d by our circumstances, our duties, our sorrows, our
temptations.

So, brethren, how shameful it is that, having the possibility of so
much, we should have the actuality of so little. There is an old
story about one of our generals in India long ago, who, when he came
home, was accused of rapacity because he had brought away so much
treasure from the Rajahs whom he had conquered, and his answer to the
charge was, 'I was surprised at my own moderation.' Ah! there are a
great many Christian people who ought to be ashamed of their
moderation. They have gone into the treasure-house; stacks of jewels,
jars of gold on all sides of them--and they have been content to come
away with some one poor little coin, when they might have been 'rich
beyond the dreams of avarice.' Brethren, you have 'access' to the
fullness of God. Whose fault is it if you are empty?

Then, further, I said there was another meaning in these great words.
The love which may suffuse our lives, the gifts, the consequence of
that love, which may enrich our lives, should, and in the measure in
which they are received will, adorn and make beautiful our lives. For
'grace' means loveliness as well as goodness, and the God who is the
fountain of it all is the fountain of 'whatsoever things are fair,'
as well as of whatsoever things are good. That suggests two
considerations on which I have no time to dwell. One is that the
highest beauty is goodness, and unless the art of a nation learns
that, its art will become filthy and a minister of sin. They talk
about 'Art for Art's sake.' Would that all these poets and painters
who are trying to find beauty in corruption--and there is a
phosphorescent glimmer in rotting wood, and a prismatic colouring on
the scum of a stagnant pond--would that all those men who are seeking
to find beauty apart from goodness, and so are turning a divine
instinct into a servant of evil, would learn that the true
gracefulness comes from the grace which is the fullness of God given
unto men.

But there is another lesson, and that is that Christian people who
say that they have their lives irradiated by the love of God, and who
profess to be receiving gifts from His full hand, are bound to take
care that their goodness is not 'harsh and crabbed,' as not only
'dull fools suppose' it to be, but as it sometimes is, but is musical
and fair. You are bound to make your goodness attractive, and to show
that the things that are 'of good report' are