ing after lost peace, of souls radiant with new joy, of Sabbaths when heaven came down to earth, of many an evening when prayer opened the golden gates and the King of Glory came in; there are prayers, unspoken solicitudes and hopes for this church and its future, for every household where I have gone in and out, for these children of my ministry who have known no other pastor, for aged and reverend heads whose last hours I might have hoped to soothe, for the brotherhood of churches, and for this city and State where I have found a catholic and generous friendliness, and in whose interests and honor I have a public pride: but there is time and call for only one last word, and let it be this one of benediction as well as farewell. It is the joy of this otherwise painful hour that you have no distraction on my account; that for fifteen years, whatever has come and whatever has failed, there has always been peace; that we part, so far as I know, with no single alienation of heart on either side; that you and I bow to what seems the ordination of Providence, with acquiescence and mutual goodwill. Fifteen years and more ago I thought I heard a voice calling me here, and I came, trembling yet trustful. And now I seem to hear the same voice calling me away. It calls me to a new work, and yet in the same Church and kingdom of Christ to which the twenty-seven years of my ministry have been given. Shall I not carry into it your sympathies and hopes and the great help of your prayers? As for you, you are still strong, and greatly blessed of God, if you will believe it, and need suffer no fears, nor yield to any unchristian distrusts about your future. You are built upon a good foundation. Be earnest, and yet be generous. Stand fast and yet go forward. Let no adoration of the past cheat you out of your inheritance in the future. Cultivate all your gifts, and charity, greatest and most excellent of all. Dismiss all jealousies, as if there were room in the Church of God for youth and age,

for all gifts and callings, for everybody who has the spirit of Christ. Let no one say, I am for Paul, and another, I am for Apollos. Be all for Christ.

Finally, brethren, farewell. Be perfect. Be of good comfort. Be of one mind. Live in peace. And the God of love and peace shall be with you.

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost be with you all. Amen.

THE OVERFLOWING CUP.1

"My cup runneth over."- PSALM Xxiii. 5.

It is not his heart overflowing with emotion, with grateful love, that the Psalmist is speaking of, though that, indeed, is a cup full and running over. For he is thinking of his life and lot, how full of happiness it is, of the great generosity of God in it. For it is not of his own making, or finding even. The Eternal Shepherd of life orders it, blesses it, fills it, nay, overfills it with good. This is just the idea of the text, of a surplus, an overflow of blessing. This is the keynote of the psalm, that life under God's care is no poor, meagre thing, but provided for abundantly; not only that there is enough, but more and to spare. It is overfilled. My cup runneth over.

You may think of this as some singular and individual experience, some unusual and royal good fortune, some joy of a poet, of a king, in some remarkable deliverance, in some unexpected and excellent gift, in some happy hour of recollection and pious exultation. Such it is, many a time, -- the gush of an unusual and surprised and exuberant gratefulness, of surpassed expectation, of perfect satisfaction. Everybody that is not a wretch has known it some better, deeper, memorable hour of wedded love, of a firstborn child, of the absent come back, perhaps the prodigal recovered, of the sick plucked from death, of victory ending some hard struggle, some new draught out of the wells of salvation, some brighter vision,

1 The last sermon he wrote, preached in Providence, August 4,

some sweeter taste of God's unspeakable love, of goodness "exceeding abundantly all that we can ask or think."

But if it is only that, some rare stroke of good fortune, some felicity of God's favored children, some excess of individual good amidst the uneven distributions of life, some special rapture of the Psalmist, it belongs to favored individuals, and not to all of us. It is then a fact of special and personal experience, and not of the common lot and of God's universal Providence. It is then the privileged cup of the elder son, born under some lucky star and to some exceptional advantage. It is then the psalm of the rich and the fortunate, and not for common and poor people, such as share only in the common and universal gifts of God.

No, the psalm is for all. It speaks a universal language. It is the feeling of all pious hearts about their lot in life, about the goodness of God. It is the fact after all exceptions, the fact that goodness is in excess; that the world, the universe, overflows with it; that it is not prudential, calculating, economical, but generous, abounding, the goodness which is love and runneth over. The divine bounty might be very carefully, exactly measured, just enough to save its character of goodness, to prove the Creator's benevolence, a cup exactly full and no more. But it is not so frugal as that. There is want, poverty, enough of it. But not because there is not enough and to spare. It is not because the universe is empty, or its Maker close and unbountiful. There is uneven distribution, and the individual share may be scant; but the total sum of good is boundless. There is taking away and withholding, as well as giving, but not because there is any lack in God, in his resources or in his goodness. Both are infinite.

It belongs to God, to any just conception of God, that He should act spontaneously, from his own impulse for his own ends. If He creates, it is not to do a piece of work, but for the joy of creating. So the Holy Word says:

"Thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created." He takes pleasure in all the works of his hand. So says the first account of creation in Genesis: "And God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good." God is not self-contained, taking delight only in himself. Thus He might have remained as He was, in his own solitude, and there had been no creation, no going out of himself into the universe which came forth from Him. He was not obliged to create. But He did, and because of his pleasure in what He created, because of his joy in doing it. And so we know what God is in part from what came forth from Him. This manifold life of the world, of the universe, so immense, so diversified, so opulent, reveals God, the greater and infinite fullness that is in Him. A God poor in himself, in wisdom, in power, in goodness, could not have made so rich a world as He has. This is the character of God, such as our reverence, our faith, our sense of his perfectness, conceives Him; not tied up in rules, in a universe of iron law; not restricted in any way; counting nothing in the heights or the depths, the smallest or the grandest thing foreign to Him, but spontaneous, with a joy like that of his creatures, only infinitely greater, acting out his infinite nature in freedom, taking delight in what He does. This belongs to any God we love and praise and rejoice in, that He creates, that He gives out of his own fullness, that He multiplies life, that He increases blessing, that He makes the world run over with good, because He likes and enjoys it, and, if we may say it of the Incomprehensible One, finds his happiness in producing good, and ever new good, without bound, without end. He is good, not by constraint or measure, but with the freedom, the generosity, the grandeur of his perfect and infinite nature. If He acts by law, this does not limit or repress Him. He is full of life, and pours out of his fullness.

1 Rev. iv. 11.