Abraham Lincoln also came the word: "Give and thou shall receive!" Sitting in the White House the President proclaimed equal rights to black and white. Then, with shouts of joy, three million slaves entered the temple of liberty. But they bore the emancipator upon their shoulders and enshrined him forever in the temple of fame, where he who gave bountifully shall receive bountiful honor through all the ages. There, too, in the far-off past stands an uplifted cross. Flinging wide his arms this crowned sufferer sought to lift the world back to his Father's side. In life he gave his testimony against hypocrisy, Phariseeism and cruelty. For years he gave himself to the publican, the sinner, the prodigal, the poor in mind or heart, and so came at length to his pitiless execution. But, having given himself in abandon of love, the world straightway gave itself in return. Every one of his twelve disciples determined to achieve a violent death for the Christ who gave himself for them. Paul was beheaded in Rome. John was tortured in Patmos. Andrew and James were crucified in Asia. The rest were mobbed, or stoned, or tortured to death. And as years sped on man kept giving. Multitudes went forth, burning for him in the tropics, freezing for him in the arctics; threading for him the forest paths, braving for him the swamps, that they might serve his little ones. He gave himself for the world, and the world, in a passion of love, will yet give itself back to him.

Recently the officials of the commonwealth of Massachusetts and the noblest citizens of Boston assembled for celebrating the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of George Peabody. For a like purpose the citizens of London came together in banquet hall. Now, the banker had long been dead. Nor did he leave children to keep his name before the public. How shall we account for two continents giving him such praise and fame? George Peabody received from his fellows, because he first gave to his fellows. To his genius for accumulation he added the genius of distribution. His large gifts to Harvard and Yale, to Salem and Peabody, made to science and art as well as to philanthropy and religion, secured perpetual remembrance. When the public credit of the State of Maryland was endangered, he negotiated $8,000,000 in London and gave his entire commission of $200,000 back to the State. He who gave $3,500,000 for founding schools and colleges in the South for black and white, could not but receive honor and praise. Therefore the eulogies pronounced by the legislators in Annapolis. As a banker in London he was disturbed by the sorrows of the poor, and for months gave himself to an investigation of the tenement-house system, developing the Peabody Tenements, to which he gave $2,500,000, and helped 20,000 people to remove from dens into buildings that were light and sweet and wholesome. Therefore when he died in London the English nation that had received from him gave to him, and, for the first time in history, the gates of Westminster Abbey were thrown open for the funeral services of a foreigner. Therefore, the Prime Minister of England selected the swiftest frigate in the English navy for carrying his body back to his native land. His generosity radiated in every direction, not in trickling rivulets, but in copious streams. Bountifully he gave to men; therefore, through innumerable orations, sermons, editorials and toasts, men vied with each other in giving praise and honor back to Peabody, the benefactor of the people.

Society, always sensitive to generosity, is equally sensitive to selfishness. He who treats his fellows as so many clusters to be squeezed into his cup, who spoils the world for self aggrandizement, finds at last that he has burglarized his own soul. Here is a man who says: "Come right, come wrong, I will get gain." Loving ease, he lashes himself to unceasing toil by day and night. Needing rest on Sunday, he denies himself respite and scourges his jaded body and brain into new activities. Every thought is a thread to be woven into a golden net. He lifts his life to strike as miners lift their picks. He swings his body as harvesters their scythes. He will make himself an augur for boring, a chisel for drilling, a muck-rake for scratching, if only he may get gain. He will sweat and swelter and burn in the tropics until malaria has made his face as yellow as gold, if thereby he can fill his purse, and for a like end he will shiver and ache in the arctics. He will deny his ear music, he will deny his mind culture, he will deny his heart friendship that he may coin concerts and social delights into cash. At length the shortness of breath startles him; the stoppage of blood alarms him. Then he retires to receive—what? To receive from nature that which he has given to nature. Once he denied his ear melody, and now taste in return denies him pleasure. Once he denied his mind books, and now books refuse to give him comfort. Once he denied himself friendship, and now men refuse him their love. Having received nothing from him, the great world has no investment to return to him. Such a life, entering the harbor of old age, is like unto a bestormed ship with empty coal bins, whose crew fed the furnace, first with the cargo and then with the furniture, and reached the harbor, having made the ship a burned-cut shell. God buries the souls of many men long years before their bodies are carried to the graveyard.

This principle tells us why nature and society are so prodigal with treasures to some men and so niggardly to others. What a different thing a forest is to different men! He who gives the ax receives a mast. He who gives taste receives a picture. He who gives imagination receives a poem. He who gives faith hears the "goings of God in the tree-tops." The charcoal-burner fronts an oak for finding out how many cords of wood are in it, as the Goths of old fronted peerless temples for estimating how many huts they could quarry from the stately pile.[1] But an artist curses the woodsman for making the tree food for ax and saw. It has become to him as sacred as the cathedral within which he bares his head. It is a temple where birds praise God. It is a harp with endless music for the summer winds. It fills his eye with beauty and his ear with rustling melodies.

For the poet that selfsame oak is enshrined in a thousand noble associations. It sings for him like a hymn; it shines like a vision; it suggests ships, storms and ocean battles; the spear of Launcelot, the forests of Arden; old baronial halls mellow with lights falling on oaken floors; King Arthur's banqueting chamber. To the scientist's thought the oak is a vital mechanism. By day and by night, the long summer through, it lifts tons of moisture and forces it into the wide-spreading branches, but without the rattle of huge engines. With what uproar and clang of iron hammers would stones be crushed that are dissolved noiselessly by the rootlets and recomposed in stems and boughs! What a vast laboratory is here, every root and leaf an expert chemist!

For other multitudes the earth has become only a huge stable; its fruit fodder; its granaries ricks, out of which men-cattle feed. These estimate a man's value according as he has lifted his ax upon tall trees and ravaged all the loveliness of creation; whose curse is the Nebuchadnezzar curse, giving to nature the tongue and hand, and receiving from nature grass; who are doomed to love the corn they grind, to hear only the roar of the whirlwind and the crash of the hail, never "the still small voice;" who see what is written in lamp-black and lightning; who think the clouds are for rain, and know not that they are chariots, thrones and celestial highways; that the sunset means something else than sleep, and the morning suggests something other than work. All these give nature only thought for food, and food only shall they receive from nature, until all their deeds are plowed down in dust. Give forth thy gift, young men and