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Autobiography, Sermons, Addresses, and Essays
of Bishop L. H. Holsey, D. D.:
Electronic Edition.

Holsey, Lucius Henry, Bp., 1842-1920.

Funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities
supported the electronic publication of this title.

Text scanned (OCR) by Lee Ann Morawski and Fiona Mills
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First edition, 1999
ca. 700 K
Academic Affairs Library, UNC-CH
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
1999.

        © This work is the property of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text.

Call number BX 8469 .H65 A3 (Treasure Room Collection, James E. Shepard Memorial Library, North Carolina Central University)


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Library of Congress Subject Headings, 21st edition, 1998

Spine

Frontispiece

Title Page

AUTOBIOGRAPHY,
SERMONS, ADDRESSES,
AND ESSAYS

OF

BISHOP L. H. HOLSEY, D D.

ATLANTA, GEORGIA:
THE FRANKLIN PRINTING AND PUBLISHING CO.
(Geo. W. Harrison, State Printer, Manager.)
1898.

Page iii

CONTENTS.

Page 3

PREFACE.

        This book is published with the hope of doing good in more ways than will be expedient to state at this time. It is intended not only to disseminate the truths and glory of the gospel system, but also, as far as possible, to inspire the Negro to think, and to encourage investigation, literary advancement and authorship by men of my race.

        The sermons, essays, etc., are selected from what I have been preaching and writing for the last decade. Originally, the sermons were not designed for publication, but for private use. The lectures and essays, with few exceptions, were designed for the public, and most of them have appeared in the public prints. I have written as I have thought, always following what seemed to be the truth, the conclusions of others, save the inspired Word, to the contrary notwithstanding.

        Rev. Prof. John W Gilbert; A.B., A.M., of The Paine Institute, is the immediate cause of the appearance of the book upon the arena of thought and action. Often he has urged me to publish a book of sermons for the sake of helping the church and race of which I am a representative. He has gone so far as to become sponsor for its publication. Also, he has, in collaboration with Rev. Geo. Williams Walker, D.D., President of The Paine Institute, read the manuscript and corrected the proof. Gladly do I take this opportunity of thanking these two distinguished scholars for the labor which they have so patiently and willingly bestowed upon these pages. I am incapable of expressing the high appreciation and esteem which their labor upon this book begets. Their labor, of course, was confined to the mechanical make-up of the

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book. For its doctrines and sentiments I am solely and independently responsible.

        Twenty per cent. of the net proceeds of the sale of this volume I shall give to The Paine Institute.

        If by this book the kingdom of Christ and the uplift of mankind are promoted even in the slightest degree, my prayers will have been abundantly answered.

THE AUTHOR.

Atlanta, Ga., March 31, 1898.

Page 5

INTRODUCTION.

        I take real pleasure in introducing this volume of sermons to the public. Not that a volume of sermons is a rarity, but the present one occupies in several respects a unique position, in that it represents the production of an ex-slave, who without the aid of school, and, despite untoward circumstances, exemplifies what aspirations the missionaries to the slave awakened and that civil law could not put down. This pleasure is enhanced by an acquaintance with its author for fourteen years that has endeared him to my heart as an honored friend.

        Bishop Lucius H. Holsey was a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. He represents a faithful product of the missionary zeal of this church that was awakened by Bishop Capers in founding the missions to the slaves. His fidelity to trust and zeal for the salvation of souls caused him to be appointed a local preacher before emancipation. So that when the changed conditions that followed in the wake of the civil war came upon the church he was an active exponent of that conservative force that resulted in the organization of the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church in America. Not only is the Bishop one of the organizers of his church, but he has ever been promotive of its highest and best interests, and the source by far of its public documents. He has supervised the editorial work of all his church's literature, compiling its hymn book, discipline, manual of the discipline, etc. He discerns in slavery a providential blessing to both white and black--a harsh measure to bring the ignorant Negro in contact with the educated Caucassian. He as firmly regards emancipation as the very best measure for

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the development of the highest interest alike for the white man and the black. His views are to be seen in his autobiography and in his recent address delivered before many of our annual conferences.

        Deprived of the advantages of the school room, he has been a close student of men and nature. He gives us a partial insight to the manful effort he put forth to educate himself as best he could. We see in his autobiography what books he read. What influence these books had upon him is seen in many of his sermons. He was in a situation to appreciate the great need of school training. He has for years represented the foremost demands and zeal of educational endeavor in the interest of his own church. He presented the first plans for a school for the youth of his church which developed into The Paine Institute. He was the first colored man to give money to the erection of such a school. While Rev. W. C. Dunlap, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, was Commissioner of Education, just before Rev. W. M. Hayes, of the same church became commissioner, Bishop Holsey, by advice of Bishop E. R. Hendrix, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, went before the Missouri Conference of the same church, and presenting the claims of The Paine Institute, collected between three and four hundred dollars for a much needed building. Thus providentially thrust out he kept on before the conferences of this church until he had collected about $3,000 from only a few of the conferences. As it was largely through his influence that the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, was aroused to the demand of the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church for Christian education of her children, so it was eminently fit for the burden of awakening a deeper enthusiasm in the educational work to devolve upon him.

        Therefore, at the urgent solicitation of the Board of Education of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, backed by appointment and request of the Board of Trustees

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of The Paine Institute, the Bishop went before this church with an appeal for $25,000 to erect a building at this school to be known as the Haygood Memorial Hall. He is not in any wise a commissioner of education, but at the urgent solicitation of his brethren is actively asking money for the erection of this hall. As if this were not enough he contributes a handsome per cent. of the sale of this volume to the erection of the Haygood Memorial Hall.

        Bishop Holsey is the best known Bishop of the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church. He has represented his church on several occasions, both by pen and person. In the New York Independent his church has been presented to the public by articles from his pen. At the Ecumenical Conference in London, he represented his church as her chosen delegate. His appeal to the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in behalf of a school for the youth of his church resulted in the establishment and maintenance of The Paine Institute, at Augusta, Georgia.

        Bishop Holsey is an eloquent preacher whose mind has a decidedly philosophical trend. He has appeared before many large gatherings of the people, sometimes made up wholly of white persons, as preacher, lecturer, orator. In each sphere he has acquitted himself well and brought about most beneficial results. He is the Munsey of the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church.

        Without further delay I present this book to the public. Whatever is found in it that is helpful and praiseworthy attribute to the heart and mind of its author; whatever of shortcoming or imperfection, attribute to the lack of education, training and culturing development.

GEORGE WILLIAMS WALKER.

Page 9

AUTOBIOGRAPHY
OF
BISHOP L. H. HOLSEY.

        I was born in Georgia, near Columbus, in 1842, and at that time was the slave of James Holsey, who was also my father. He was a gentleman of classical education, dignified in appearance and manner of life, and represented that old antebellum class of Southern aristocracy who did not know enough of manual labor to black their own shoes or saddle their own horse. Like many others of his day and time he never married, but mingled, to some extent, with those females of the African race that were his slaves--his personal property. My mother was named Louisa, and was of pure African descent. She was of fascinating appearance and comely parts. Her father was named "Alex," and was an African of the Africans. He was short, thickset, and of a stubborn and massive build. He lived to be nearly a hundred years of age. So far as I know, all his children were daughters, of whom my mother was the youngest. She was an intensely religious woman, a most exemplary Christian, and belonged to the M. E. Church, South. She had fourteen children, myself being the oldest. I lived with her until about six years of age, when my father died, and I became the property of Mr. T. L. Wynn, who lived in Sparta, Ga. Mr. Wynn was my second owner. I served him as body servant until 1857, when he died. A few days before his death he called me to his bed and told me that he was going to die, and

Page 10

wanted me to choose one of two of his intimate friends as my master. He named the two friends and I chose Col. R. M. Johnston, with whom I lived until the emancipation of the slaves. As he was a very kind man to his slaves, I remained on the plantation with him one year after the emancipation. From the fall of 1857 until the emancipation I was his house servant, and looked after his domestic interests in general. He had great confidence in me and trusted me with money and other valuables. In all things I was honest and true to him and his interests. Though young, I felt as much interest in his well-being as I have felt since in my own. I made it a special point never to lie to him or deceive him in any way. I felt that I could not afford to be false even to those who appeared to be my enslavers and oppressors, and I have never regretted this course in after years. The training that I received in the narrow house of slavery has been a minister of correction and mercy to me in all these years of struggle, trial, labor, and anxiety. I have no complaint against American slavery. It was a blessing in disguise to me and to many. It has made the negro race what it could not have been in its native land. Slavery was but a circumstance or a link in the transitions of humanity, and must have its greatest bearing upon the future.

        Col. Johnston, my last owner, had an interesting family of seven brilliant children and a brilliant wife. For them I have the best wishes and the highest esteem.

        In 1867-68 I cultivated a cotton farm in Hancock county, Ga., on rented land. My wife and I labored to make an honest living. Assisted by two young men whom I hired, I made a competent living. My house was built of skinned pine poles and contained two large rooms and a hall. It was so constructed that every part of the spacious building had windows, so that I was out of doors while I was in doors. In my humble palace on a hill in the woods beneath the shade of towering pines

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and sturdy oaks, I felt as a king whose supreme commands were "law and gospel" to my subjects. Here I dwelt for two years cultivating the cotton farm and preaching at the same time. This was in the years of 1868-'69. Prior to this in 1866 I farmed on the old plantation of Col. Johnston. My wife then "took in washing" and I ran "a one-horse farm." Col. Johnston, the owner of the place, conducted a large boarding school, and my wife was laundress for the students. By this combination of interests we made a "handsome living," and all was well.

