human one, and not only will he do more for them than the walking delegate or the academic reformer, but, even though he fail in many things, the good which he attempts shall build him up by steady increments into the stature of a manhood which counts for more by the true standard of success than millions in the funds.

It is so with those who go abroad, and it is not otherwise with those who stay at home, for those whose business is the daily household and domestic care. These have material to work with in comparison with which the finest of Carrara marble is but dull and coarse, the notation of the musical composer narrow in its range, the words with which the poet and the writer work their spells but poor and perishable things. A mother's dream of what her child may be is more than Shakspere's dream of what his Desdemona or Cordelia may become. But, if the material in which the mother works is more rare and subtile than the sculptor's, the musician's, or the poet's, it is often, too, less tractable than theirs. Yet, as the mother prays for her child's growth in every excellence and grace,—and what is true of the mother is equally true of the father, the fashion of her mind and heart and soul is altered, is transfigured. It becomes a different, larger, fuller, deeper soul.

"She means him well so earnestly,

Unchanged in changing mood,
Her life would go without a sigh

To bring him something good."

But, if she does not bring the good to him, she brings it to herself. No one can cherish an ideal and devote himself to its realization from year to year, and strive and struggle and make sacrifices for its attainment, without undergoing a certain gracious transformation, of which the highest powers must be aware and men can hardly miss.

Turn any way we will, this law of spiritual transformation through constancy to an ideal has ample illustration. The greatest figure in all history, that of the mighty Nazarene,

furnishes his quota to the full amount. His personal ideal was that of the Messiah, the prophet and redeemer of his people. The criticism of Dr. Martineau has endeavored to relieve him of this imputation; and we might well be grateful to him, if, to cherish that ideal, Jesus had been obliged to cherish it in the popular way, in any one of the many popular ways that were pressed on his acceptance by the eager and impassioned time. But the Messianic ideal that he cherished was not the popular ideal, but his own personal ideal, as every prophet's had been before his day; and, therefore, I for one am glad that a more searching criticism than Dr. Martineau's permits us still to think of Jesus as cherishing the Messianic ideal and consciously realizing that ideal in his own personality. How could it be otherwise? With that great hope in the community and with that great aspiration in his heart, how could the two but marry? and how could their offspring be anything but the Messianic consciousness of Jesus? Lifting himself to the high level of his ever-greatening ideal of what that one would be who should redeem Israel, he rose into that stature which commands the centuries with the majesty of his great compassion and his perfect trust. And what that ideal did for him, his constancy conspiring with its exalted grace, he in his turn has done for thousands of his brother men. He has been their ideal of trust, of inwardness, of pure compassion for the most base and ruined lives. Beholding as in a glass his glory, they have been changed into the same image from glory to glory. "Beholding as in a glass!" In that striking phrase the great apostle builded better than he knew. For the ideal which in all ages, since he came, men have called "Christ" and "Jesus," has been very largely the reflection of their personal ideal of holiness and truth and love. They make the same tender and beautiful mistake that he made when he abandoned himself to what he conceived to be an objective Messianic ideal, which was in reality his own subjective ideal projected upon his imagination's radiant screen. But, as that lifted him into its height,

so the ideal which has for centuries borne his name has lifted millions into a region of more consecrated thought and will.

Happy are they who find their loftiest ideals embodied in the living substance of some man or woman who is transfigured for them in the golden light of love. The story that has touched me more than any other I have heard for a long time is that of the blessed girl who, when Dr. Lyman Abbott asked her, "Do you want to be like Christ?" made answer, “I want to be like my mother." O happy mother, to deserve that crown of praise! and happy child, with her ideal incarnate in warm breathing flesh beside her in the love-light of her home! But, however the ideal is made manifest, and by whatever name it is called,- father, mother, sister, brother, friend, lover, Jesus, Mary, Buddha, Brahma, God, let us be glad that its compelling beauty ever rises on our hearts, ever soliciting our loyalty; and that, if we are not disobedient to the heavenly vision, some ray of it will be each day inwoven in the texture of our lives, to be a part of them forever.

"More than clouds of purple trail
In the gold of setting day,
More than gleams of wing or sail
Beckon from the sea-mist gray.

"Glimpses of immortal youth,

Gleams and glories seen and flown,
Far-heard voices sweet with truth,

Airs from viewless Eden blown.

UNITARIAN ADVANTAGES AND
OBLIGATIONS.

I HAVE come to you this morning purposing to remind you' once again of the advantages which you enjoy and the obligations that are laid upon you through your connection with the body of people called Unitarians. It is as clear as possible that such advantages as appertain to various other Christian bodies of a quite different constitution and numerical strength do not come within the range of our position. The vast and splendid, if sometimes tarnished, tradition of the Roman Catholic Church is not for us, nor its immense political influence, from which, apparently, nothing has been abated by the declension of the temporal power of the papacy. Witness the manner in which it is crushing into serviceable shape the French Republic, with which only a few years ago it made a hollow truce. Not for us, either, are the imposing ritual of the Episcopal Church and its thriving business of putting the newest wine into bottles gray with the dust and cobwebs of a venerable antiquity. Equally unavailable for us are such advantages as are not separable from the magnificent and efficient organization of the Presbyterian Church, or that of the Methodist,― an ecclesiasticism as arbitrary and intolerant as that of Rome herself, and as paralyzing to individual initiative of any kind. And, though the perfect independency of our congregational methods answers as face to face in water to that of the great Baptist conglomeration of parochial autonomies, the mass of that conglomeration is antipodal to our numerical weakness; and utterly impossible for us is the effectiveness with which that mass is brought to bear upon the individual, to crowd him