dream? We shall tug at the load all our lives long,

that we know, when we stop to think,- and fall in the traces at last. So that it is with a little reluctance that we come back and take upon ourselves the burdens and responsibilities of what we by contrast are accustomed to think of as our artificial, our conventional life.

And the question indeed crosses our minds at times as to whether it may not be possible for us to lead a natural life the year round. I think, friends, that, if we only would, we might come a little nearer to it than we do. We should miss some things; we should lose some things. We should have to make up our minds to consent to be thought a little odd that is, a little unconventional-by our neighbors. We should lose certain social successes, perhaps, certain social triumphs that now we gain; that is, we should have to forego making somebody else sick with envy because we had distanced them in some social contest; for that is about what these social contests amount to, after all, when you analyze them carefully and look them clearly through. We should have to make up our minds to consent to get along through life with a smaller amount of money beyond that which we really need than contents us now. Some of the most pitiful part of the struggle of human life, to my mind, is not the work of the common day-laborer who is earning a fair living and is content; but something very pitiful to me it is to see a man with five hundred thousand dollars who is wearing his soul out, starving his brain, neglecting the highest opportunities of his manhood, hardening his heart, making his friends uncomfortable, turning away unhelped the calls of charity that the world is always sending up into the ears of the pitiful, and all for the sake of making his five hundred thousand dollars into a million. This, to my mind, is one of the most pitiful exchanges I observe as I look over the world. If we were willing to live the manly, womanly life in the highest sense, learn to think and to feel and to concentrate our lives on these things which in the highest and noblest sense are human, then we could lead the natural life

in the truest and noblest sense of that word, not only for a few brief, bright days which we remember like a gleam of sunshine through the darkness all the rest of the year, but we might lead it every day and every week from January round to January again.

But, leaving the matter with so much discussion on this lower plane, let us turn to ask the question which concerns itself intimately with all that we call progress,- the result of human struggle, human endeavor, human accumulation, human effort in every direction. What is a natural life? What ought we to mean by nature? How ought we to gauge that which is natural to a man? We sometimes speak of the human race or of man as in a state of nature. What do we mean? Where do we draw the line of distinction between the natural and the artificial? If we draw it accurately with

scientific care, it will be about here: The natural in the ordinary sense of that word is that which occurs without the intervention of thought or purpose on the part of man. The artificial, the result of art, is that which has been brought to pass as the result of human forethought or purpose or plan. In that sense, no living man ever saw the world in a state of nature, ever saw a human being in a state of nature, nor ever will. For the first time that a man-like animal perhaps the first being that could be called a man tore off a limb from a tree to use as a walking-stick or as a club, at that minute began the work of art, something above and beyond the mere operation of natural forces. So that all that has been wrought from the beginning of the world until to-day, in lifting up mankind, in developing higher civilization, is the result of art,—is artificial, in other words. The only natural dwelling for man is a cave; and the moment that he changes the structure of that cave in the slightest degree to add to its convenience, that moment art steps in and nature is behind it. So our clothing, everything that distinguishes the civilized man from the wildest conceivable barbarism, all the architecture of the world, all the music, all the poetry, all the literature, all the highest ethical ideas, all the noblest

religion, even such common things as human speech, the power of writing, communicating ideas,- all that makes man manly, that lifts humanity above the brute,- is artificial, has been wrought out and added to that which nature furnished the human race as the raw material of life.

The poet Cowper, as we are accustomed to pronounce it, -I notice the English always say Cooper,— in his famous poem called "The Task," has written the verse which has been quoted over and over again as though it deserved it, that

"God made the country, and man made the town,"

the idea being that, the moment you escape from the city, from the village, into the wide field and under the open sky, you are, in some true, high sense, nearer God than you are in cities. Friends, I have never in my life heard this phrase quoted without, if it were proper to do so, most earnestly contradicting it. I do not believe a word as to the thought which it is intended to convey. If I am able to invent a machine which itself shall automatically produce some wonderful result, am I not the creator of that result as well as of the machine or of the raw material out of which it is created? If man made the town, who made man? And who so constituted him that, as the result of the highest thought, the highest life, the noblest effort, he should create the town? I think that, if we do not find God and a natural life of a higher order and grade than any we ever find in the country, in the city, then it is not because the natural life, the divine life, is confined to the country, but because we have false conceptions,- lack eyes to see, ears to hear, and hearts to understand God.

