Let us, then, throw away this narrow, self-justifying doctrine of the survival of the fittest, and follow instead the noble counsel of Milton:—

Nor love thy life, nor hate, but what thou liv’st, live well.
How long or short permit to heaven.

Let us find our model less in the conquering Saxon and more in the dying Saviour. Christ died that we may live; and for the same purpose all created life has passed away. Let us so live that when the last man goes from the earth, he will, no matter what his race or color, owe a part of the good there is in him, of the hope there is for him, to our influence. Our life cannot be too brief for this influence to be exerted; and when God shall look over his flocks to praise the worthy, it is the witness of His Son that his first loving welcome will be for the least and lowliest.

But we have so little faith to-day, that I hardly doubt that there is chiming in the ears of many in this audience the refrain:—“This is all sentiment and doesn’t help us to deal with hard facts.” We ought, however, to hesitate, I think, before consigning this view to the babies’ limbs. It may be after all that the Sermon on the Mount was not pure eccentricity, nor Christ a Don Quixote. Of the two counsels, ‘Get religion,’ and ‘Get money,’ there is yet something to be said in support of the former. Carlyle fairly exculpates the nobility of Scotland for their cold treatment of the poet, Burns. “Had they not,” he asks, “their game to preserve; their borough interests to strengthen, dinners to eat and give?... Let us pity and forgive them. The game they preserved and shot, the dinners they ate and gave, the borough interests they strengthened, the little Babylons they severally builded by the glory of their might are all melted, or melting back into the primeval chaos, as man’s merely selfish endeavors are bound to do.”

And after all, who are the poor? Let history answer! Is thrift taxed, which seems able to bear, or prodigality, which spares nothing? Do we tax clear-headed temperance, or the wretched drunkard, whose starving wife and babes, by reason of the penny of internal revenue, lose one more crust of bread? Upon whose shoulders falls the lash of scorn and punishment? Upon those of the able man, who never tries to do his best, or upon the ill-born, ill-bred creature’s only, whose best is so little above society’s arbitrary passing mark, that to slip at all is to fall below it? I have often thought that in the words, “The poor always ye have with you,” is contained, far from a curse, the greatest pledge of the world’s salvation; for except that hunger, cold, sorrow and disease walk among us, the bond of sympathy which binds us to our fellow-man slackens, and the heart grows dead and cold.

One night during the long period of hardship which the missionaries experienced in the conversion of England, a snow-storm drove Cuthbert’s boat on the coast of Fife. “The snow closes the road along the shore, mourned his comrades, the storm bars our way over sea.” “There is still the pathway of heaven that lies open,” said Cuthbert. It is even so with us. Can we regret it? Surely the problem is greatly simplified. While our minds are fixed upon survival, no path is clear, and we weary ourselves walking along roads which either lead nowhere at all, or bring us back to our starting point. But, with only right living in view, there is no mistaking the way; for there has always been a straight road ahead of us, which we could follow if we would. It is hard to keep plodding along the narrow path, when fields of wealth and power stretch away on either side, but, happily for us, these are about all fenced in, even the great Sahara desert is fenced in. We cannot be tyrants if we would, nor can we despoil our fellows for they are as poor as we. Our road is made smooth before us. God has not led us into temptation. We ought then to come nearer than other peoples to a