        From my youth I felt a call to preach the gospel, although I saw no opening for such a thing in the days of slavery; but still there was a hope and a lingering anticipation that somehow, in the divine arrangements, I would ultimately have an opportunity to proclaim God's truth. In the little church that stands beneath the oaks and cedars, in the village of Sparta, Ga., I was licensed to preach. It was in February, 1868, under the pastorate of Rev. A. J. Garrell, that I appeared before the Quarterly Conference. Rev. W. H. Potter, D.D., was the Presiding Elder. Bishop George F. Pierce being present, I had to be examined by him. He was a wonderful preacher, with wide influence, and august presence. Everybody loved, respected, and some almost adored him. Coming before such a high personage I was scared out of my wits, and all that I had previously known seemed to have taken the wings of the winds and fled away. But I was examined pretty closely, especially on the doctrines of the church, and the Bible, yet, somehow, I came out all right. In 1862 I was married to Miss Harriett A. Turner, a girl then fifteen years of age, who had been reared by Bishop Pierce, and given by him to his son-in-law, Mr. Turner, as a maid for his wife. We were married in the spacious hall of the Bishop's residence by him on the 8th day of November, 1862. The Bishop's wife and daughters had provided for the occasion

Page 12

a splendid repast of good things to eat. The table, richly spread, with turkey, ham, cake, and many other things, extended nearly the whole length of the spacious dining hall. "The house girls" and "the house boys" and the most prominent persons of color were invited to the wedding of the colored "swells." The ladies composing the Bishop's family, dressed my bride in the gayest and most artistic style, with red flowers and scarlet sashes predominating in the brilliant trail. As the gorgeous flashes of waving scarlet and white softly moved across the spacious hall and stood in the glare of the light, I thought I saw in my Harriett an angel in the dwarfed splendors of heaven as if ornamented with gems set upon a background of gold. In the vision of life that then threw its brightness upon me, I saw nothing but the roseate splendors of its triumphs and its glory. But since then I have seen something of its opposite phases, and know much of its trials, reverses and disappointments. From the union thus formed fourteen children were born, but only nine of them lived. One of them, the first child, a daughter, died in her seventeenth year. The others died at birth. I have at present, eight living children, four of whom are boys.

        After I was licensed to preach in 1868, I belonged to the M. E. Church, South, as all colored people did who were Methodists in the slave States. In 1868 and 1869, I was on the Hancock circuit which covered the entire county. Rev. E. B. Oliver and myself were the pastors. I was senior and he junior. There were seven churches on the circuit, and we followed each other in rotation. Brother Oliver was a great preacher, also great in prayer and song. He was the popular man among the people and their ideal man and pastor. He had a clear, loud, high, ringing voice, with a rare depth of pathos and sweetness. He could make his voice thunder, thud, or scream, as the occasion required, and a few blasts, as it were, of his silver clarion, in that "age of stone" was

Page 13

considered a wonderful sermon. One of the most difficult things with which I had to contend, was to get from under the withering blight of his trumpet voice. The man that had the loudest voice and the most dramatic emotions in pulpit or on platform, was necessarily, irrevocably, infallibly, and eternally in the estimation of the people, the great preacher, the flying angel of the everlasting gospel. But as I was farming, and not depending on the people for a living, I continued common sense preaching, which was considered by the undiscerning multitudes as very dry. My hearers would often take a nap while I was trying to do my little talking. My voice was very poor, weak, and defective, which greatly militated against me as a preacher. As a preacher's ability, in those days, was measured by his voice, a poor fellow like I was in a bad fix. It was noise that moved the multitudes, held the public ear, and like magic, swayed the public heart. For a long time I did not know where the trouble lay. I could not move the multitudes to tears like the junior preacher, although it was understood by the people that I was "the deeper reasoner," as they used to say, but was "no preacher." However, I never was discouraged by the adverse verdict of the people, because I had higher aims, ambition, and an unflagging industry which never faltered, but pressed every moment and opportunity into service that could be spared from the farm and circuit work. But it was voice that I needed more than learning or gospel. What shall I do to make it thunder, scream, screech, howl, or roar as did the junior preacher. I had heard of a great Grecian orator, who, to improve his voice, put pebbles of stone in his mouth, and spoke against the loud roar of waves on the sea shore. As I lived in the hill country away from the great waters and as "there was no more sea" for me, I often spent an hour in the woods, and from a pine stump, serving as a temporary pulpit, I would take the text to be used on the next Sabbath, and from

Page 14

it preach in a loud voice. I went through with all the gestures and attitudes with some respect for silent nature as was to be given to the listening congregation. A stump was my pulpit, the trees, grape-vines, and the smaller daughters of the woods were my congregation, and the open heavens were the high dome under which I proclaimed the truth as best I could to a silent and emotionless multitude. This practice helped me wonderfully, and soon I began to thunder and rattle like the other big preachers.

        No salary was fixed for the circuit preachers. Each man made his living in the sweat of his face, and preached on Sunday as best he could. But at the end of the second year it was proposed by some of the members of one of the churches to give the preachers a collection, and they willingly and generously gave us both the magnanimous sum of four dollars for the two years' services. We both were present, and a wide-awake and generous brother paid us the money, and with a triumphant air on his beaming countenance, said to us, in the tone of self-congratulation, "We are glad you don't preach for money, but for souls." Thus ended my first two years as circuit preacher. The memory of those two years is still fresh and green with its romance and "spiritual revelries." The following year (January 4th, 1869) Bishop Pierce called all the preachers of color, belonging to the M. E. Church, South, in the State of Georgia to meet in Trinity church at Augusta. On the day appointed, about sixty of the preachers assembled in Conference, and here, under the presidency of Bishop Geo. F. Pierce, the first Annual Conference was organized. Up to this time, all the colored preachers were merely local, and but few had received ordination. The material was very raw and untrained, and the men presented that uncouth appearance that belonged to the earlier days of freedom. A few had on long coats, and "plug" or "stove-pipe" hats, and all who could, wore

Page 15

long hair so as to look venerable, which was thought to be very becoming to ministerial dignity. To be in style and maintain the exalted dignity of the venerable parsons, I was adorned with a bushy head of red hair, parted in the middle, and covered by a "stove-pipe hat" of indefinite length. Like many other young circuit riders, fresh from the "bushes," I began to suspect that I was a very wonderful personality, based especially upon the length of my hat, and the enormous amount of "the insufferable wool" upon which it was pillared. I made the same mistakes that I have often observed in young preachers in later years. I was too big a fool to know that I was a fool. But the wear and tear of years will correct such errors, and force our erratic manhood into line. Of this conference of "raw recruits" I became a member. As there had to be a starting point, all the preachers who attended became at once full members of the Conference, and deacon's orders were given to most of them. At this Conference I was ordained a deacon by Bishop Pierce and sent to Savannah, Ga. After I had received the appointment I returned home, sold out my farming interests, abandoned the plow, gathered my family, and went to Savannah to take charge of the colored church known as "Andrew Chapel." But this church was seized upon by the A. M. E. Connection, and was then in litigation. As there was no way for me to get or use the church, the white people of Trinity church in Savannah gave me their library to preach in, which was located up stairs in the rear of the church. Lest we should come in conflict with the white congregation because of our noise, we held our meetings only in the afternoons on the Sabbath. Here I preached and labored as pastor with a membership of about fifteen for six months. As the church was in litigation and could not be obtained until the decision of the court, I returned to my home near Sparta, Ga. Up to this time I was very deficient in that training that was almost

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absolutely essential for successful work in the ministry. I had a wife and three children to care for, and a very little of this world's goods. It is true, it required but little for their support, but then that little was essential. Happily for us, we lived two miles in the country from the town, where we had no rent to pay, no wood to buy, and were surrounded by plenty of vegetables and fruits. My wife milked a cow that was given to us by the owner of the place. We had chickens and eggs besides. I had learned to read to some extent in the days of slavery, and I thought that I knew it all, but going to Savannah was an "eye-opener," and I now had begun to see myself in the true light. Savannah was too big for me, and I was too little for Savannah. I learned by the dint of adverse conditions that the world had more in it than I had hitherto calculated.

        As stated before, in 1857, when my second owner, Mr. T. L. Wynn, died, I became the property of Col. R. M. Johnston. In the early winter of that year he went to Athens, Ga., and became a professor in the State College. As an important part of his effects, I was carried along with him and his family as carriage driver, house servant, and gardener. I was then fifteen years of age. As soon as I arrived in Athens, I felt an insatiable craving for some knowledge of books, and especially I was anxious to learn to read the Bible. What must I do? I was a slave and could not attend school, and it was considered unwise, if not dangerous for slaves to read and write. But my owners, although strict, were very kind, especially my master. So I determined to learn to read at all hazards, and take whatever risks there might be connected with it. There was a junk house in the city where rags were sold. I gathered and saved all the rags that I could, and sold them that I might get some money with which to buy books. After weeks of toil and intense vigilance in gathering and watching for rags that belonged to the first man that laid hands upon them, I

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had accumulated about thirty pounds. These I stuffed into the legs and seat of a pair of old white pantaloons, the cast-off garment of a large and long-legged man. At nights after tea, I was allowed to "go down town" for recreation. I hired a boy to help me carry the rags to sell them to the rag merchant. The boy put one leg of the pants on one shoulder, and the other leg on the other, and we both marched to town with bright dreams of wealth. Reaching the store, I lingered in the darkness in front of the door, and when the boy walked in with something that had the appearance of a fat man on his shoulders, the man said in a loud voice as if astonished at the strange sight, "What in the h-- is that you have on your back?" "Some rags," replied the boy. "Well, lay them on the scales," said the merchant. So we did, the rags were sold and the money was mine. With this money I bought books. I purchased at one time, two "Webster blue back spellers," a common school dictionary, Milton's "Paradise Lost," and a Bible. These then constituted my full stock of literary possessions, a library more precious than gold to me. There were several colored people in town that could "spell to baker," in the old speller, while others could go to "the a, b, ab's" or to "the b, a, ba's." The white children and an old colored man taught me the alphabet, after which I fought my way unaided through the depths of my ponderous library. Day by day I took a leaf from one of the spelling books, and so folded it that one or two of the lessons were on the outside as if printed on a card. This I put in the pocket of my vest or coat, and when I was sitting on the carriage, walking the yard or streets, or using hoe or spade, or in the dining room, I would take out my spelling leaf, catch a word and commit it to memory. When one side of the spelling leaf was finished by this process, I would refold it again with a new lesson on the outside. When night came, I went to my little room, and with chips of fat pine, and pine roots

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that were grubbed up from the woods near by, I would kindle a little blaze in the fire-place and turn my head toward it while lying flat on my back so as to get the most of the light on the leaves of the book. Thus lying on the floor with pine knots at hand and my blankets around me, I reviewed the lessons of the day from the unmaimed book. By these means I learned to read and write a little in six months. Besides, I would catch words from the white people and retain them in memory until I could get to my dictionary. Then I would spell and define the words, until they became perfectly impressed upon my memory.

        In 1858, in Athens, Ga., I was converted, and became a member of the Methodist church. At that time Rev. W. A. Parks was sent as pastor to the colored church, while his uncle, Rev. H. H. Parks, was pastor of the white people's church. During April and May of this year, Rev. H. M. Turner, (now Bishop) came to Athens and preached every night to appreciative congregations, and under his powerful sermons I experienced a change of heart, and became a zealous member of the church. I was taken into the church by Rev. Mr. Parks, and baptized and fellowshipped by his uncle, the Rev. H. H. Parks.

