time. But he taught his disciples-not only those who were about him, but all those who shall learn of him until the end of time—that there is a sublime faith in God, a consciousness of God's presence so sweet and comforting that it takes out the bitterness of sacrifice and gives it a song instead. One of the sublime characteristics of our Christianity is that it teaches us the joy and the happiness of sacrifice. We are likely to think of sacrifice as a sorrowful and grievous experience, and so it is unless there is some great and noble purpose in it which transforms the act and makes it a glad and happy deed. How much the mother sacrifices for her child, her little babe, that cannot give back anything in return for the wealth of love and anxiety and care which she pours out upon it. But if she be a true mother you would not talk to her about the agony of the self-sacrifice which she makes for her child, for there is a joy about it that is deeper and sweeter and nobler than any joy she has even known. And so it is with the Christian. The devil twits a man about the Lord asking him to sacrifice evil desires and sinful pleasures in order to be a Christian; taunts him with the sacrifice of time and money and devotion to Christ and his service. But it is all the devil's falsehood, for there is no bitterness in it. Give your heart to God; surrender your soul to Jesus Christ; give yourself up in love to him, and in the midst of your sacrifice you will catch a song in your heart that will give you a little touch of the sublime glow of heavenly enthusiasm which must have been in the heart of Jesus when he sung that last hymn with his disciples.

This is also a war song. Jesus Christ came to be the Captain of our salvation. He is the leader of the hosts of righteousness in the earth, and we can imagine the soldier spirit flashing in his eye and inspiring his heart as he sang:

"The voice of rejoicing and salvation is in the tents of the righteous; The right hand of the Lord doeth valiantly.

The right hand of the Lord is exalted:

The right hand of the Lord doeth valiantly."

Christ went to the greatest battle-field the moral world has ever seen, or ever will see, with a song of courage and victory on his lips. And it is in that spirit that the Christian church has won her great triumphs. Christ went forward into the battle brave and strong. with unfaltering courage, because he knew that he did not go alone. The right hand of God was with him, and that makes men courageous and brave everywhere. Men get cowardly when they know they are in the wrong. Make a man know that God is with him, and he

does not cower before anything. Some people hesitate about becoming Christians lest the battle shall be too hard for them. They say, "I never could bear the trials some people stand. Such awful struggles come to some men and women who are Christians, that I am sure I should be disgraced and overwhelmed." But, my friend, remember that God does not ask you to go alone through the hard battles of human life. He will go with you. And the dear Christ who said to his disciples, "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world," will not fail you when the battle is thickest and the struggle is heaviest. There shall come no place so dark or so lonely but that Christ will be as near as he was when he came to the disciples in the storm, saying: "Lo, it is I, be not afraid."

The Christian is the only man in the world who can meet the struggles of life with a song. There is a vast difference between the soldier who goes into battle because he has been drafted and must go, or because he has been hired to fight for so much money, and the soldier who goes because of loyalty to his country, because of love for his flag, because of devotion to liberty, and goes with a song of inspiration and courage on his lips. It is the privilege of the Christian to go into the hardest battles of life with a heart full of love for Christ, with devotion to the good of his fellowmen, and with the assurance that God is with him and will bring him off more than conqueror. I call you to this victorious life. I call you to fight under a banner that has more splendid war songs than any other cause

that has ever been known.

About the close of the war some Confederate officers were once listening to some Union officers singing the songs that were most popular in the camps of the Northern army during the Civil War. After the singing had gone on for some time, one of the Confederate officers said, "If we had had your songs we could have defeated you. You won the victory because you had the best songs." However that may be,I am sure that no cause since the world began— nor, indeed, all other causes since the world began-has inspired so many noble hymns of praise and love and courage as has Christianity. How its old war songs fill the earth with their music! You have only to recall a few of them to remind you that their name is beyond number. "Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me," "Jesus, Lover of My Soul," "O Happy Day, That Fixed My Choice," "All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name," "Am I a Soldier of the Cross?" and so on, and on, I might quote for an hour, the titles of hymns that have stirred the hearts of men in the struggle against sin and in the upward march toward heaven.

