times rocky, always impressive because isolated and solitary. And there are the vast continents of the denominations; the countless valleys and modest lowlands luxuriant with the prayers and examples of Christ's obscure ones; the bubbling springs and winding rills and leaping brooks and rushing rivers rich in fertilizing charities; the many deserts of false profession, ever and anon green and fragrant with oases of Christian character and deed; the broad table-lands golden with the harvests of the Christian rich and influential; the lofty mountain-ranges radiant with sacred theologians and holy orators; the very volcanoes lurid with an Elijah and a John the Baptist, a Luther and a Moody. Even the very sands themselves have their blessed part to play. What King Canute, enthroned by the seaside, could not do, Jehovah, our God, has ever been doing.

"Will ye not fear Me, saith the Lord?

Will ye not tremble at My presence?

Who have appointed the sand as a bound to the sea,

A perpetual barrier, which it cannot pass?

Though the waters thereof toss themselves, they do not prevail,
Though they roar, they cannot pass over it."-(JEREMIAH iv. 22.)

What, then, is the lesson at this point of discourse? Simply this: Cheerfully use your own gift in the place appointed for you, and cheerfully recognize the gifts of others in the places appointed for them. Having, then, gifts differing according to the grace given us, whether prophecy, let us prophesy according to the proportion of the faith; or ministry, let us wait on our ministering; or he that teacheth, on his teaching; or he that exhorteth, on his exhortation (Rom. xii. 6–8). Ay, on earth, not less than in heaven, the Father's house hath many mansions. (John xiv. 2).

1

Our Text the Com

plement of our Last.

Thus our text is the complement of our last: The doming Heavens gave us God: the Emerging Lands give us Man. Of what use is it to evaporate into the cloud, if the cloud does not condense into the rain? That text said: Upward! This text says: Forward! And, practically speaking, the moral life blends the two directions into an ascending diagonal, soaring aslant even as does the bird. The arching sky awakens the sense of Divine Fatherhood: and so we say-Heavenly Father. The distribution of Sea and Land awakens the sense of Human Brotherhood: and so we say -Our Heavenly Father. And the higher our zenith, the broader our horizon. Here is the key to the story of St. Paul: he soared very high-therefore, he saw very far: he saw very far-therefore, he was apostle to the Gentiles. Alas, how different are most other lives: nothing but stagnant, malarial pools, without a solitary islet or even rock to relieve the dreary waste! Ah, here is Life's great battle, the Duel of the I and the Not-I. Christianity reverses the doctrine of Natural Selection, or Survival of the Fittest. Instead of crushing out the feebler, she instinctively selects. them for her special care, bestowing upon the less honorable parts of the body more abundant honor; so that our uncomely parts have more abundant comeliness (1 Cor. xii. 22-24). May God give you and me grace evermore to do to others as He evermore does to us! So shall each of us find this great fact of Individuality a boon and not a curse on that approaching Day of Judgment when every one of us must give account of himself to God.

A Summary.

This, then, is the stirring thought of the hour: Individualization for the sake of Mankind. Go forth then, brother, inspired with the majestic thought that you are a Personal Unit—a man

among men-individualized from the mass of Humanity for the sake of Humanity and Humanity's King. Yes, happy the day, let me again say it, when God says to thee: "Let the waters gather themselves to one place, and let the dry land appear." Thrice happy the day when thou obey-· est, looking upward to the opening Heavens and outward to the broadening Horizon. This, then, is the twofold lesson of the day. "Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is one Lord and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first and great Commandment. And the second is like unto it, namely this: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets" (Matt.

xii. 34-40).

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

LECTURE VII.

GENESIS OF THE PLANTS.

"And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the third day.” -GENESIS i. 11-13.

As is our wont in these studies, let us attend, first, to the Explanation of the Passage, and, secondly, to its Moral Lessons.

I. Explanation

of the Passage.

And, first, the Explanation of the Passage.

To this end, let us again stand with 1. — Panorama of the Sacred Seer on his Mount of Pano

the Emerging Plants. ramic Vision. What though the Breath of God has been moving over the face of the fluids, organizing the chaotic universe? What though the light of chemical activity has lighted up the Cimmerian Abyss? What though the sky, gliding in and arching through the fluid mass, has separated the Earth into an independent globe? What though the sea has received its bounds, and the mountains tower, and the lowlands spread, and the rivers flow? All is still a lifeless waste-no germ, no living thing exists. From pole to pole nothing is seen but

surging billows and dull-brown soil and naked adamantine rock. And now sounds again the Deific Word: "God said: 'Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit-tree yielding fruit after its kind, whose seed is in itself, above the earth.'" And, lo, it is so. On all sides spring up, as though by magic, the floating algæ, the circling lichens, the luxuriant mosses, the branching ferns, the waving grasses, the graceful palms, the kingly cedars, the iris-hued flowers. And a blessed vision it is: this grateful exchange of dull uniformity and barren nakedness for vegetable colors-for carpets of emerald, and tapestries of white and azure and crimson and orange and purple. Even the God of beauty Himself feels that it is good. And there is evening and there is morning, a Third Day. Such is the Vision of the Birth of Vegetation. And now let us dwell on it somewhat in detail.

2. The Birth of Life.

"And God said: 'Let the earth put forth shoots, sprout, germinate:' and it was so." It was the first appearance of that mysterious thing which we call Life. How shall we account for its introduction? Naturally or supernaturally? Spontaneously or executively? Atheistically or Divinely? Observe what the precise question is. I am not speaking now of transmitted life, the life by inheritance from ancestors. I am speaking of the first Life, the Life of that primal, original Plant which existed before it yielded its first seed. Whence came that original first Life? Did it originate itself, spontaneously evolving itself from blind, dead matter and force? Here is the colliding point between atheist and theist. Observe what the exact problem is. All living beings, alike plants and animals, are essentially composed of four chemical elements-carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen—combined in proportions vary