        In 1861 when the war began, my owners moved back to Hancock county where I remained until freedom came to the slaves. After returning from Savannah in 1869, I began afresh my studies. That I might be retired and placed in the best condition to prosecute my studies, I purchased a number of school books and theological works, and sought a convenient place in the woods nearby where I was then living. Every day when the weather would permit I resorted to this place for study, contemplation, and prayer. By the bank of a little rippling brook that came murmuring down the rocky hillsides, I found an over-hanging boulder that ran up perpendicularly, mildly facing the east. A cluster of maple

Page 19

trees, interspersed with sweet gum, that constantly dropped their fragrance along the brook beneath, I selected as a silent boudoir. Wild grape-vines interlaced with yellow jessamines, wrapt around the slim trunks of the towering wood, and threw a crown of green and tangled meshes of vines and flowers on the waving limbs above. The murmuring brook that rolled below whispered to me the presence of God, the wonders of his providence, and the marvels of his hand. Here, in the deep solitudes of silent nature, retired and alone, I spent the greater part of two years. Here I studied reading, writing, geography, grammar, arithmetic, astronomy, history, and theology. I read Milton, Dick's Works, Watson, Wesley, Stevens' History of Methodism, and a number of other books. Among them were "Barnes' Notes," and "Newton on the Prophecies." I gave close attention to the English language, as I would need that more than anything else. When I came to a word that I did not understand I would turn to the dictionary, spell it and define it, and with a cedar pencil I would write down every word thus acquired. On the next day I first had a thorough review of all the words and all that I had read and studied the day before. I cared nothing for gold and silver, nor the presence and company of mankind, nor anything that would divert the mind from its deep thoughts of God or intense application. At the end of about twenty months I was lost and bewildered in the deep things of God. However, I rose from my hermit home with spiritual powers and convictions that have been a wonderful help to me through all these years of struggle and toil. I became so intensely interested and profoundly engaged that sometimes I seemed to have been out of the body and in another sphere where God and angels stood nearer to men. There are no months and days in my life more precious to me than those days of mental struggle and silent contemplation. Then it was that my intellect was broadened and deepened, my religious proclivities intensified, and my character fixed.

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        In the fall of 1869 the colored conference of Georgia met in Macon, having Bishop Pierce for its President. Here I was ordained Elder and elected delegate to the organizing General Conference, which met in Jackson, Tenn., the 15th day of December, when the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church in America became a separate organization. I was present as a delegate during the session of the conference and voted upon all the measures that were put forth for the organization of the C. M. E. Church into a separate body. I was also the strongest advocate for the election of W. H. Miles, of Kentucky, to the bishopric. I first entered his name as a suitable person for the bishopric, and on the first ballot he was triumphantly elected.

        In January, 1871, the Conference convened in Augusta, Ga. Three Bishops were present, Miles, Vanderhost and Pierce. Bishops Miles and Vanderhost were the presidents, and presided on alternate days. Bishop Pierce was the distinguished and honored guest. When the appointments were read out I was appointed to Trinity church, then the leading church in the conference, and perhaps in the connection. Here I was pastor two years and four months. In the fall of 1872 the conference was held in Columbus, Ga. Bishop Miles presided, and I was elected delegate to the called session of the General Conference which met in Augusta, Ga., in March, 1873. I received every vote in the Annual Conference cast for delegates to the called session of the General Conference. When the General Conference assembled in extraordinary session in Augusta, in 1873, I was then pastor of Trinity church in which the conference was held. The business for which the General Conference was convoked in extraordinary session, was the election and consecration of three Bishops. Bishop Vanderhost was dead, and the whole presiding fell upon Bishop Miles. Bishop Pierce was present by special invitation.

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Three men were elected Bishops, namely: J. A. Beebe, L. H. Holsey, and Isaac Lane. I was elected on the first ballot with Bishop Beebe, and I think I received every vote cast but two. I assisted Bishop Miles in preparing the Bishop's message for the conference, and took a leading part in all its work. Bishop Pierce preached the ordination sermon on the Sabbath, and at that time I was ordained Bishop by Bishop Miles, assisted by Bishop Pierce. Here also, Bishops Beebe and Lane were ordained. The respective fields of labor for the new Bishops were laid off, and I was sent to Texas, Arkansas, Alabama, and Tennessee. The Bishop's salary was fixed at eight hundred dollars, his traveling expenses to be paid by the work he served. The work was poorly organized, and, indeed, was scarcely organized at all. I had with myself, seven in family. It was hard to get bread to live on and pay traveling expenses. My wife and children lived mainly on peas, bacon, and corn bread, having biscuits for Sunday morning breakfast. None of them had any shoes but went barefooted, and nearly naked, and lived in only a two-room house in Augusta. The first ten years was a struggle, a terrible struggle to keep our heads above the wave. I have been so pushed for fuel on a cold night that I would take the coal ashes and wash them in water and drain out the burnt bits of coal in order to make a fire. In these years of suffering and almost starvation, my vegetable garden was the main and real dependence for a living. My good wife being strong and muscular stood by our garden, and often at night when the moon was shining, she and I would put the little ones to bed, and work until twelve o'clock. She would often cut short the rations for the family that I might have money to reach the appointments and build up the connection. No one knows the anxiety, the sorrow, and the depth of suffering through which I have had to pass for the church of my choice. The annals of God alone can tell. I cannot. But on I went, struggling

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up the hill of difficulty, often staggering and trembling beneath the heavy load. At an earlier period of my history (1869-70) my small amount of money once gave out and I taught a little school that kept the wolf of hunger from the door. This process of training to which I subjected myself, in its results, is, of course, infinitely better than ignorance; but it is far inferior to a regular course in the schools. I have found that it is patchwork, a kind of crazy quilt education; and yet this form of training has its blessings and advantages. It teaches a man to rely upon his own efforts, and by experience he is convinced that nothing is impossible for him to accomplish by industry and faithful application. Since I have been a Bishop I have been in the regular work. I have tried to do the work assigned to my hands with an eye single to the glory of God, the good of the race, and the salvation of men. I have traveled and preached all over the Southern States many times, and have been intensely interested in the establishment of the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church in America. Not because I thought it to be the best church in itself, not because I thought it purer and better than other such organizations, but because I thought it to be the most fitted religious power to meet the peculiar conditions that exist in the Southern States. Harmony between the two races is what is needed. There can be no great progress in the betterment of the people of color without peace and harmony. The pulpit has much to do with human sentiment, and consequently with the actions of men. A semi-civilized people are necessarily greatly controlled by their religious feelings and sentiments. Often they are very religious, and at the same time very slow to comprehend their true status and the best modes of procedure in the chief things that make for their peace and prosperity. Many conditions and facts come in to make the Negro race unique in this country. The diversity of manhood brought about by the diversity of character presents to

Page 23

the calm judgment of the philanthropist intricate questions that involve the life and safety of the race. Moral purity and Christian excellence being equal, the best church for them is that religious organization that can, without compromising its great fundamental principles, adapt itself to present conditions. From the time of the emancipation of the slaves by the fortunes of war, I have not seen any reason why the Southern people should not be the real and true friends of the Negro race. The very religion that they taught, and practiced, and preached to the Negroes, directed them to be the friends of the ex-slaves. Consequently, I can see no reasons why they should not teach Negroes in the school room. I saw from the first no reasons for any feelings of hate and revenge, either on them part of the one or the other. Accordingly, at the Conference held in Macon in 1869, I wrote and offered a paper on Education, in which I advocated the establishment of a church school by the M. E. Church, South, for the training of Negro preachers, said school to be taught by some of the good white people of that church. I knew that colored ministers of the gospel were far behind in those accomplishments that best fitted them for that important work, and that up to that date there had been but few opportunities presented to them for improvement. It was also clear to my mind that the white ministry was the only standard of excellence by which the colored ministers could be inspired to reach a higher plane of fitness. True, the Bible lay open before them, but in the conduct of the white ministers, the teachings of the Bible were displayed in visible, tangible form, and in its best practical phases. I thought then, and still think, the nearer the colored and white preachers are to each other in the work of the ministry, the better it would be for us all. This view of things caused me to be a perpetual and persistent advocate of the establishment of a school for the training of our preachers under the care and complete control of

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the M. E. Church, South, with teachers from the same source. "The Paine Institute" is the outcome of this sentiment. To enforce this idea I wrote a series of letters upon the subject in 1870 just prior to the organization of the Colored M. E. Church in America. The letters were published in the Christian Index while Dr. Watson was editing and publishing that paper for the colored people. At that time, and for some years after, many people, white and colored, thought that I was a "crank," and that it was the one thing impractical if not impossible.

        In 1882 I was sent as Fraternal Messenger to the General Conference of the M. E. Church, South, which assembled in Nashville, Tenn. I was especially instructed, first, to bear to them the friendly greetings of the colored church, and then to ask them to establish a school for us wherein our ministry might be properly trained and fitted for evangelistic work among their own people. When the General Conference of that church was held in Atlanta four years before, I addressed a rather lengthy communication to them upon the same subject. Some things I then said were thought to be a little reproachful, or reflective on them. Their noble endeavors to preach the gospel in heathen countries, while they neglected the heathen at home, appeared to me to be inconsistent with the teachings of Christ and the Apostles. I meant not that the evangelical work in foreign countries should be neglected, or left to perish, but that the needy people at home should have some attention given to them as was done in the days of slavery. It was true, there were many barriers in the way, but no more in this country than in foreign lands. It ought to be said, however, that after emancipation the Negroes held themselves aloof from the Southern people to such extent that no proposition made by the latter could reach the former. Consequently, the margin for evangelistic labors among Negroes by Southern white people was narrow. When

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The Paine Institute became a reality, but few of the colored people approved of it, and the men of my own "faith and order" were more against it than those on the outside. My own preachers fought it bitterly as an untimely and unwise measure. They fought it because they thought that other Negro organizations would reproach us for being under the Southern sentiment and bowing to the verdict of pure prejudice upon the race question. Already all the colored churches had branded us as "Democrats," "bootlicks," and "white folks' niggers," whose only aim was ultimately to remand the freedmen back to abject bondage. This was, as subsequent events have proven, a distorted view of a great movement. But prior to the organization of the school in 1883, I traveled over the States, agitated the question, and spoke in its behalf in public and private. In the early fall of 1882 I held the Virginia Conference in Front Royal, and there I made a speech on the question, and laid the first dollar on the table that was ever given to it. Rev. W. T. Thomas followed with a like amount.