This song of Jesus was a song of immortality. What meaning there must have been in it for him as he led that old temple chant on Passover night, and came to the words,

As Jesus sang these triumphant notes the resurrection morn must have been in his mind, and the glory of that first Easter day must have filled his soul with a sense of victory. And Christ hath bequeathed unto us that song of immortality. Every Christian may sing with confidence, "I shall not die, but live." Thank God, Christians die well. This is because death hath lost its sting to them. The fear of death is gone, since through Jesus Christ it has become a defeated enemy. What a difference between the pilgrims who go with Christian songs on their lips on the march toward heaven, and those poor pilgrims in heathen lands who go on their long and painful journeys to some earthly shrine, where they hope to find forgiveness. Sometimes men and women set out from some far-off corner of India to make a pilgrimage to Mecca; and as they continue week after week and month after month, they become travelstained, and sick, and impoverished, until at last, if they live to reach Mecca, they come in poor, battered, bruised wretches, like some ship that has been long at sea and savagely used by winds and breakers until, with masts and sails gone, it drifts into the harbor a dismantled wreck. Thank God, the Christian pilgrims never come home like that. God has promised that they shall be like the palm tree; that they shall continue to bear fruit in old age, and shall be fat and flourishing to the last. He has promised that the path shall get brighter and brighter unto the perfect day. And ever and anon we see them, white-haired men and women, who gave their hearts to God in childhood, who enlisted under the banner of Jesus in their youth, and who through all the years have been marching toward the heavenly city, and have found the words of God true when he declares: "And an highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called the way of holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it; but it shall be for

those the wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein. No lion shall be there, nor any ravenous beast shall go up thereon, it shall not be found there; but the redeemed shall walk there: and the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads: they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.'

I call you to this singing religion. It is the only life which has songs for all seasons and for all weather. The world has songs for youth and success and power and fame, but it has no songs for sickness and defeat and old age and death. A little while ago, when the most nortorious infidel of this century lay dead in his home on the shores of the Hudson, the telegraph which bore the message to the ends of the earth, when telling of the kind of funeral service that would be held over the body, said: "There will be no singing." Of course not; there are no songs for dead infidelity. But, thank God, there are songs for the Christian in his dying, songs as joyous and splendid as in his living.

A HEART AT FLOOD-TIDE.

"He did it with all his heart, and prospered." II Chronicles 31:21.

It is the heart that counts. More people fail for lack of heart than for lack of head. Service rendered either to man or God is measured by the amount of heart there is in it. The service may seem very small, but if there is the full blood of the heart's devotion behind it the act is glorified by the motive.

A soldier who was in Cuba with General Leonard Wood during the siege of Santiago has many stories of the kindness of heart displayed by the General. One day he saw Wood pick up a little Cuban not more than seven years old, who tried to reach the American camp to get something to eat and had fallen by the way from sheer weakness. General Wood gathered the little bundle of Cuban bones up in his arms and carried him to headquarters and nursed him better than his own mother would. After the little fellow had been fed he was sent home with a quantity of provisions. But after the surrender, when the American troops marched into Santiago, there was that little Cuban boy, with nothing on but a pocket handkerchief, holding in his hand something closely wrapped up in an old rag he had found somewhere. He caught the General's eye and

succeeded in presenting his gift to him. It proved to be a little yellow chicken about a week old. It was the dearest treasure the little Cuban had on earth, and he brought it as a gift to the man whose kindness had saved his life. I don't wonder that the soldier who tells the story says General Wood was greatly moved, and received the little gift most tenderly, had it sent back to America, and seemed to think more of it than of any military honors he has won.

Hezekiah, the king about whom our text is written, was a man of heart. Solomon had more of head than Hezekiah, but the latter had a larger and truer heart. And the record says of him that in every work which he began in the house of the Lord, and in the law -in politics as well as religion, in business as well as in private life— he did it with all his heart. And God gave him prosperity as a result. A king might have found excuse for not rendering a wholehearted service to God and giving regular attendance on religious worship on the ground of being too busy with the affairs of state. Often if a man is elected to be a city councilman, or a justice of the peace, he gets too busy to go to church because of the great strain put on his time and attention by public affairs; but here was the king of a great people, who did not try to find excuses to justify himself in staying away from church, but gave himself up to it in the most whole-hearted way. Our religion ought to be first in our attention. How it must grieve the heart of Jesus to see the men and women who profess to be his friends and disciples give to business and politics and society and every other interest a hearing before they cast the fag-end of their time to him. Some one writing recently has made a parable which illustrates this.

A conscientious gentleman importuned a noble and splendid friend of his to come and visit him as his guest and counsellor. He repeated this invitation again and again. The burden of his constant appeal was, "Come! Come! Come and abide with me."

The guest finally came, but only to find his host completely immersed in business. He apologized for taking time for only a few hurried words with his guest after breakfast, and then ran for the car with his newspaper in his hand and was gone for the forenoon.

"But I shall have a chance to be alone with him at the noon hour," said the guest, "and it will not then be too late to counsel with him concerning part of the day.

But when noon came, the gentleman snatched only a few moments for a hasty lunch, and with apologies tore himself away from his disappointed guest, and buried himself in business.