diers gazed at bills, piled up like bales of cotton. Being cold and cheerless, the Union boys pitched quoits that night for stakes of Confederate money. They played for $100,000 a game-in Confederate money. The next morning, one soldier boy bought a grey mule for a quarter of a million of dollars, and paid another $100,000 to have a shoe put on. Meanwhile these soldiers, rich in bales of money, were hungry and cold and houseless. One never sees a youth stretching out his hand toward these midnight pleasures, and taking gluttony and drunkenness into his bosom, without saying, "Satan is paying another boy off with lying money."

All these stock-jobbers, industrial deceivers and men who degrade their fellows are being deluded with counterfeit pleasures. Meanwhile, God is not mocked. Whatsoever a man soweth, that, in kind and in quality, he shall reap. For men cannot escape from the nature of things. Law entraps the transgressor. Conscience and memory are always with the wrong-doer. God also encamps on David's right hand and on his left, and makes his days to be remorse, and his nights misery. When Booth assassinated Lincoln, he locked the door of the box, had friends in the alley, a horse that was saddied, and everything sure. Booth had guarded against everything excepting God, and his country's flag. So, after Booth shot the President, the spur on his boot became entangled in the crimson bars of the flag in the President's box, throwing the assassin heavily to the floor, broke his ankle, and the flag stained with our father's blood, brought the assassin down and set him front to front with

justice and penalty. For the nature of things is round about us, and there is no escape for David in the olden time, or for any transgressor today.

If we had only nature and law and science and memory and conscience, and the approaching judgment day, we should be of all men most miserable. But when Absalom rebelled against David, the father's heart turned in love toward the wicked son. In these days, when we are recalling everything that had to do with Abraham Lincoln, let me remind you of an incident in his life, that will explain the all-forgiving love of God. One day a telegram reached the White House, saying that Lee was about to surrender. That night Lincoln quietly left Washington and made his way to the front. And when the surrender came and the rebellion was over, and the officers were planning the entrance to Richmond, Lincoln waved aside all suggestions of a triumphal procession. This must be no Roman conqueror, moving along the Appian Way. There must be no chariots, no chargers, no bands of music. So, alone again, Lincoln entered Richmond. It was the strangest triumphal entrance in the annals of time. The sunshine fell on the Southern capital, but Lincoln seemed very tired as he started up the street. The Southerners had no greeting, their curtains were down. The President was alone. Slowly he walked. His head was on his breast. He seemed very sad. His steps were heavy. The slaves were in the alleys and in the side streets, and they wished to greet him, but were afraid. They met him on their knees, praying and sobbing and singing, but in low tones. On and on

the worn, weary, broken President walked toward the house that was the capital of the Confederacy. When he entered Davis' room, the President waved his two officers back. One of them, after a while, not understanding the silence, looked in. What strange victory in this President! What mystery in his triumph! Mr. Lincoln's head is down on Jefferson Davis' desk. His head is in his hands. The President is sobbing-weeping for the desolation of his beloved South, weeping for Rachel and her children, and he cannot be comforted, weeping for the brave Southern boys who will never come home, and perchance whispering to himself, "How often would I have gathered thee as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not." We were not enemies, we were friends, but lo, ye would be enemies." And because this weary, broken man is staggering under his weight, and cannot be comforted, the great God took him home, and gathered him unto Himself, where the day dawned and the shadows fled away. And David the king, going up toward his palace, sobs, "Oh, Absalom, my son, Absalom, my son, my son! Would God I had died for thee, oh, Absalom, my son, my son!" Lo, we are Absalom, and this is the King of Time and of Eternity, abroad in the night on His mission of recovery, to bring us in out of the far off frontier, and the battle lines of sin, to heal our wounds, to forgive our transgressions, to cleanse away our iniquities.

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V

THE BLEEDING VINE

And, behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisees's house, brought an alabaster box of ointment, and stood at his feet behind him, weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet and anointed them with the ointment. And he said to the woman, Thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace.”—Luke vii: 38, 39, 50.

A

S an apology for the slenderness of his book of reminiscences, the Beloved Disciple, with oriental imagery, said, if all the deeds and words of Jesus had been preserved the whole world could not contain the books that would be written. John means that if one sermon on the Mount was recorded, hundreds were never reported; that if a few brilliant parables, like the story of the Lost Coin, the Lost Sheep and the Lost Son, were written out, thousands of parables existed only in the memory of the eager hearers; and that if some wonder deeds of mercy were described in the Memorabilia of the Master, that other thousands were known only to the recipients of His kindness. But it could not have been otherwise. Consider the fertility of the intellect of Jesus! His mind blazed like a star, glowing and sparkling with ten thousand brilliant effects.

His genius was a rich garden, putting forth fruit and flowers in every nook and corner, and no hand could do more than pluck a few blossoms here and there. In August the whole land waves with leaves and flowers from Maine to Oregon. Then winter comes, invading the vineyards, and harvest fields. Always the north wind leads the armies of destruction. Fierce gales flail the boughs of maple and whip the branches, and the leaves fall in millions. When December comes the forests are bare save where, here and there, the oak leaves adhere to their boughs, like fragile bronze. Now and then a botanist, chilled by the snow, refreshes his memory by looking at the leaves he pressed and the flowers he placed between the pages of his notebook, but it is a far cry from a pressed violet and rose to June bloom and universal summer. These slender reminiscences of Luke's Master represent a few pressed flowers plucked in the garden of his memory. The hand of Luke was made for one golden bough and not for all beautiful forests. In trying to interpret that myriad-minded Master and His efflorescent genius, we must pass from this handful of incidents, this score of parables, to the rich gardens where these flowers were plucked and to the veins of silver and of gold from which this treasure was taken by loving hands. The artist may paint a few canvases, but no painter will ever be a historian of the full summer. The limitations of the human intellect make it certain that the life of Christ will never be written.

Why, then, did Luke and John pass by ninetynine incidents, and record this particular one?