        When I made my speech before the General Conference of the M. E. Church, South, in Nashville, in 1882, in behalf of the school, it was well taken and highly appreciated by the large and intelligent audience. The venerable John B. McFerrin put his arms around my shoulders and congratulated me for its timeliness. So did a large number of others. While I knew that all was agreeable and pleasant, yet I had a sense of fear and a thrill of doubt, lest I should make a failure, and the chief end for which I came should be defeated, and the whole project lost. But the golden eagle of success perched upon my staff, and I felt as a plumed knight beneath its wings. I had but one object in view and that was to help my fellowman. As this General Conference authorized the establishment of the school, and appointed a committee to put the thing in motion, Bishop Pierce being the chairman, called that committee to meet in

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Atlanta. In the summer of 1882 it convened in the First Church. Bishop Pierce and Dr. Haygood, and all the Bishops of the colored church were present. I wrote to our Bishops and urged them to be present, and all agreed to come but Bishop Miles. But I wrote him again to be present, lest he should hinder the initiatory of a great work, and to my surprise he came. The whole matter was discussed pro and con. It was agreed to locate the school at Augusta, Ga., and ask the church for two hundred thousand dollars for facilities and endowment. Early in January, 1883, Rev. Morgan Calloway, D.D., then the vice-president of Emory College, and Rev. Geo. W. Walker, of the South Carolina Conference of the M. E. Church, South, came to Augusta and organized the school. For this purpose rooms were rented in the heart of the city, and I gathered up the students by personal solicitation and public appeals until the number reached about thirty. Still it was a dark day for the school. Popular sentiment, among white and black, was widespread and bitter against it. But my friends were numerous, and Dr. Calloway used to say that I had more friends than any man he ever saw. I paid the first hundred dollars that were ever given for that purpose, a few days before the organization of the school, and since that time I have given myself, and collected from others almost continuously whatever I could for it.

        In 1886, at the request of Rev. W. C. Dunlap, who was then its commissioner, I wrote a strong paper upon The Paine Institute, and sent it to him, and he sent it to the Nashville "Christian Advocate" to be published. But as it was so long before it appeared in the "Advocate," I concluded that it had found its way to the waste basket. Finally it appeared and I afterward learned from Mr. Dunlap the reason for this delay. He told me that the editor hesitated in publishing it because he believed it to be somebody else's production, and, consequently, "bogus." It was thought that the paper was an abler

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one than I could produce. It was published on the first page of the great church paper, a place where only the best documents appear.

        In 1890 I was impressed that enlarged facilities were almost essential to the successful work of the school, and I started out of my own accord, with almost infinite misgivings, to make speeches before as many Conferences of the M. E. Church, South, as I might be permitted to reach. This I did with good results, as to the aid given the school. Although I was self-appointed, these conferences gave me the warmest reception and responded librally to the cause. This conference year (1897-'98) I am out on the same work. The trustees of the school and the Bishops of the Colored Church, and others, thought it wise, and so steadily urged me to take the field again in behalf of the school. This I have done, and have spoken before fourteen of the Conferences. In 1886 the General Conference of the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church in America, met in Augusta, Ga., and at that session I wrote our "Financial Plan" by which Paine Institute and the other schools have received a considerable amount of money for their running expenses. I wrote this financial plan with special reference to the support of the schools of the church, which at that time were only two--"The Paine" and "The Lane." Perhaps there is no single act of legislation connected with the history of the church so significant and far-reaching in its effects as our "Financial Plan." Prior to its adoption in 1886 there was no way of a practical nature for the collection and disbursement of the general funds or general revenue of the church; but since the "Financial Plan" has been operated, the whole connection and the schools have felt the advantages, and owe their life, in a large measure, to its operation.

        For twenty years I was the Secretary of the College of Bishops, and kept the minutes of our meetings from year to year at my own expense. Also, for the same length

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of time, I was the statistician and corresponding secretary of the connection, and replied to all communications of a public nature. I have written every Message for the Bishops except the one written by Bishop Miles, in 1873, and I assisted him in that one. Only two of these Messages have ever been changed in a single word or sentence by the Bishops after I had written them, and consequently nearly all of the acts and legislation of our general conferences have been governed by them. I have read and passed upon every book in manuscript that has been published in our church from its organization until the present time, and have written their introductions. By authority of the General Conference, I have written and compiled the only hymn book and the only Manual of Discipline that we have ever had, without any aid from the church whatever.

        In 1881 four delegates were selected by the Bishops to represent the church in the Ecumenical Conference that was held in London, England, and no one went but myself. As yet I am the only C. M. E. representative that has ever gone to a foreign port on an official errand. I read a paper before that splendid and august body according to the program. While in London I preached in City Road Chapel, the distinguished mother of Methodism, from the same little box pulpit from which John Wesley preached the gospel of free grace. I did what I could upon the same great subject. During my stay in this the largest city of the world, I preached many times, perhaps with more force than I have before or since. On this trip to the first Ecumenical Conference of Methodism, I visited Paris and spent a week in "sight-seeing," weighing and measuring the world's greatest civilization, which no man can know until he comes in contact with it. I was delegate to the Centennial Conference of American Methodism that was held in Baltimore in 1884, and wrote a paper that was read in that conference. I was not present on account of ill health, but the paper

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was read by Rev. F. M. Hamilton, M. D. I was also a member of the last Ecumenical Conference that was held in Washington, D. C.

        From 1870 until the present time (1898) I have written a great many papers and public communications on the history and polity of the church, a large number of which have been published in the Christian Index, the official organ of the church. I have given the reading public the greatest part of what permanent literature the church, up to the present time, has been able to produce. A great deal of what I have written in the last twenty-eight years never has been and never will be published. Much of it has already been suppressed, the other in all probability will be. I have often written sermons and afterwards destroyed them. This I have regretted, but they are gone beyond recalling.

        As orator or writer, philosopher or preacher, I leave the estimate of myself to the candid judgment of those who have known me. As a citizen I have tried to do the right, no matter how far I have come short of it.

        My history is the history of the church of which I am a member. Its history cannot be written, nor its records compiled without me as one of the chief actors in its drama, and one who has deeply impressed himself upon its character and productions.

        At present, I am the editor-in-chief of "The Gospel Trumpet," associated with the Rev. R. A. Carter A.M., who is the managing editor. I was elected to the office of Bishop when I was in my thirtieth year of age, and have held the position for twenty-five years. When I was elected it was said by some prominent man that I was the youngest man ever elected Bishop in any age or church.

        I have not sought to get rich, nor make money, and have in no way made my office, position, nor the church an instrument of power or worldly gain. All that I have received above a bare living, I have made it a habit to

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return to the church, and to help on to a better state suffering humanity. At this time I have no "cottage in the wilderness" that I can call my home, and I have been in debt ever since I have been a Bishop. From youth to the present, life has been an unremitting struggle and a perpetual series of trials and conflicts. I have helped every man, woman and child that I could, and have tried to bear the burdens of others as the Scriptures direct.

L. H. HOLSEY.

Atlanta, Ga., February 23, 1898.

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SERMONS.

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Man an Ideal Empire in Miniature.

        "What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?"--Ps. 8:4.

        However small and insignificant man may appear to be in physical parts and bodily proportions amid the marvelous wonders of creation, and however insignificant in weight, height, and girth, when compared with the cloud-kissed hills or the towering mountains of eternal snows that lift their cones to the cloudless zones, and however light and ponderable he may be, compared to the infinite masses of tangible materialities that compose the universe in which he lives and moves, and of which he is a part, yet he is an ideal and realistic empire within himself. He has not only a realistic and enduring self, but he within himself is a real and ideal empire composed of all those powers and elements and inherent qualities that seem needful to complete the same. As a great steam engine may be built in miniature with its wheels, cogs, pulleys, cylinders, boiler, steam chests, piston rods, and gear, and as such a miniature engine may be as real and as perfect as a great engine which it may represent, so man is as perfect an empire as the little or model engine is an engine. As extension of parts and immensity of materiality have nothing to do with perfection of quality and character, so there need be no real difference in the two engines except in degrees. Indeed, man is a perfect creation in the fundamental facts and constituent elements of his being; and in these respects he is an emanation of the Divine. Humanity is divine, not in its moral purity and perfection, but in its mental capacity and corporal delineations. In everything but moral standing, the mental humanity is made in the image of its Creator. Man's

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mental humanity is the most real and the most conspicuous, indeed the only real enduring and essential attribute of his being. This mental individuality is in the image of God, the Supreme Mentality, that universal spirituality whose exterior building is the universe. This universe is the temple of God--the empire of the Supreme Mentality. Somewhere in this temple or empire, is the seat of universal government, authority, and power, the central location of one almighty thrilling force that acts upon and centralizes all the forces, energies and activities of all the universe. Gravitation, so called, can be nothing less than the operation of universal mentality in perpetual activity, by whose coercive energy the mindless elements and their infinitely various combinations sustain their harmonious interrelations. Thus God is the life and soul of the universe in the same sense that man's soul is the life and light of his body. In this high metaphysical sense God is the life of the universe, the life of all the worlds, and the light of men. Evidently man is the little God, the microcosm, an image of the macrocosm, which is God's larger universe. I need not dwell upon the indestructibility of human nature. It is as enduring as the ages. The tardy steps of centuries and cycles, the abrasions and indentures of all eternity, will leave the divinely imaged mental humanity fresh and green, forever blooming from its own deathless inherent vitality, because it is the image of God. Man's body is the temple of his soul. It is the splendid super-cosmopolite from the cosmopolitan center, tenting and dwelling for a season on this sub-lunar sphere. Its style and outlines and delineations are from heaven. It is the human form divine from the skies. The body is materialistic, because there is nothing in the universe other than matter of which it may be composed, and, therefore, desolation and decay shall overtake it. Its pillars and columns and towering arches shall fall down, and its stately roof and star-crowned

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turrets shall be broken and buried, but the image of God--the heavenly Visitant--that dwells within, in all its divine completeness and ethereal brightness, shall remain intact and untarnished amid the wonders of the cycles and the evolutions and transitions of the endless future. Truly man shall live forever. Death is simply a removal from one sphere of being to another, a shuffling off a coarser and earthly coil, and a flight from a lower to a higher, purer and sublimer altitude in another sphere. It is the heavenly mentality abdicating an earthly throne, and reascending to its high place to be in perfect unison with kindred spirits, and vie in the splendors of the ethereal.

