backward, and in a poor place, whose soul I know would expand in the sunshine of prosperity and fill a better place; or a woman, waiting with her unfulfilled life in her heart, willing to give it in any high, pure fashion to the Lord, if he will but come and take it; or a preacher, with a mighty power to preach somewhere in his nature, if he could only find the clew to it; or a man who has waited through his lifetime for the Lord to show him the true church, the place where he can feel that the religious heart of him is at rest; — if in these things, or in any of them, I feel I have found my place, and am doing my work, I must feel very tenderly, and judge very generously, all the waiters in all these ways; must call up this picture of the faces so wistful in the old marketplace, watching for the coming of the Lord: "Who has made me to differ, who has called me at the first hour, why do I succeed where others fail?" It is the gift of God; it is not of works, iest any man should boast. It is the difference between the seed the husbandman, for his own good rea son, will leave dark and still in the granary, and the seed he sows which can spring at once to the sun and the sweet airs of summer. It is the

difference in the home, in our conduct towards our children, when we know it is best to let one go forward in the school and keep another back: yet both decisions come out of our heart's best love, and are made through what we know, but the children do not know, of their present and future So this working and waiting lies in the will of God, and God is my Father, and this is the pre destination of my Father's love.

There is another thing in this parable we must not miss; I have touched it already, but not all it needs it is the eager wistfulness and readiness in those faces of the waiters; the sure sign that when they are called, they will be ready to go. If they had been indifferent or asleep, the Master might have passed them by; if they had not been ready also in the sense of knowing what to do, they would have had only disgrace and no penny. The two great sources of failure, when the fault lies at all in ourselves, are to be found first, in not keeping our heart and life awake to the call of God, and, second, in not knowing how to take hold when we are called. Every man and woman who has achieved a real success

in any way whatever, from the forging of a

horse-shoe to the saving of a soul, succeeded through being ready when the call came. You believe that a lucky hit, as we call it, made them what they are. I tell you, Nay; whatever has come out of the head, and heart, and hand of any man or woman, first went into it in some quick, genuine, human fashion. They builded better than they knew, but they knew they builded: John Bunyan was the pilgrim who made the Progress; George Fox quaked and trembled, it was Wesley's methods that made the Methodist; and before the slaves could be free, Garrison must be bound with them. No man or woman ever won the penny by accident. If you will be sure that the longing you feel for something better is not to end in disgrace when your call comes, you must now be gathering the ideas and aptitudes that will insure the place; keep your whole life open and ready; then when the Master comes, and says, "That is the place you are to fill, and the work you are to do," you shall find that to you, as fully as to those that were called before you, comes the full reward.

There is one thing more; it has lurked in some

of your hearts and minds all the time I have been talking. You say you can tell me of men and women who never could do what they longed to do, but only had it in them to do it, and could never get it out; men and women as noble as those I have mentioned for illustration, and as good, but lonely and unknown to the last, and they died hearing no call from the Master, but only waiting until the sun set and they went home. Yes, and I myself have known such men and women, whose lot, from the place where I stood looking at it, seemed as sad as a tragedy; and yet this was the wonder of it, that somehow they themselves were generally among the most cheerful and happy people at last under the great canopy of heaven. For one thing they generally do get a poor little show of some sort before they get through, and it does them more good than we can tell. It does not take much coin to come to a penny, but a penny to them has a wonderful worth; they feel somehow, at last, as a rule, with very few exceptions, that, taken altogether, their lines have fallen in pleasant places. And then standing there, watching and waiting, there have come to them a patience and power that seldom

come to the prosperous and happy--to those that have everything they want.

I think the most heart-whole man I ever knew, was a man who had waited and watched, breaking stones through all weathers on the cold shoulder of a Yorkshire hill, and he could hardly see the stones he had to break he waś so sand blind.. His wife was dead and all his children; his hut was open to the sky, and to the steel-cold stars in winter: but when once one said, to comfort him, "Brother, you will soon be in heaven!" he cried out in his rapture, "I have been there this ten years!" And so when at last the angel came to take him, he was not unclothed, but clothed upon; mortality was swallowed up of life.

I treasure a small drawing by Millais. It is the figure of a woman bound fast to a pillar far within tide mark. The sea is curling its tides about her feet; a ship is passing in full sail, but not heeding her or her doom; birds of prey are hovering about her, but she heeds not the birds, or the ship, or the sea; her eyes look right on, and her feet stand firm, and you see that she is looking directly into heaven, and