religious education. When I travelled in Italy, I found that the common people, though they would take every advantage of one in a bargain, yet, the agreement being once made, would keep to it loyally. I have heard the same thing of the Arabs. The idea of fidelity to one's engagements is often found where we least expect it. It is a sort of sheet-anchor holding the soul to truth amid the wreck of many virtues.

Fidelity in seeking for the truth, honesty in uttering it, leads to knowledge. The power of seeking for truth is what we possess, but when it gives us knowledge, that is something which we own. Life is not meant to be a perpetual seeking and never finding. We come at last, by faithfulness to the truth, to know God, duty, and immortality. There are some convictions which go down so deep into the human heart that they remain and cannot pass away.

We begin by believing in God, but we come at last to know God. That belief in God which only rests on what we have heard and been told, or on speculation and argument, is liable to be disturbed and changed. We possess it, but do not own it. But if we are faithful to that belief, and live by it, it will grow at last into knowledge. If we live as we believe, we at last know.

Jesus said, "Whosoever will do the will of God, shall know of the doctrine." We grow up by fidelity into knowledge. We do not acquire knowledge

by thinking, but by living; and if we use well the little knowledge we have, we receive more.

Consider the case of Laura Bridgman, a child blind, deaf, and dumb; shut out from the world by having all the usual avenues of thought closed. One only sense remained, that of touch. But by the genius and fidelity of her teacher this one sense became a broad highway through which light came to her soul, by which love entered in and went out, by which she found friends, amusement, joy, work, thought. By this one By this one sense of touch she came to the knowledge of God, to faith in him and in Christ, to a hope of an immortal heaven, where she will have her eyes and ears opened, and be admitted into a full vision of God's world.

Meantime, how many of us there are, to whom God has lent eyes and ears and tongue, who have not used them so as to get any real knowledge of him. We have eyes, and look on the glories of the world, on the beauty and grandeur of Nature, and do not see God in it. We have ears, and hear the music of the universe, and remain insensible to it. God speaks to us each day by the voices of affection, and our hearts remain cold and dead. Meantime, this poor woman, shut in the inner prison of a world perfectly silent and wholly dark, has come to see, and hear, and know the best truths that can be known.

It is not so much opportunity as fidelity which conducts to the greatest results. The ships with

which the Northmen discovered Iceland, Greenland, and the coast of Massachusetts were not much larger than our pilot boats. The apparatus with which Faraday made his discoveries was of the simplest sort. Ferguson became a great astronomer by lying on his back in the sheep-pastures, measuring the distances of the stars with beads strung on a thread. Thus fidelity in a little leads to knowledge of much.

This year hundreds and perhaps thousands of people will go to Europe, to Colorado, to California. They will see mountains, cathedrals, works of art, ruins; but whether they gain any knowledge out of what they see will depend not only on their opportunity, but also on their fidelity. They may see all these things as we see things in our dreams, and bring away nothing. Meantime, the person who loves truth and Nature will go out into the fields close to his house, and there find wonders and beauties sufficient for the study of a lifetime. Every little brook which creeps through the meadow is full of wonders of life. Every cloud that drifts past, has lights and shadows more tender than any artist can copy. Every sunrise in New England is more full of wonder than the pyramids, every sunset more magnificent than the Transfiguration. Why go to see the Bay of Naples, when we have not yet seen Boston harbor? Why go to the Paris Exposition, when we have close to us manufactories of all kinds, with the most curious machinery?

If you wish to see one of the greatest wonders of modern times, go some night into the cellar under one of our newspaper offices, and observe the halfreasoning printing-press throwing off its tens of thousands of copies of the journal which is to be laid on your breakfast-table in the morning. He who faithfully notices what is close at hand is the man who gains knowledge, and not he who looks for it on the other side of the world.

As with knowledge, so with love. The simple, natural affections are the steps by which we ascend to the largest love. Kindness in little things, a pleasant word when we can say it, a good-natured act when we can do it, these are conditions by which we reach large generosities. These little opportunities come and go every day; we possess them, but cannot keep them. But they may be used so as to leave behind what shall be always ours, a habit of kindness, a temper of good-will, a disposition to see and say the best we can of human kind.

The greatest soul and the largest heart that ever lived on earth had for friends some of the simplest men and women. How he loved those disciples, and loved them to the end, educating them by slow degrees to comprehend a little of his thoughts, hopes, and purposes! Yet what a gulf remained between his mind and theirs! He could not make them understand the spiritual nature of his kingdom, the probability of his death, the rising from the dead into a higher life. But still he loved them,

-the unstable, impetuous Peter, the sceptical Thomas, the fiery-hearted John; Martha, Mary, Lazarus, Mary Magdalene. He loved these undeveloped minds; for his greatness enabled him to perceive in them the capacity which no others could discover, of becoming at last his apostles, missionaries, and martyrs. The wisdom of this world would have said that those ignorant fishermen were the last persons to establish a religion for the civilized world. But he found in their present fidelity a guarantee of their future power. They were faithful in a few things, and could become rulers over many things.

And what he beheld in them, God sees in us. We, also, are weak, ignorant, full of errors, faults, and sins. We have faults of temper, faults of character; we are careless, or selfish, or forgetful of our duties. But if we are trying to be faithful, if we are beginning to do what is right, God finds in that small beginning a power which his grace will help to unfold into perfect truth and love. If we are faithful in that which is another's, he will give us that which is our own.

It has been usual for preachers to speak of the temporal things which pass away as though they were therefore worthless. But they are of infinite worth if they are the means of reaching that which shall abide. If we can change time into eternity, wealth into generosity, thought into knowledge, opportunities which are soon gone into faith, hope,