        I. What is man in his physical constitution?

        The psalmist says, "I am fearfully and wonderfully made." None but God can make man. No angelic fingers nor seraphic handicraft, nor wonderful mechanism, though contrived and manipulated by the skilful touch of angelic operators, can spin into threads and weave in golden looms the warp and woof, and manufacture into grace and beauty the delicate fabric of which man is made. None but God could throw the silver shuttle and bring from the evolving intricate mechanism of nature a mighty product like man. What a wonderful organism is this man empire! In this man empire, there are two hundred and sixty-three bones, five hundred muscles, and three hundred millions of brain cells, about three thousand of which are destroyed every minute. Therefore, every man has a new brain every sixty days. Every man that has lived to be seventy years of age has had, therefore, four hundred and twenty-nine sets of brains. Allowing that the average brain weighs sixty ounces, the man of seventy years would have had two thousand five hundred pounds of the precious thing. Every day there are in each head more than four millions of the brain cells destroyed and replaced by new ones. The alimentary canal is thirty-two feet long. Man has a heart six

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inches in length and four in diameter, beating seventy times per minute, four thousand two hundred times every hour, one hundred thousand eight hundred times a day, and two billion six hundred millions in three score years and ten. At each beat, two and a half ounces of blood are thrown out of it at the rate of one hundred and seventy-five ounces per minute, six hundred and fifty-six pounds per hour, seven and a half tons a day, lifting it two thousand one hundred and twenty-two feet in the same length of time. We breathe twelve hundred times an hour, using twenty-four gallons of air a day. The breathing surface of the lungs is twenty thousand square inches, equal to the floor space of a room twelve feet square. There are ten millions of silken cables or nerve cords that permeate and ramify the man empire, and center in the brain or the seat of government, making the greatest army of body-guards that ever defended a kingdom or assembled upon the field of battle. The atmospheric pressure upon each square inch of the human body is fourteen pounds, making the weight upon a single human body of medium size forty thousand pounds. There are three thousand five hundred perspiratory pores, one-fourth of an inch long, making a little drainage canal forty miles long. Beyond and beneath all of these there is the great ganglia system of nerve tissues, so fine and minute that the point of a sewing-needle covers a whole system, in which there are thousands of little elastic threads, too fine to be seen except by glasses of the highest magnifying power known to man. Indeed, there are thousands of wonders and marvels in the physical constitution and operations of the human organism that are beyond the power of the mind to comprehend and explain. As God, the Supreme Mentality, presides over the universe, governing all its forces under the reign of law, so man is presided over by the mind, which is the supreme king of the man empire, governing all its parts and forces under the reign of law. As God's mind is everywhere in

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the universe as an all powerful and infinite activity, so the mind of man is everywhere the infinite activity in the man empire, filling all its parts and ramifications with its own ineffable light and glorious power. The God empire and the man empire are images the one of the other. The first is absolute and infinite in fact and abstract; the second is only absolute and infinite within its prescribed bounds. Both are the same in kind, but different in degrees. Therefore, the mind of man is the reigning king, the monarch and master of the man empire. Hence, man is an empire in miniature, with all the elements and inherent capacities of a kingdom, with its presiding monarch highly exalted upon the throne of the brain. Here lives and rules the mind king from whose dictatorial throne edicts are issued and commands sent forth into all the realms, provinces and the ramifications of the universal dominions. Indeed, man is an empire, having all the realms, provinces and the ramifications of the universal dominions. Indeed, man is an empire, having all the elements, forces and powers of nature in co-operative harmony, with its solids and liquids, and with its flora and fauna. It has lands, skies, seas, brooks, rivers and sparkling rills, that convey life and light and vitality to every part; from its fertile plains and golden fields, the metropolis and seat of empire draws tribute and support. The brain is the throne and seat of government and the mind is monarch. At his command ministers fly, cables hiss, sinews quiver, fluids dash, bones quake and sensations play like electric volts on the strings of the nerves. The mind king has eyes, ears, hands, feet, lips and tongue. He is the real and divine personality, the mind monarch whom God "from old times" has crowned, sceptered and clothed with the royal robe and insignia of state. He has judgment, discretion, tastes, will, choice and sensibility. Around him are his courtiers, diplomats and flaming ministers, hung on threads of gold and cables of silver, ever ready in reverential attitudes to

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execute his high behests. By these space is blotted out and time annihilated. They fly on wings of thought and dance as it were on the lightning's flame, unifying and binding the states of empire with his arm of glorious power. God's power is absolute, and his government executive, ministerial and dictatorial. "He maketh his angels spirits, and his ministers a flame of fire." As the empire of God moves about his throne as the center of attraction, so the man empire moves about the brain as the center of will force, rule and authority. This man empire has reservoirs of blood, lakes of water, rills of oil, and repositories of fluids that make up its gulfs, seas, inlets and bays. It has cables of elastic steel that thread and permeate all its parts, wrapt in silken integuments, and of the finest mould. Over these elastic threads and living cables, fiery dictates and high behests from the throne of the mind king dance and play and preach his will and proclaim his laws upon every hill, through every plain and valley, till every leaflet, rock, and tree, and all the deep gorges and mountain passes are resonant with his voice and filled with his commands. Deep in its seas there are flowing currents and boiling springs, from whose agitated waters come pearls of thought, folios of science, books of wisdom, bringing up from their hidden archives curriculums of study, deeper, vaster, broader and higher than ancient sages, approximating the ken of angels and the wisdom of seraphs. There are mountains of bone, hills of cartilage, ledges of gristle, and ropes of sinew, to give form and beauty, and hold intact the rolling, jostling empire, with its leaping rills, restless seas, agitated gulfs and quaking land. It has a fertile soil of flesh and blood where roses blush and lilies bloom, through which a thousand streamlets flow to perpetuate its virgin days of youth, and crown its high meridian with the flora of light, wisdom, and strength, and its hoary years with a diadem of silvery harvest. This man empire has its winds, storms, cyclones, hurricanes,

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typhoons and trade-winds, that roar among its caverns, whistle along its dales, hum among its rocks, play on its seas, shout over its hills, and strew its valleys with awful wreckage and direful ruins of uprooted forests. This man empire has its sun, the central luminary, meting its days and years, shining over its hemispheres, continents, seas and islands, giving light and life to its flora and fauna, producing towering trees of knowledge on its mountains of wisdom, from whose sunny peaks the mind king makes the sunbeams his horses and the ethereal currents his chariot wheels. Or through the lofty constellations of judgment, discovery, and golden thought he flies toward God until his wings of flame sets aglow all the widespread areas of air, sea, and land, until the lakes and rivers and island homes are filled with the life of God, the anthem of the ages and the symphonies of the skies, until every granite bone, elastic cord, and nerve cable is filled with heaven, and suffused with songs of seraphs and the melodies of the spheres. In orbital grandeur, around the miniature empire's sun shine the satellites of truth, virtue, will, purpose and the designs of life, while each planetoid of disease--the fragment of broken worlds--"walketh in darkness" through its cities, states and provinces, corrupting its fountains, contaminating its seas, and planting the baleful seeds of death and dissolution along its flowing currents and prolific soils. By flying fragments of broken worlds many upheavals occur. Rivers overflow their banks, seas forsake their ancient beds, volcanoes explode, islands are submerged, mountains quiver on their rocky foundations, isthmuses sink, the land quivers while all its elements groan at the approach of the great catastrophe--death. Yea, by these fragments of broken worlds (diseases) many a joint is dislocated, cables of elastic steel are broken, and silken links of ligaments, sinews of brass, and bones of granite yield amid the general "wreck of matter and the crush of worlds." But the text says, "When I

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consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained; What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him."

        II. What is man in his spiritual or mental nature?

        Whence came he? It is said there is nothing great in the world but man, and there is nothing great in man but mind. Indeed mind is the man--the true hidden man that thinks, conceives, judges and forms mental images; measures time and space, calculates in numbers, weighs even the imponderable masses of materialities, comprehends the sublime majesties of the universe, and has the power of will, choice, taste and thought, and indefinite continuity of individual consciousness. Deeply pervading all the attributes of his nature, the faculty of imagination like an angel of flame in splendid trim, with his golden sandals buckled on his feet, is ever ready to sweep the azure floors of the skies, or pierce the illimitable bounds beyond, where planets, stars and suns revolve on their rounds. By this faculty space is blotted out and time annihilated. It is swifter than lightning, faster than electricity and outflies its volts that dance, as it were, on ethereal vibrations. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye this cherub of the airy deep leaps heavenward or hellward, rejoicing in the happiness of the saved, or revolting at the horrors of the lost millions. It sweeps the tracks of lesser stars, pierces the orbits of planets, the belted splendors of Jupiter, the golden rings of Saturn, and visits "Arcturus, Orion, and Pleiades, and the chambers of the South," and wraps itself in the fiery sheets of the sun. It delights to flee through "The Milky Way" and the gem studded and constellated highways of God. Above stars, planets, suns, in the zoneless seas and unhorizoned spheres where the wings of seraphs battle for decades with the tides, the imagination lingers not, but lifting its fiery eye as system after system recede and sink in the shaded distances of eternal

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space he seems to cry to all the children of eternity, "On to Alcyon, on to Alcyon," the greatest system known to man, and which once seemed to be the center of universal power, and the place of the throne of the Most High. Here alone, at the throne of God, this wonderful faculty is foiled and baffled, but still radiant in its glory; and virgin strength. The wings of this mighty visitant can carry thought no farther. Here all ends meet and all explorations end. And here she cries--


                         Eternal Power, whose high abode
                         Becomes the grandeur of a God:
                         Infinite lengths beyond the bounds
                         Where stars revolve their little rounds.


                         The lowest step beneath thy feet
                         Rises too high for Gabriel's seat;
                         In vain the tall Archangel tries
                         To reach the height with wondering eyes.

        In the transitions of eternal wonders, or those spiritual metamorphoses and evolutions that await us in the future, this faculty will dwell with us as the great photographer that never sleeps, but ever pictures upon the expanding canvas of the memory all the images with their exact forms that have ever been presented to the mental man.

