when through the scientific instruction of schools of philanthropy, such as has just been organized by the Charity Organization Society of New York City, overseers of the poor and church societies and charity organizations shall cease to pauperize citizens by supplying relief without investigation, when these and other similar reforms are adopted, and by determined, united, persistent effort all of them may be secured during the next decade,— shall we not then begin at least the golden age of charity and correction? With decreasing egoism and increasing altruism, let us unitedly strive for this ideal, and thus glorify God by promoting "peace on earth and good will to men."

Though from farthest shores of ocean we have brought the spoil,—

If the world's want and sorrow be not lessened by our gain,

If we strengthen not the weak, raise not the bowed again,
We have lived our life in vain.

"To the giver shall be given:

If thou wouldst walk in light,

Make other spirits bright.

Who seeking for himself alone ever entered heaven?
In blessing, we are blest,

In labor find our rest.

If we bend not to the world's work, heart and hand and brain,
We have lived our life in vain.

Selfishness is utter loss:

Life's most perfect joy and good,

Ah! how few have understood!

Only one hath proved it fully; and He died upon the cross,

Taking on himself the curse,

So to bless a universe.

If we follow not his footsteps, through the pathway straight and plain,

We have lived our life in vain."

Caroline Seymour.

II.

Conference Sermon,

CHARITY AND JUSTICE.

BY RIGHT REV. JOHN LANCASTER SPALDING.

The love of self is the radical passion of human nature. It is the love of life, and of that which constitutes the good of life; and it is strongest in those who are most alive, in whom the vital current is deepest and mightiest. It is the inner source of strength in high and heroic souls, whether they seek and utter themselves in word or in deed, whether they strive for fame or for power or for union with God through faith and devotion to truth and righteousness. Whatever the aim and the means, the end all men propose and follow is their own happiness, a more intense and enduring sense of their own life. Personality is enrooted in the love of self; and, the higher the person, the more completely does he identify himself with all that is other than himself. Savages, in their feeble attempts to think, consider things to be self-existent, each standing apart and independent; and hence the love of self is in them a selfish love. As they are incapable of perceiving that their relations to nature and to society are essential elements of their being, they imagine that the good of life for each one is separable from the general welfare. Hence they easily become false, cruel, treacherous, and revengeful. They lack humanity. They are the victims of instinct and impulse. They have the kind of social sense which is found in gregarious animals, but they are unable to ascend to the conception of the universal law which binds the whole race into a brotherhood. The degree in which individuals and societies rise above this separateness of childish and savage thought is a measure of the degree of their progress in religion and civilization. All advance is an ascent from the primitive and superficial self toward the true self

which is born of the union of the soul with truth, justice, and love. It is a process of self-estrangement, of self-denial, of self-abandonment. They alone enter the land of promise who quit the low and narrow house of their early thoughts and desires, and struggle with ceaseless effort and patience to reach the kingdom which is founded on the eternal principles of righteousness. They believe and know that peace, joy, and blessedness, which are the end to which the love of self points, can be attained only by those who seek and find the good of life in the service of the Father who is in heaven, and of his children who are on earth. Self-seeking is transformed into self-devotion. A little world of petty cares and sordid interests is abandoned, and the enduring world wherein alone souls are at home opens wide its portals to receive us. In isolation the individual is never great or impressive. To be so, he must identify himself with truth and justice, with beauty and love. He must feel that he lives and battles in the company of God and in that of the noble and good, in some cause which is not merely his own, but that of mankind.

He could never become man at all, were it not for the society and help of his fellows. The human child would perish at once, were it not received at birth into the arms of intelligence and love; and its prolonged infancy would issue in nothing higher than savagery, were it not fostered by beings in whom instinct has been superseded by reflection and the sense of responsibility. In Christendom the individual enters the world as the heir of all time. For him the race has suffered and groped and toiled through ages that have sunk into oblivion. For him countless generations have fashioned language- the social organ - into an instrument fitted to express all that he can feel or know. The clothes he wears, the home that shelters and makes him self-respecting, every implement he uses, every contrivance that ministers to his comfort and security, have been fashioned, in the process of unnumbered centuries, by the pains and privations, by the sufferings and deaths, of tribes and peoples to whose labors he gives no heed.

If he is born into a world where religion, science, and morality, law, order, and liberty, make it possible that he should lead a life of reverence, wisdom, and purity, should have rights and possessions which are defended by public opinion and the power of the combined strength of all, where his home is sacred, where his conscience

is respected, where opportunity for the exercise of every talent is given, he owes all this not in any way at all to himself, but to others. And, if in the midst of this world he himself is to have worth and significance, joy and peace, he must turn from himself, and seek a better self through devotion to his fellow-men, whether they be in his home or in his church or in his nation or anywhere on God's round earth. He can have no real importance unless he ally himself with truth and justice and love, the knowledge and practice of which are within his reach because he is a member of a social organism. He is not self-made: he is a product of all the forces which have been at work in the universe from the beginning. He partakes of what nature provides, and he gathers the fruits of the seeds that saints and sages and heroes have sown up and down the world from immemorial ages. He is made strong and enduring by the struggles and labors of the race to which he belongs.

For him the martyrs have died, for him the poets have sung, for him the patient, tireless investigators have revealed the secrets which have given to the mind control of the forces that lie in the heavens and in the earth. Mankind has lived for him: it is his duty to live for whomsoever he can help. His proper home is above nature in the domain of reason, in the realm of freedom, in the kingdom of righteousness, in the spiritual world where that which we communicate becomes doubly our own, where knowledge begets knowledge, where love kindles love, where charity burns the more, the more it becomes self-diffusive. A man cannot be wise or good or strong for himself alone. He is formed and confirmed by the virtues he imparts even more than by those he receives. If his heart is set on material things, he may gather them for himself, may grow hard and exclusive, ignoble and base; but, if his supreme desire is for the things of the soul, he must communicate the blessings he gains, or they will vanish. In the home, in the church, in the nation, the important thing for each one is the help he gives, the benefits he bestows. He who is not a source of faith, of courage, of joy for those about him, has no wellspring of divine life within himself. He must educate if he would be educated, he must ennoble if he would be made noble, he must diffuse religious thought and love if he would become religious.

Every worthy form of individual activity is altruistic. The money paid is never the equivalent of the work done; and whether the la