Look at the city for a moment, and see what it means. A city is the accumulation of all that human civilization up to the present time has been able to achieve, its concentration at some one point, some active centre of life and thought. I wonder if we ever notice as bearing on this and it will illustrate the point I have in mind perhaps as

well as anything I can think of the significance of the words " pagan " and "heathen." They tell the story I have in mind. A pagan is simply a man who lives in a village. A heathen is a man who lives out on the heath. How did it happen that, as Christianity conquered the Roman Empire, those who clung to the old and lower type of religious life came to be nicknamed pagan and heathen, until to-day we apply them indiscriminately to all those that we think of as outside the pale of true religion? It means simply that Christianity, like all new, higher, finer thought, found its first echo and opportunity in the great centres of human life, where people are active, where thought flows freely, where a new idea can first get a hearing, where a new reform can first find followers, where the grandest things are most keenly appreciated, where newest improvements are most readily adopted. Christianity was founded in Jerusalem, in Antioch, in Rome, in the great, live, earnest cities first; and, after a hundred or two hundred or three hundred years, the more sluggish life of the village still clung to the ancient thought, and the man away out on the heath had either not heard of it or entirely disregarded it. So that it is the villager and the heath-man who are centuries behind the cities, the new ideas, the new life.

Contrary to the common idea, the city is not only the centre of new thought, the place where all the grandest ideas are first appreciated,- but it is, other things being equal, always the healthiest place to live. Other things being equal, the city is healthier than the country, take the year round.

The city is the manifestation of the highest, the best, the noblest, as well as the lowest and the meanest, that belongs to human nature. Naturally, both flow to these great centres as their mart, as the brooks run into the sea. But you must not only think that the dregs, the scum, the refuse of the city are a manifestation of human nature: you must think that the highest and the noblest and the best are equally manifestations of human nature. I pity that man

who can live in a city like ours of Boston without being proud of his city. I pity him who can ignore the human associations, the historic side of things, and see only immense warehouses and magnificent railway centres.

People sometimes say, What is there about Europe that is so much more interesting than anything we have in this country? Nothing except the humanity and the past. have never seen a river more beautiful than the Hudson. From what is told me of it, though I have not seen it, I doubt if there is in the world a lake more beautiful than Lake George. What is it, then, about the Rhine, what is it about the Italian lakes? It is a thousand years, two thousand years, expressed in ruins, in castles, in historic spots of every kind. It is humanity, with its legend and its story, its comedy and its tragedy, all that is highest and best of human nature, that is in the very air you breathe, and that comes to you like an echo on every wind.

So why should we be proud of Boston as we could not be, for example, of Chicago? Chicago may beat us at every point as a business centre, but I pity a man who can go into the Old South Church or Faneuil Hall and not see the invisible forms and hear the words that have been spoken, though now it be silent. I pity the man who walks these old streets and does not see and converse with the Mathers, the Winthrops, the Warrens, the Adamses, Sumner, Phillips, Channing, Theodore Parker, all the great and noble who live as you and I do not live, more real as shadows than we as flesh and blood, and who make the spiritual life and have made the high civilization of our city, and have made this high civilization natural to men who have climbed high enough to comprehend it. I will yield to no man living in love for mountain or tree or brook or sea, or any aspect of country life; but I love this old town of Boston, so that when I come back to it I could fairly kiss its bricks and stones, love it for the spirit, the life, the associations on every hand. And these,- and this is the point I am bringing you to,- these all are artificial, in a sense conven