        III. But what is man in his moral constitution?

        Man is a sinner, for the "Scriptures of Truth" declare that "All men have sinned and come short of the glory of God." Again, "Sin is the transgression of the law." Not a visionary or arbitrary command, but it is the violation of the law, the high, holy, and eternal law that governs the mental and moral universe. The law here spoken of is the embodiment of those underlying principles by which the universe is governed, and by which it maintains its successive and harmonious relations. By this law all of its elements, physical, and mental, act in concord. Whoever violates this law, or, if you will, these laws, is a sinner, a sinner against God and against

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all those spiritual beings, or mental individualities that have kept the laws of God, and thereby maintained their perfect estate. But this man empire, like others in which there is sin, is in perpetual throes, discord, and agitation, through all the years of its sublunar existence. Its restless inhabitants, with its rebellious states and provinces, constantly threaten the dissolution and subversion of its earthly domains. They threaten to transplant their interests and move the seat of empire to sublimer realms in those sunny plains of eternal day, where they may vie in the altitudes and majesties that live in their bright abodes. On earth storms arise upon the empire's seas, cyclones move and twist its mountains upon their rocky bases, shake its hills, sweep down its forests, filling its plains and valleys with howling destruction and the broken ruins of his kingdom. This is dying, so-called. As the mind king doffs his crown, lays aside his royal insignia of state, drops the sceptre and abdicates the throne, the silken cables and elastic cords break, the chambers of the king's palace are closed. All his courtiers, diplomats and flaming ministers cease to do his biddings and sink in eternal muteness. The nerve centers with their ten millions of body-guards in decadence die. On come the whirlwinds of death, over the coagulated seas of blood, up the streamlets of oil and channels of fluids. It climbs the vertebrated stairs of the spiral mountain of sinews and the hills of cartilages, crushing the granite of bones and scattering the parts of the magnificent pile. Its sun ceases to shine, its moon is turned to blood and all the stars of his lofty firmament are covered with the thick blackness of the night. The kingdom is demolished and the strength of the empire broken; but "the soul of man, Jehovah's breath," like an eagle from its cage, soars away on its wings of flame to dwell with God, to live and reign with Jesus, the Christ, "and through eternal ages will shout beyond the skies."

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The Irrepressible Conflict.

        "For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil." 1 John III:8.

        The text brings before us the two most conspicuous and renowned characters that have ever appeared in the world, acted upon the theatre of life or written their deeds upon the scroll of the ages. The annals of the ancients and the records of the nations cannot produce their equals in the least degree whatever. Indeed they stand out in bold relief of character and incomparable individuality. In their respective relations and natures, they are without a compeer. If all the greatness of mankind that has been displayed in the wisdom of the sages, the sagacity of statesmen, the valor and prowess of heroes, the sweetness of poets, the melodies of bards, were compressed into one great personality, he could not be so great, so wonderful, so matchless in consummate skill, profound wisdom, and exhaustless resources of those principles and things that make up the sum of greatness, as to rival the great characters mentioned in the text. Add to the control of such a personality, the rubies of kings, the diamonds of queens, the scepters of emperors, the gems and gold of princes, the sacerdotal scarlet of popes, the royal splendors of imperial courts, and the wealth of the ages and nations, yet such a character could not be compared to either of the distinguished individuals mentioned in the text. Then give such an individual a thousand years to display all this mighty wealth and dazzling splendor, yet in celebrity and influence, he could not approximate the ideal representatives of the irrepressible conflict--the Son of God and the devil. They both occupy the most exalted, lofty and most conspicuous position in the

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world, and in their work, influence and relations, they affect every nation, people, tongue and age. Their influence runs parallel with all times, epochs, and dispensations, ramifying all human governments, institutions, orders, fraternities and administrations. They affect the administration of all civil laws and the adjudication of every lawsuit. The one or the other has paved the pathway of every war, feud, conflict and revolution that has swept the zones of human civilizations, and fixed the destiny of men and nations. They affect all events in the world's written and unwritten history; from its incipient civilization and birthday, until in the sable drapery of its solemn requiem, the world shall cease to be aglow with the burning cinders that fly from the two great swords of Beelzebub and the conquering Messiah. Their influence stops not in time, but crosses the dark and trackless sea of death, and, rekindling on the shores of the spiritual world, will continue through all the great millenniums of eternal duration. Heaven and hell, with their crowded intelligences, will feel their potent and lavish influence by which their unnumbered billions of indestructible individualities will be forever swayed. Their imprint of character, for good or for evil, for hell or for heaven, for life or for death, will be made and deeply engraved upon the life and spiritual nature of every man, woman and child that has ever lived, or ever will live. They are not private but public individuals--federal heads--and representatives and embodiments of the two great diversities of the moral universe--good and evil. They are the representatives and heroes of the two great spiritual empires of the world, representing the two great moral ideas of the universe, which are founded upon the immortal principles of right and wrong, and of truth and falsehood, and of life and death. There is an infinite distinctiveness --constitutional, innate and irrevocable--between these two individuals, in their nature, work and the great

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outcome of their career. This difference is essential, absolute and necessary. Therefore, it is as much impossible to operate them together in harmony upon the same plane so as to produce the same results, as it is to bring the north and south poles together. They are not only antagonistic, but antipodal. Two distinct principles inspire the work of the one, and the efforts of the other. The one is the principle of good and heaven, and the other is the principle of evil and hell, each in battle array, and perpetual conflict. The one is from heaven and the other from hell; one is life, and the other death; one is eternal happiness, the other eternal misery; one is of God and godly, the other is of the devil and devilish; one seeks the good of all, and one the death of all; one dignifies and deifies human nature, the other strips man of his glory, and leaves his prostrate form on the ground--"a splendid palace in ruin." Ever since sin hath entered into the world, and death by sin, these two great leaders and powers have exhibited themselves in the children of men in all the departments and diversified features of human society. In the courts of kings, in the palace garden, in the halls of justice, on the rostrum, in the realms of legislation, in commerce, field, and store, their prowess is seen. On the battlefield, in prisons and camps of horrid war, in the diplomatic circles, and stealthily along the quiet veins and avenues of thought and learning, all along, and everywhere, these two great majestic powers and principles confront each other and beset humanity round about. Hence, they have made the children of men good or bad, right or wrong, lifting them to heaven, or casting them down to hell. Therefore, whatsoever exists in the moral world, exists under the generic terms of good and of evil. Whatever is good is not evil, and whatever is evil is not good. Good cannot produce evil and evil cannot produce good. Life cannot produce death and death cannot produce life. Out of the depths of falsehood and darkness arise no

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truth and light, and out of the depths of truth and light come no darkness and no untruth. Darkness flees before approaching light, and falsehood loses hold when truth enters. Both cannot fill the same moral space at the same time, because they are moral spheres, filling the utmost limits of the mighty circles of the moral universe.

        But to our conception, good and evil are best known by their effects upon those who follow the one, and pursue the other. If certain actions of moral creatures-- whether they be men or angels--render them happy or miserable, we know that those actions are good or evil, and spring from the good or the evil one. The practice of the two principles, in their respective relations and tendencies, always and forever produces and reproduces the same results in every case. They are eternal evolutions, but their evolutions never evolve out of themselves so as to produce something different from themselves. They produce their own likeness and superscription. Heaven is heaven, and hell is hell, a thousand times so in all their intrinsic natures throughout eternal duration. Good redeems her children, washes them clean and white in the blood of the Lamb, and sends them up the shining way to God and gives them the endless felicity of heaven. But evil, hideous, dark, and treacherous, sends her multitudinous squadrons to hell, giving them the misery that hath no end. Every word and work of men and angels, is, therefore, significant. There is a meaning, deep, profound, and far-reaching in every word, thought, and deed that enters the broad realm of being. Our thoughts chisel their forms upon the disc of the soul. Our words are written upon the folds of the heart, and our actions are the pent-up fires that leap out, leaving the dead volcanic cinders within. Like causes produce like effects, and like effects are produced by like causes. For every effect there must be a cause, and the cause is best understood by the results. In the moral world this is a truism. Now, every moral

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action that takes place among intelligent beings, is actuated by, and receives its momentum from the will and volition. The will is the motive power--the sheet anchor of the soul--that moves and stimulates the actions. Therefore, every moral action must have the consent of the will, otherwise they cannot be moral actions for which men and angels are responsible. All actions, therefore, are good or evil, and must be classified as such. The former lead to heaven, the latter lead to hell. At the end of every man's road stands life or death, hell or heaven, which is the inevitable and final destiny of all the living. When the sundering blade of death shall cut the vital threads of life, the soul--the heaving spirit--emancipated from its house of clay, shall then be transported away and up to God, or away and down to hell, and the day of preparation shall then be closed, when the inexorable fiat of Almighty God shall forever seal the irrevocable life of the one, and the changeless damnation of the other. No man can tell where hell is, but it is, it does exist, and whatever it is, and wherever it is, is a matter of small moment. But we are certain of two things: (1) It is a state and place of punishment. (2) That punishment is eternal in its duration. This arises out of the nature of the case, and the nature of God's government. When the sinner lands in hell, he will then be nearer to God, heaven, and life, than he will ever be again in all the cycles and evolving millenniums of eternity. Every surging wave and fleeing current of rolling years, will thrust him farther and farther out into the mid-ocean of hell's seething and boiling billows. Every turn of the wheel of the centuries will but augment his sins, and enlarge his capacity for transgression and sink him lower and lower.

        Man is a progressive being. Progression--eternal progression--characterizes his innate constituency whether in the human body or out of it; whether in a state of bliss or state of misery; whether in earth, heaven or hell, or

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whether as applied to the three realities of his nature--physical, moral and mental. Change of place or condition cannot change his nature and indestructible selfhood or spiritual identity. Man is man in all the relations and conditions in which he may be placed. The immortal mind, the conscious self, with all the moral sensibilities, are incapable of decay, and therefore, of necessity, he is eternal in conscious duration. It seems, also, a truism, that the functions of the moral and mental man are never in a state of perfect quietism. There is a perpetual unrest, or rather there is rest only in motion, progression, and development. Absolute quietism is incompatible with life, and there can be no such thing as vital energies in absolute quietude. Activity, in a greater or less degree, is the law of all living and is operative in all intelligent beings, whether in a state of bliss or state of woe. The saved will continue in obedience, the lost will continue in sin, since mere punishment has no redeeming qualities, and since obedience has no element of misery. As one wave of the sea produces another, and these produce others indefinitely, so one act of sin produces others through the eternal rounds of the dreadful series of transgressions. One hell will rise above and crowd the burning crest of another, each more dreadful and pressing harder upon the heels of the other, adding force and fury to the mighty avalanche of the fiery flood.

