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Charles I-beware the wrath of the people! Mary, Queen of Scots-beware the voice of your lovers! Henry VIII-beware the tyranny of your passions! Daniel Webster-beware the hour of compromise! Francis Bacon-beware the price of honour! Lord Byron-beware the tempests of thy soul! Oh, for a voice! "Remember March, the Ides of March. Remember !" And beware!

Robert Browning

I. Beware the hour of defeat. waited twenty long years for literary recognition. A famous London editor had reviewed Browning's first great poem and written across the volume these stinging words: "Froth, foam, nonsense, trash, balderdash !" And for twenty years the world believed the lie. But the hour of triumph, though long delayed, arrived at last. That was a brief but pregnant tribute which Bishop Quayle recently paid to the memory of William the Silent: "He was never defeated by defeat."

2. Beware the hour of discouragement!-that hour of gloom when the heavens are black with clouds. The ministry of John Hall ended in apparent failure. The tide of popularity began to recede. He could find no reasonable explanation for the strange turn in events. Empty pews looked him in the face Sabbath after Sabbath. His heart failed him and he went home to his native hearth to die. The Irish physician who was called in to see the dying preacher, all unconscious of the depressing circumstances of the closing years of his ministry in New York, thus explained the case: "This man is dying of

what we call here (in Ireland) the weary heart-the tired heart." Alas, how many are dying of the weary heart. Gradual, down-grade discouragement breaks more hearts than sudden failure or unlooked-for disaster. Oh, Master, help me to preach to the discouraged!

At Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, I found a sick and discouraged preacher. The bare floors of his poorly equipped home seemed colder than a cathedral aisle. He lifted his skeleton form from the ragged couch on which he lay, and with an expression never to be forgotten, he said in sobbing syllables: "I worked hard, I preached hard, I prayed hard, I pled hard, and now my children are hungry, my wife clad in rags, and I am left alone." Poor soul! He knew not what Providence was preparing for him. The clouds had descended. There was not a star in his sky.

Life is a voyage. We are sailing on an unknown sea. The clouds are temporary. The sun is eternal. You are never so near God as when you are lonely. It was a broken-hearted priest, afloat on a great sea, and hindered by absent breezes, a priest homesick and weary, who wrote:

"Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom;

Lead Thou me on.

The night is dark, and I am far from home;

Lead Thou me on.

Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see

The distant scene; one step enough for me."

Henry Ward Beecher never preached with such heart-power as in the hour of his great trial. When men were asking: "Is he innocent ?" "Is he guilty ?"

"Is he true?"

"Is he sincere?"-in that hour the flood-gates of his soul were unlocked and a great, broken-hearted child of nature wept over a brokenhearted world. The auditors who were swept by his sobbing eloquence rendered their own silent verdict and the deepening conviction of the passing years has confirmed it.

3. Beware the hour of Destiny! Let it not pass without a noble decision. Thomas Carlyle was boarding in Edinburgh and dreaming of a literary career when, to use his own words: "All at once there arose a thought within me, saying, 'What art thou afraid of?'" And then he adds: "From that moment I began to be a man." A noble decision is a glittering jewel set in the golden ring of destiny.

When Mary, Queen of Scots, had decided to go to England and fling herself on the mercy of Queen Elizabeth, the Archbishop of St. Andrews followed her to the middle of the stream dividing the two kingdoms, and holding her horse by the bridle, said, in wooing tones: "Come back! Come back! Come back!" That was an hour of destiny for Queen Mary-beautiful, wayward, fascinating, willful, impulsive and misguided child of fate. An evil decision is like an ink-stain on the printed surface of a beautiful volume which sinks in like a black shadow and finds its grave in a hundred blackened pages.

Oh, hesitating soul, decide! Imitate the noble action of Admiral Foote when, walking the deck of his vessel on a dark and starless night, he suddenly exclaimed: "Henceforth I live for God!"

X

THE LAW OF THE UNSEEN

The Possibility of Communication With the Spirits of Loved Ones Who Have Passed On

W

HAT a wonderful age is ours! Almost everything that we have wished for, hoped for, or imagined, has happened, or is happening-wonders of the telescope; wonders of the microscope; wonders of the spectroscope; wonders of electricity; wonders of radium; wonders of discovery; wonders of invention; wonderful conquest of land, sea and air.

Edison, that modern magician, who, had he lived three hundred years ago, would certainly have been regarded as a wizard, affirms that in ten years airships will be carrying passengers across the ocean and over the sea at a speed of two hundred miles an hour. Scientists tell us that wood can be melted and poured into any mould like liquid gold. Perpetual motion is almost within our reach. A radium electroscope has been invented which works automatically and can be trusted to keep a bell ringing -ringing-ringing-for thirty thousand years. So

be it!

In our modern inventions and investigations we are verging upon the mysteries and powers of the

unseen world. We have made two great discoveries. First, we have discovered that man is a spirit, and second, we have discovered that we are living in a spiritual universe.

Man is a spirit. There is a natural body and there is a spiritual body. The spiritual body is the cause and the natural body is the effect. The eye cannot see, the ear cannot hear, the brain cannot think, the hand cannot handle, the body cannot move. All these organs but register and reflect the will and desires of an unseen personality. Tolstoy has congested the whole thing in a nutshell when he says: "It is necessary to have a soul."

We are living in a spiritual universe. Whatever is, is double. Behind every material thing there is a spiritual force. Matter is spirit in its lowest and slowest manifestation. Everything which exists is the manifestation of an unseen energy. Yonder giant oak of the forest, cut down and cast into the furnace, will leave only a handful of ashes. All else was sunshine, moisture, air, spirit, soul, and life. The fire liberated the spiritual elements, but they still exist.

The world will eventually be ruled by spiritual forces. The great discoveries of the future will be in the spiritual realm. The last achievement of science will be the conquest of spiritual elements. In the comprehension of the laws which govern unseen forces will be found the solution of all the problems which confront the intellect and puzzle the spirit.

Fifty thousand persons die for every hour of the

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