world would enter upon an era of prosperity and peace. Men have tried many expedients, many laws, many weapons, but some day they will try Jesus' plan, and then the discordant, warring classes will find that the paths of worship are paths that lead to social peace, brotherhood and prosperity.

N view of his few brief years, man has the

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endowment of a god, the arena of an insect.

The sand fly is born at daylight, dies at dark, but its life is long-for a sand fly. Man lives through seventy years, but these years are all too short for a being made in God's image. The vast endowments of the soul; its mastery over the forces of land and sea and sky; its unfulfilled places, all assume an existence, not of seventy years, but of seventy times seventy years. The average man spends his entire career in mastering one art, one profession, one industry, while all the other realms must be postponed to another career. Only now and then is there a Leonardo, or a Michael Angelo, who masters architecture, sculpture, painting, music, civil engineering and all in one life. Biography illustrates the brevity of our career. Our country has one inventor with two thousand patents to his credit, but he has spent seventy-two years on the electric light, the phonograph and the battery. In the world of literature, Coleridge was unique, but dying, he left one hundred manuscripts carefully outlined and big with

promise, but not one of them complete. Shaftesbury was the leader of his generation in philanthropy, who worked for coal miners, chimney sweeps, orphans and castaways; but dying, Shaftesbury said that he had just started his reforms.

Coming to the end the falling statesman, the dying mother, the gifted boy, all exclaim, "Too short! Too short!" Moses felt the bitterness of life's brevity, and expressed that feeling by saying that his little life was like a falling leaf, a fading flower, a dissolving cloud, the summer's brook, the night watch between two days of battle, the tale told around the evening's fire, but forgotten when the morning comes. David, the poet king, also rebelled against life's brevity; his life was like the flight of a bird, the speed of an arrow, the stay of a postman, the glimpse of a passing ship. The wise king felt it; his life was like the flight of the eagle, that left no more mark upon the air, like the keel of a ship that leaves no mark upon the face of the water. Man is the weaver, the days are flying shuttles, the earth furnishes the framework, slowly the purple cloth is woven, but suddenly an enemy comes, to break the loom, and rend away the cloth, and ruin the weaver's house. Oh, this beautiful world! How eagerly men plan for many years packed with achievements! Looking out upon the stars, walking under the tranquil sky, beholding the beauty of the summer, singing the harvest song midst shock and sheaves, exulting midst the majesty and beauty of the winter-what lover of his fellow-men but wishes to stay in this

beautiful world at least a thousand years? Then comes the warning as to life's brevity, "Man's days are as sparks falling upon a river."

Consider the contrast between material achievements that abide, and the invisible life of the soul that dissolves like a cloud filled with golden light. Go into the museum; lo, the bird tracks are fixed in sandstone, that received their impression ages

ago. Enter old Warwick Castle. Here are dented helmets, broken shields, nicked swords, used by King Alfred's men, lo! all the knights are dust! Study the Egyptian room at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and you behold the mummies yellow, dry, falling before the touch of a finger; but there, too, are the shrivelled seeds of wheat, that ripened three thousand years ago. Sown on good soil that grain will swell, germinate, put forth tall stalks, grow green and gold in the sun, and being sown again, with the process repeated for fifteen summers, lo, there is bread for the fifteen hundred millions of the children of men. Study the stump of the redwood tree whose seed was dropped into the soil twenty-five centuries ago, and the scientist finds some rings that represent years of heavy rain, and other narrow rings that represent years of drought. Needle and leaf were monument builders that left a permanent memorial behind them in the Mariposa groves of California. Strangely moved, the worker turns from the seeming permanency of things in wood and stone, and notes the fleeting, transient element in the noblest lives. The career of parent, patriot and teacher is like unto the shadow that falls upon the wheat

field when a cloud passes between the sun and the earth. The influence of the singer, the artist and the orator seems as fragile and evanescent as the landscapes etched by the angel of the frost upon the window in January. There is a bloom upon the cheek of the peach and the plum that is destroyed by one touch of the hand; and thus the work of many a hero sometimes seems to be as fleeting and perishable as that delicate flush upon the fruit. But man longs to be remembered. He wishes to build, not in ice, that dissolves, but in granite, that abides. Then comes the warning: Thy days are like the foam upon the crest of the wave, iridescent for a moment, then broken and dissolved forever." Verily the time is short! Therefore," what thou doest, do quickly!"

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Now it was the sense of the shortness of His career that strained the Saviour of men to the most intense activity. History contains the record of no life that was so fruitful as his career that was packed with good deeds. Beginning His work at thirty years of age, Jesus toiled under an overhanging cloud that was not black with impending gloom but bright with approaching glory. He tells us plainly that He did not know what the future held in store as to the time or the manner of His death. In view of His open break with the State and the Church He felt His end could not be far off. Under the pressure, therefore, of the thought that His time was short, His mind fairly effulged with great thoughts. His days were packed with memorable deeds.

He was not content with opening the furrow