        This text, like others, gives us the key to the origin of evil in the world, a question long debated by "the wise and prudent," and philosophic schools of the ancients. "The devil sinneth from the beginning," "for in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die," is the plain declaration of holy writ. Long was the world in darkness on this subject, and many were the vain and absurd theories entertained by the wisest of human kind. They were greatly troubled, puzzled, and bewildered to account for the advent and work of evil in the world. The fertile imagination of the ancient thinker set about

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to invent theories and invest probabilities with the habiliments of truth, hoping thereby to explain the mystery. Hence, the necessitarians tell us that evil arises out of the nature and constitution of things; and that the Creator himself could not hinder its manifestation in the world. The Manichean theory is that there are two deities, the one good and the other evil; one the author of the body and the other the author of the soul; and that, therefore, the body is evil because it comes from the evil deity, and that the soul is good because it comes from the good deity. How absurd! But this is the result of human wisdom, when it sets at naught the word of God. "In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die." This positive command, given to Adam by the Creator, placed him, as a free moral agent in a state of probation and trial, clothing him with power to stand, yet liable to fall, because he could not be free as an agent unless it was in his choice to obey or disobey. But he fell. He "kept not" his first estate. By the influence of the devil, he became a sinner, "and brought death into the world and all our woes," because:


                         "She plucked, she ate,
                         Earth felt the wound,
                         And nature from her seat,
                         Gave signs of woe,
                         That all was lost,"

        Thus sin entered into the world, and death by sin. Death, with all his howling furies came in pompous state, drawing the dreadful phalanxes of hell at his chariot wheels. Here then is that long and dreadful reign of the king of hell, called in Genesis, "The seed of the serpent." The declarations of the Scriptures, his natural character, and his real work in the world, prove that he is a real being, possessing individuality, and identity of personality. He is endowed with all the properties and characteristics that constitute an intelligent being. He is not the principle of evil personified, as some would have it to be, by assigning to it all the qualities and

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actions of an individual. He is not a mere myth, a fable or fabulous being--the outgrowth of man's fear, or product of human imagination. He is not an allegorical being without body or parts, but he is a great and astute being, mighty in power, skilled in wisdom, profound in knowledge and is thoroughly acquainted with the history of the world and the acts of the nations. In Genesis (3:15) he is the seed of "the serpent," and the singular personal pronoun is used to describe his personality and unity of being. In Job he is called "Satan," the adversary, the great enemy of God. He is called "the prince of this world" (John 10:31), "The prince of the power of the air" (Eph. 2:2). He is "a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour." He is called "the God of this world" (2 Cor. 4:4). He is said to be a "murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie he speaketh of that which is his own: for he is a liar and the father of it" (John 8:44). In Revelation he is the king of hell, for says the Apostle, "And they had a king over them, which is the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon" (Rev. 9:1.1). Moses, the venerable lawgiver of Israel was well known by the Devil. He knew also his relation to God and to Israel, and that Israel venerated him above all men living or dead. But Moses died, and was buried in the land of Moab, in a valley over against Beth-peor. Satan knowing that Moses was dead went in search of his body, that if possible, he might devise some plan by which the body might be given to the children of Israel, that they might fall down and worship the lifeless corpse of a great man, as was the custom in Egypt, and thus bring down the wrath of God upon Israel, and nip the plan of salvation in the bud. But God in his goodness, foreseeing what would follow, placed an archangel there to watch over the body, and defend it against the violence and intrigue

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of hell's greatest legate. This is the work of a character, and the diplomacy of hell.

        St. Peter declares that "God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment" (2 Peter 2:4). Jude substantially declares the same thing, using almost the same words. From these, and similar passages of Scripture, we learn:

        1. That the Devil is not a principle personified, but that he is a real substantial and individual character.

        2. That he was in a state of happiness and probation --under positive law, well understood by him, and his fellows, or "the angels that sinned" and "kept not their first estate."

        3. That he rebelled, or "sinned" against the laws of God and the government of heaven, and thereby lost his first estate and was cast "down to hell and delivered into chains of darkness," awaiting the just vengeance of the judgment day of Almighty God.

        4. That he is a powerful prince, a mighty king and a great captain with an empire of spiritual darkness of immense proportions, and that he stirs the hearts and minds, and works through and in the children of disobedience.

        Let us study his nature, work, and history, its it is written in the history of the world. He is wise, astute, stalwart. Standing up like a spiritual giant of massive proportions, and roaring like a lion when he thirsts for blood, he sounds his clarion voice which, like an electric shock, flashes along all the zones and parallels of the habitable earth, convulsing the nations, and spreading far an intensive discord through all the tribes of men. His footprint and handiwork is seen and felt in every land, state, and age--wherever men live and die. The operations of his hand are simply marvelous--dark deep, intricate, and profound. His devices are multiplex and serpentine. His aim is one. He lives through the ages

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with illustrious strength and indomitable will that forever spring with elastic and virgin strength which nerves his spirit and inspires his obdurate soul with a fiery zeal that "no langour knows." Changes in the world of man make no changes with him. Yoking the whirlwinds to his rolling car he traverses the misty deep, plods and plows the surging seas, and as a bold corsair in quest of treasures new and old, he seeks the heathen in his jungle heath island home to pour hell and denser darkness upon his moral and mental day. He throws the somber pall of sin and death high upon the disc of his shield, while his black pinions shade and darken the path and contract the highway of the world's civilizations. As a warrior, he stands at the head and is the dictator of a multitudinous, powerful, and well organized army, epuipped and skilled in all the military tactics of diabolical and spiritual warfare. His soldiers are the bold spirits, the thunder-driven and hell-bred legions from the infernal cave of the damned that kept not their first estate; being goaded on by the hell in their conscience, they are ever ready for the scenes of war and carnage. The weapons of their warfare are mighty, formidable and tried upon the spiritual battle-fields of the nations and ages. Each soldier-devil is armed with barbed spears and swords of adamantine steel whose dreadful play in the air shows that they are in the hands of spirits bold and spirits daring. Their quivers are filled with winged arrows, polished and tempered, and tipped with poison of asps and venom of serpents. Precision and dexterity characterize the engagements of these diabolical archers and sharpshooters of hell. But open war is resorted to only when cunning and intrigue fail. The devil is great in cunning and strategem. Hence the Apostle tells us that "we are not ignorant of his devices." He stirs the passions, lust and pride, and the baser nature of kings, princes, rulers and potentates, and perpetually foments civil and national strife among the

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nations of the earth, causing the plowshare of destruction to glide through the flourishing fields of human society, unroofing the temples, of civilizations and flooding their open halls with human gore, and piling high around their fluted columns the broken bones and bleeding bodies of the dead and dying, causing the widow to weep and the orphan to sigh and clamor for bread. Often he seeks his seat in the church of God, throwing discord and confusion among the saints of the Most High. He is not omnipotent, nor omnipresent, but mighty, and is the antipodal force and antagonistic power against Christ, God and humanity. Messiah on the one side and the devil on the other are great leaders and captains. The battle began in the Garden of Eden six thousand years ago. Both have had varying success and defeats upon the arena of the nation and rostrum of the ages. Still the battle rages. Neither has entirely defeated the other, but onward and fiercely rolls the battle cry. But hush! hush!! I hear the silver notes of the golden clarion of Messiah coming with martial tread and haughty tramp. He is "clothed in a vesture dipped in blood." He rides upon the great white horse of truth and on his head are "many crowns." By his side hangs a potent double-edged blade of "heavenly temper keen" that never turns back from the blood of the slain. His armies are upon white horses robed in the bright and shilling habiliments of divine purity. Their swords are forged upon the anvil of God in "the house of David," and made of the best old Jerusalem steel dug out of the mountains of God. Other blades may break or shatter, but these never. Dreadful are the incisions they make in the rank and file of the enemy. "How shall one chase a thousand and two put ten thousand to flight?" "For the weapons of their warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of the stronghold of the devil." Christ cannot fail. Hell is great, but heaven is greater. Christ is rich in all the fathomless depths and endless

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heights of eternal power. He is more than a match for the Devil. "He is the same to-day and yesterday and forever," and on through the eternal series of great and glorious achievements he repeats his mighty deeds and stupendous acquisitions in the redemption scheme. While this and more is true, yet dark and dreadful were the closing scenes of the world's greatest drama, for it is said in Genesis by the mouth of God, "Thou shalt bruise his heel." The "Thou" here spoken of is the Devil himself, and the expression comes from the custom of pursuing an enemy so closely that the heels of the fleeing are trod upon by the front part of the foot of the pursuer. This implies that the contest was to be close, fearful and irrepressible, and that Satan would pursue the Son of God even to the gates of death. This is also the turning point in the great and long struggle for the mastery, and the ascending of the one over the other. Here the Son of God must conquer or be conquered. Here he must rise victorious over the power of darkness, or he must fall under shame and defeat. Christ says, "The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me." He felt the dreadful tread of Satan crowding upon "his heels," while his steps in the Garden of Gethsemane were marked with his own blood, sweat, and tears. He felt the powers of hell surrounding him on every side and hedging in the pathway of the Son of God. Four thousand years of conflict had passed, but now the culminating hour is reached at last. Now is the dreadful hour when his strength and power are tried and hope flickers in the golden sockets of life. Now the Redeemer of the world was to stand off no longer, and from the red mouth of heaven's artillery rain hail and burning thunderbolts upon the hideous head of the demon; but he must meet him face to face, and arm to arm, and measure swords and spears. Ten thousand devils peep up from the bottomless pit and hiss and howl and clamor for the blood of the Son of God. Swift winged messengers pass in

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rapid transition from earth to hell, and also from earth to heaven, bearing dispatches and news of the dreadful hour and of the culminating scenes of the great and irrepressible conflict. O, dreadful hour, fraught with life or death for the millions of the sin enslaved of Adam's race! The Son of God now falls upon his knees upon the cold ground, while his humanity passes through the fearful ordeal and crucial test and the augmented sorrows of the ages, but amid anguish, pains, sorrows and temptations, he says, "My soul is exceeding sorrowful even unto death." The sins of the world were upon him, and for that reason he must be fearfully chastised by the hand of his Father. But he went a little farther, and fell on his face and prayed, saying, "O, my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me! nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt." This prayer he prayed three times. He begins to sweat blood and bleed at every pore, and his tears thrown up from the depths of an aching heart fell in Gethsemane's Garden. Not only his body, but his soul, the intelligent, the sensitive inner man, was "exceedingly sorrowful even unto death." How deep was that sorrow, and how painful the situation! He looked up, and behold, Judas with his band of ruffians came with swords and staves, and the Son of man is betrayed into the hand of sinners and taken to the judgment seat of the wicked. "Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted." Having ascended the hill of sacrificial death, he is nailed to the cross. The rough iron spikes pierce his feet and hands, and he is cruelly transfixed to the rugged wood. Every sinew is stretched, every tendon distended, every joint dislocated, and every nerve cable thrills with pain. Here hangs in agony and blood the Prince of Peace, the incarnate Son of God, the Alpha and the Omega of all creation. But he dies! "It is finished." But the great tragedy is not yet ended. Another scene is yet to be acted In the

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world's greatest drama. Joseph of Arimathea deposits the dead body in his new tomb. The disciples scattered and all seemed lost. Nature by her internal throes "gave signs of woe." Hell laughs and shouts in triumph. Hope seemed fled away. upon the dying zephyrs of the last breath of the expiring Messiah. But on the third day, Messiah calls back and, resumes his ancient power. The bars, bolts, and rock-ribbed jaws of the grave began to swell and heave as if moved by the omnific hand of God. Death and hell heard the rattling chariot wheels of the heavenly legates as they leaped from the heavenly gates and fled to the rescue of the sleeping Jesus. They pour the message of life from God into the dungeon of death, and the Son of God rises from the dead. Heaven laughs, hell is astonished, and, universal humanity is thrilled by the triumphal declaration: "I am he that liveth and was dead, and behold I am alive forever more, amen; and have the keys of hell and of death."

