doves of commerce, as they move from sea to sea and from shore to shore, or rather as the pilgrims of eternity wend their way to an everlasting haven, they may never have to criminate us for culpable neglect.

CHAPTER XIII.

UNCONSCIOUS INFLUENCE.

"Is it Christ's light is too divine,

We dare not hope like Him to shine?

But see, around his dazzling shrine,

Earth's gems the fire of heaven have caught."

"Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house.”MATT. v. 14, 15.

EVERY figure used to describe a Christian is essentially aggressive. It teaches us that no man is a Christian in order to enjoy a monopoly of blessing for himself. Being made a Christian, his very first function is to go forth and Christianize others. Some talk of proselytism as a sin, and denounce it even as a crime. Proselytism to a sect is most obnoxious, proselytism to the truths of the gospel is the duty of every man that knows them. Some persons play upon words, and do not distinguish things that differ. They make you suppose by their remarks that your first and primary duty, to bless others by having been blessed yourself, is a sin, a crime, a scandal. Every figure used to describe a Christian indicates his duty to Christianize. "Ye are the salt of the earth." What is the nature of salt? To give

savor to the substance with which it is mixed, or in contact, and to preserve that substance, if needs be, from corruption. An idea involved in salt is something transmissive of virtue; and if you, therefore, are the salt of the world, your part of the world will be touched by the savor of what you are, and so be benefited and blessed. Ye are the "light of the world." A lamp is lighted for diffusing light; and if it do not diffuse light, it is because it is not light. A man who is not a missionary, is not a Christian; he that does not seek to promote what he has, feels in his conscience he has nothing worth promoting. You may have a choice of these two figures. Some would prefer to be the lights of the world; to illuminate with a visible splendor that men can admire, rather than to act as the silent, hidden salt of the world, that penetrates the mass, and is not seen, but felt. But one or other you must be, except you choose to be what a Napoleon and an Alexander preferred-not the silent, penetrating salt, not the quiet and beautiful light, but the rending and crashing lightning, that blasts the world, not blesses it and does it good.

From the expression, "Ye are the light of the world," we learn how truly catholic Christianity is. The church that boasts emphatically to be catholic is the most sectarian of all, for she believes there is no Christianity without her own pale. That is sectarianism. The really catholic Church believes there are Christians everywhere, whom she hails as such. She can forgive ritual peculiarities because of the living religion that underlies them. This religion was meant to be universal. "Ye are the lights," not of a country, nor of a century, nor of an age, but of the wide world. You are to be satisfied with nothing less than the world for your sphere, and no fewer than all mankind for your brethren in Christ Jesus. Christianity, it is true, was once restricted to a few, but it was then in its infancy; as soon

as it was grown enough to be exhibited to all, the conviction of a few became the creed of mighty and powerful nations and now wherever the prince of the power of the air has left his footprint behind him, wherever sin has tainted the earth with its poison and its trail, wherever the human mind is in darkness, the human heart depraved, the human will in chains, the human soul without a Saviour, there, irrespective of caste, of clime, of color, the angel of the everlasting gospel goes and preaches the opening of the prison doors to them that are bound, sight to the blind, freedom to the slave, and blessings high as heaven and wide as the universe to all that wait and are willing to accept them.

But in looking at the world let us not dissipate by any excessive generalization, if I may use such an expression, our own daily duties. Some men are so charmed with the magnificent that they have no time to attend to the minute. Some who are splendid advocates in parliament for liberty to all, are the greatest tyrants in their own homes. Some who are every thing benevolent abroad, seem to have so expended their stores upon all mankind that they have not one flash of sunshine for their own firesides. We are very

apt so to think of the grand, that we overlook the instant, and the more practical and personally minute. "Ye are the lights of the world." Your world is your shop, your warehouse, your counting-house, the parliament, whatever place God in his providence has placed you in, that is to you for all practical purposes your world: and before you feel such an absorbing interest in the enlightening of the wide world, just see if you have put your light under a bushel in that little world in which for six days of the week from morning to evening you must move. "Ye are the lights of the world." We are not answerable for the sphere we are in: we are only responsible for letting our light shine in it. If

God has made you rich, powerful, illustrious, great, that is his sovereign act; over that you have no control. Your personal duty is to do well the work that is assigned you, in the sphere in which God in his providence has placed you; never to dream that what you want in order to do better is to get a larger sphere. Many people make excuses to themselves for not doing better in the little sphere in which they are, by saying, Ah, if I were only in such a sphere you would see how I would shine. Now if you do not shine in a cellar, depend upon it you would not shine in a palace; if you do not shine in the shop, depend upon it you would not shine if you had the command of her Majesty's fleet. Your duty as light is to irradiate the sphere you are in; and when you have done that well, God, who placed you there, and sees you are able to fill a higher, will say, "Come up higher."

This very thought, that "we are the lights of the world," whatever that world may be to us, implies that we are constantly in that sphere to keep and to carry our Christianity with us. You are never to merge the Christian in the tradesman, but always to unite the tradesman to the Christian. You are not to merge the Christian in the member of parliament, but always to remember that the Christian is to govern the senator, not the senator to govern the Christian. Christianity is not a religion confined to consecrated tiles, and holy places, and holy days, but a religion that treads with as beautiful a foot life's lowliest floor as it walks in grand procession in ne noblest cathedral of Europe. Our religion is not a beautiful robe that we must lay carefully aside upon Sunday night, lest it should be rumpled by the rough wear and tear of the weekday; it is a religion that we are to carry with all the splendor of its first kindling into life's highest, and life's lowest, and life's universal places, knowing it is fit to sanctify all, and make us shine as