THE CHOIR INVISIBLE AND OTHER SERMONS BY JOHN WHITE CHADWICK MINISTER OF THE SECOND UNITARIAN SOCIETY IN BROOKLYN, N. Y. TWENTY-THIRD AND TWENTY-FOURTH SERIES BOSTON GEO. H. ELLIS, 272 CONGRESS STREET 1899 THE CHOIR INVISIBLE We have a poem and a novel with this title. Why not a sermon, too? The poem is a great one, one of the greatest. The novel? It is more than tolerably good. The sermon? "Measure not the work Till the day's out and the labor done, I have no criticism to offer on Mr. Ailen's novel or George Eliot's poem. Hers is the choir invisible of those immortal dead who live again in lives made better by their former living in this hot and dusty world. Mine is the choir invisible of those who, while they are yet alive, do the same work as her immortal dead, and do it generally in a more effective way than they, because they are alive and here. What I . am bent upon is to celebrate the quiet side of life, the silent forces of the world, the men and women who without noise or shouting, without repute or fame, contribute something, much, to the sum total of the world's work, the common good, "The bravely dumb who do their deed, In the world below man there are hints and prophecies of what is true of man's estate. How silent for the most part are the processes whereby the earth yields her increase and sustains the wasting heart of man! The tempests and tornadoes have their place and part in the economy of nature, and, roughly as they handle him, are, no doubt, the farmer's great allies; and yet not such allies as are the habit |