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The Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood
of Man.

        "I am debtor both to the Greeks, and to the Barbarians; both to the wise and to the unwise."--Rom. 1:14.

        From the language of the text, it is evident that the great Apostle to the Gentiles designed to represent or set forth the universal family of man as one whole and perfect race in so far as a common humanity goes. But when he comes to consider the civil, social and religious status of humanity, he divides mankind into two very distinct divisions, and grades the human race under the appellation of "the Greeks," and "the Barbarians." This view of the apostolic idea is emphasized and paraphrased by the words, "The wise and the unwise." Hence, the difference between "the Greeks" and "the Barbarians" is a state or condition, and not a fundamental. The difference between the two representative specimens of the human family here presented is not constitutional or inherent in the nature of man; but the evident or manifest superiority of the one over the other, grew out of those conditions, elements, and phases of civil and religious life that proceed upon natural law, and have always characterized, to a great or less extent, the race of mankind. Whatever aspect of human progress or retrogression has presented itself to the student of ethnical science and the philosophy of history, nothing founded on bottom facts warrants the conclusion that one man is, by nature and certainly not by grace, superior to the other. But there is a common humanity with a common interest, destiny and parentage that unify all the nations and peoples of the earth. Manners, habits, customs, the forms of governments and civil institutions change according to the tastes of men and the evolutions of human

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nature; but the innate manhood knows no change in that sense whereby one man or people is made inherently superior to the other. Human nature is found by experience as well as by history and philosophy to be the same in quality and essentials, in all ages, states and conditions. State or condition, whether national, racial, or personal, has nothing to do with those great immortal and high mental parts or constituencies that belong to the human individualism. All men are created with the same number of mental faculties, the same number of those attributes of mental and physical parts that have characterized all the individuals of the race from its inception in the Garden of Eden to the present day. Neither does time, in its steady and onward flow through the centuries, nor do those advancing and changing forms of government under which man has lived, have any tendency to change his innate nature in the slightest degree whatever. No improvement in civilized life, no matter how far and how high it may advance the human character in the scale of progress, can add to or take from man one single faculty of his nature. So far as the kind and number of the human faculties are concerned, they are complete. And it seems that his present number of faculties is sufficient to put him and keep him in touch with the spiritual, mental and physical universe by which he is surrounded, and of which he is a part, as well as a citizen. The capacity to do and to know and to comprehend the phenomena of mind and matter on this plane of life, or it may be even in the life to come, does not demand new faculties or other innate constituencies, but only the culture, the development and the indefinite expansion of those that now belong to him. At present, man seems to be in the morning twilight of his being. He is on the inclined plane from the days of his infancy, ascending those loftier graded altitudes of perfections of being and character that are demanded by the very nature of his existence. But so far as the real attributes of his nature

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are concerned in their deepest and broadest realisms, there will be no more change in him than there is between the man when he is an infant and the same man when he is grown to riper years. In the growth, training and culture of such an individual, great changes have taken place. His body has grown, enlarged and taken on its majesty, beauty and stateliness. His mind has been cultured and all the faculties have become active, keen and incisive, and with the fulness of a finished and rounded manhood, he is far different from what he was when lulled to sleep by the sweet, soft melody of a mother's song. But mark you, he is the same individual. There has been added no new nature, attribute or faculty, either in his physical or mental being, but he is the same character with the added expansions and developments of the human essentials. It denotes progress in the potentialities of the mental and immortal humanity that constitute the real man, whose continuity of consciousness is eternal. If these statements are not true, then man's identity is not possible, and his moral obligations with his moral nature are destroyed, and there can be no punishments or rewards. Indeed, man is man wherever found, with the same connections, relations and affinities of life and character. Every man is made by the same hand, according to the measure, mental contour and personal and original endowments. Neither can racial distinctions, color, climatic or geographical situation of birth and growth make any difference in the characteristics of his real manhood. This proves the unity of the race of man, the oneness of interest, origin and destiny. What, therefore, is possible for one man is possible for all men under the same conditions and circumstances. All are made in "the image of God," after the same pattern, in the sublime fundamentals of the original. Hence the great Apostle says: "I am debtor both to the Greeks and to the Barbarians, both to the wise and to the unwise." In plain words, "I am

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in debt to all men, whether they be the polished, educated, and refined philosophic Greeks, or the crude, wild and untutored Barbarians." Again, there is but one religion for all men. There is one God and Saviour--"Jesus Christ, the same yesterday and to-day and forever." God has presented to mankind but one living, active and forceful Christianity which is adapted to all states, ages, and conditions of universal intelligence. God has adapted its requirements, tenets, doctrines, practices and all its splendid elements and agencies to reach and save his intelligent offsprings in any and in all the possibilities of life and human probation.

        I. What then is the greatest work to be done under heaven?

        Answer: To save both the polished Greek and the ignorant Barbarian. Both have souls that must be redeemed or lost. This is a great work, the greatest that can be done by men or angels. For this the great universal church of God was established in the earth. For this the great world of man has groaned, oppressed beneath the heavy and sable bands that beclouded as with a heavy laden pall of death his social and civil horizon in the dreary and sluggish moving centuries of the past. But dead centuries cannot save, nor sleeping cycles atone for the sins and transgressions of men. Time can do nothing of itself without the superior power and agency of the Son of God. We are all debtors one to all the others, and all the others are indebted to that one. God demands of all men to do all that they can to save the race of man from sin. Our duty, in this respect, is never accomplished until we have done our best to reach the ends of the salvation of the one and universal humanity. All the great works, achievements, and wonderful discoveries of the centuries cannot be compared to the work of redemption. Man is lost. The vital threads and living strings that played in harmonious relation between heaven and earth, threading and thrilling the deep ethereal seas, were broken off by the cruel

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hand of sin. Somewhere in the great ocean between God and man, the ends of the broken cables lie buried in some vast depth, sleeping embedded amid the unfathomable mysteries in the wonders and plentitudes of those awful seas of pandemonic and howling space. Over these broad seas of unfathomable depths, tented Night threw her canopy of thick darkness, heavier than mountains of iron and stronger than hills of brass, over which the thunders of God and the winged lightnings of wrath played in gorgeous and awful splendors filling the space of empire between God and man with all the obstructive elements, agencies, and forces of sin and disobedience. No seraphs bold, nor angels daring, ever penetrated the darkened highways or flashed on flaming pinions over the howling seas, gyral cataracts and leaping billows of that wide and black waste that divided the empire of sin from the empire of life. Man is lost. The planet on which he lives has broken her moral relations with God, life and glory. The silver cables and steel chains whose adamantine links were older than the angels and stronger than the cycles and more wondrous than the centuries have been broken. The rebellious planet is lost somewhere in "the void immense," and rolling away far from God and peace she wheels her flight covered with the thick and unyielding nebulæ of sin. God strikes the keys of the diapason of being, and all the cords, pulleys, wheels and threads of the universal mechanism are still attuned but one. He strikes again all the keys, and pulls all the lines and threads of the infinite and universal mechanism and all respond to their God and their Maker but one. There is a harsh sound, a broken thread that causes a discordant note in the mechanism of the moral universe, breaking the melodies of the centuries, the harmonies of millenniums, and severing from the throne of God and the bosom of his love an alien planet. The cables break, heaven feels the tremor, and the rocking chimes of a lost empire of man and God come flashing on ethereal volts

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faster than ever lightning flashed. They danced into the outer space of "the lost Pleiades," when God thundered in the heavens and sent it in billions of flaming parts, broken shafts and splintered spars as flaming messengers to execute his high behests in the illimitable empire of space. He looked out on the extended seas of the ethereal deep, counted the stars, weighed their imponderable masses in scales and called them by name. Every sun is still shining, and every star in the vaulted chambers of creation is twinkling in its orbit and dancing and singing on its eternal lines, making schedule time. Hard by the throne of God a thousand millions of sparkling and singing worlds roll on in their awful majesty, and yet in meek submission to their awful King. On they fly, wrapping their belted splendors and burning webs of golden flame around the throne of the great "I Am"-- all but one, and that is the one called earth. "Oh, earth, earth, hear thou the word of the Lord." Who will go in search of the lost planet called earth? unite the cables, tie their broken ends and severed cords and again hitch them to the throne of God? Who among the ancient sons of God and the tallest archangels of eternity hath the arm of power to sound the infinite mains, gather the cables with hand omnipotent, and relink their broken fibres? O, ye bright sons of heaven, ye morning stars that sang together when "all the sons of God shouted for joy," can you not go and do wonders and work the works of gods in the mighty deep? Heaven stood mute, seraphs dropped their crowns, victors cast their palms, choirs hushed their voices, the Te Deum of the cycles lost its melody, and unstrung harps their euphony. Millions of towering spirits, each wrapt in the splendors of a morning sun, with uplifted wings of sheeny brightness, with eyes of flame whose focal gleam swept the orbits of a thousand suns, measured the rims of moons and traced the track of comets, stood in listening attitude but dared not move. The temple of the tabernacle in heaven was

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opened and the house of the lords of creation ceased the eloquent and profound deliberations upon the things which "the angels desired to look into." Bulls and briefs, edicts and behests, and all the wide commands of the temple court that flamed on lip and tongue, and glowed in the hearts of the tall minds and intellectual majesties of the universal metropolitan center, felt the tremor and the moving forces of the approaching crisis. The crowned and mitered sentinels who stood on the jasper walls of heaven while cycles perished and millenniums died, left their golden towers, and like burning splinters of broken suns, sweeping from the azure peripheries to the diamond centers, they joined the heavenly perturbation and stood with bated breath and uncovered heads in the great congregation. Fiery squadrons on electric steeds whose thrilling circuits quiver with the living energy of heaven, faster than flashes of lightnings, thread and ramify the illimitable "fields of light," the kingdoms, thrones, dominons, principalities, powers, heights, depths, lengths and breadths, and all the multitudes that dwell in those eternal and extended areas under the gem-studded and the arch-flaming concavity of heaven's high ceiling are summoned to the tabernacle of the great congregation. It was "a great multitude which no man could number" of all the great personalities and eternal ki