are a masterpiece, and
it is being copied, and long after you are gone it will bloom or blast
in the homes of those who knew you, and be a Gorgon or a Madonna. Look
out what you say. Look out what you do. