles," you say; "it is almost impossible that I should find anything startling or surprising in that book." It has become like an old fable. It ceases to make that deep, profound, and rousing impression upon our soul which it ought to make. Are you not aware of the fact that we need in the perusal of God's word an earnestness of soul we have never before felt? What is the Bible? It is a prescription for the worst of all illness. Suppose you had been sick for years and years, and all medical treatment had failed in your case, and some skilful one should come along and examine the symptoms of your disease and write a prescription, saying: “I go by the next steamer into a far country; you will never see me again, don't lose that prescription. I am sure if you take the medicine there prescribed you will get well." How you would hold on to that prescription. You would say: "Everything depends upon my getting that prescription before the apothecary in the right shape, and my getting the right medicine." We are stricken by the leprosy of sin. The world comes and tries with its pleasures and honors to heal us, but it has always failed. Here is a Divine prescription. Take it and live; refuse it and die. How we ought to hold on to it, and with what earnestness we ought now to take it. It is more than that. Suppose a captain is awakened in the night. The men who have had the management of the ship have been asleep, and not minding their business. The vessel is among the breakers. The captain comes on deck with the chart. With what earnestness he looks at it now. Here is a rock and there is a rock; there is a lighthouse; here is a way of escape.

So here is a map setting forth the perils of the sea in which we are voyaging: there are dangers all round about us. If the following of that chart does not get us out of the breakers, nothing will. With what earnestness we ought to examine it, and feel that it is a matter of heaven or hell whether or not we read it, and whether we read it right or wrong.

I remark, that we need more earnestness in the matter of prayer. In childhood we begin with: "Now I lay me down to sleep," and we learn the Lord's Prayer, and then in after life we get a few formulas of prayer, and go on with the same thing year by year, as though we did not have every day new sins to confess and new blessings for which to thank God. We want more earnestness in our prayers. What is prayer? A doctor in the army said he was going over a battle-field after a great conflict. He had but few medicines, and there were enough men there wounded to occupy twenty or thirty surgeons. He could only attend to a small part of the wounded. It was doleful, he said, to hear the cries of the wounded men. One cried out: "This artery is bleeding me to death, doctor, won't you bind it up?" And some one else cried: "Doctor, can't you give me an anodyne to sooth this pain?" Hundreds of voices crying out all over the battle-field. Ah, that was prayer! We are wounded from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot-hurt with wounds that will be our death unless we have the Divine surgeon come to our relief. Are we holding up these gashes of soul before Christ, our Divine physician? Are we anxious for Him to come? This is prayer, and anything short of it is no prayer at all. I saw in one of the English journals a picture of the destruction of the Northfleet, a few weeks ago. You know how that vessel was anchored, because of the rough sea-not venturing out very far. The afternoon went by, the evening came down, and in the darkness a steamer crashed into the Northfleet, and she sank. Amid the excitement they got out the life-boats; but most of the people perished, three hundred going down to a watery grave. There were a few who got into the boats. I saw a picture representing a boat shoving off, and one man hanging outside the vessel, holding on, and begging that they would take him in that boat. Oh! it was a distressing picture. I could almost hear the man cry out: "Let me in! I won't be very heavy! I can't die! I don't want to die here! Just let me in!" Ah, that was prayer; that was the prayer of a dying soul

for life. And if we could realize the position we occupy before God, going down in our sin and wretchedness, while the Gospel life-boat without is pulling away with two oars and two wounded hands for the beach, we would, from the depth of our anguishstricken soul, offer up a prayer to God for mercy, and pardon, and life.

any mistakes, I do to-night? He is not in What does he

I remark further, we want more earnestness in the matter of Christian work. A brother comes into this house of prayer, and he stands up to speak a word for Christ. How tremulous he is! He says: "I wonder if the people will hear me?" His heart is not thoroughly enlisted. He wonders who will criticize him. He wonders if such and such a person is present. Before he begins to speak for Christ, he looks all around, to be sure such an one is not in the room. How he trembles! After a while he gets through, and he wonders whether he made and he goes away asking his friend; "How did Did I get along well, or did I make a balk ?" earnest. There is another young man beside him. care for rhetoric? He says: "Here are people that I must meet before the throne of God, and I have but three minutes now to talk to them. I don't care what people say. It is between God and my soul, and their souls." A Sabbath-school teacher sits down before her class. She is not in earnest; she has no appreciation of the great work to which she is called. She thinks that it is a fine thing to be a Sabbath-school teacher. She comes in and says to the class: "Fine day!" Then she arranges her apparel; then she gives an extra twist to the curl, and looks at the apparel of all the children in the class.

A minister of the Gospel comes on the Sabbath-day into the ante-room of the church. He is not in earnest. He has just happened to get into the ministry. He says: "I wonder what the newspapers will say to-day? I wonder how many critics there will be in the church? I wonder if that sharp-looking man that sat before me last Sabbath, looking at me through those spectacles, will be there to-day? I wonder if my hair is parted straight? I wonder how my cravat is tied? I wonder if my shoes have the right polish? I wonder if that gesture I made awhile ago is graceful?" The Sabbath goes by, the people disperse to their homes, no saving impression is made, the Sabbath is dead and will not live again until the resurrection. Another man of God comes to the ante-room of the church. He says: "Now there will be two or three or four thousand

people here this morning. What shall I say to them? I may. be dead before next Sabbath. The people who will be in church to-day will never be there again. It is my last chance at them. Oh, God, help me now; if Thou never didst help me before, help me to-day." And then he comes before the people, and looks out upon the audience and says: "All these in fifty or seventy years will be gone. They will have heard their last offer of mercy and salvation. The trumpet of judgment will sound and they will stand before the throne and I will be there too. Alas, if on that day, any of them can point to me, and hiss at me, and say: "You didn't tell me the whole truth, you hid the fact that I was a sinner, I didn't know there was any hell. I hardly knew I was an immortal. You told me not of the judgment, and here I am, and the heavens are flaming, and the throne is set, and the doom is being pronounced, and I am lost, and it is your fault." Oh, how different then the preacher feels. How little he cares for what the world says of him. How his soul goes up to God in an agony of earnestness. How little he

cares for the gesture, the style of his apparel, or what the critics may say. It is a matter between himself, and his God, and his hearers. I do not know whether, in these different items I have mentioned, I have touched your case; but I simply know that you, as Christian men, have a great responsibility resting upon you, and that you have never labored with that earnestness which ought to have characterized you.

I was going over from Camden to Philadelphia some years ago, very late at night, after a meeting. It was a cold winter night, and I stood on the deck of the ferry-boat, impatient to get ashore. Before the boat came to the wharf, a man who stood on the outside of the chains slipped and dropped into the water. It is the only man that I ever saw overboard. It was a fearful night. The icicles had frozen on the wharf, and they had frozen on the steamer. The question was how to get the man up. The ropes were lowered, and we all stood with fearful anxiety, lest the man should not be able to grasp the rope, and when he grasped it and was pulled on to the deck, and we saw he was safe, although we had never seen him before, how we congratulated him. A life saved! Have we the same earnestness about getting men out of spiritual peril? Do we not go up and down in our prayer-meetings and our Christian work, coldly saying: "Yes, there is a great deal of sin in the world; men ought to do better. I wish the people would become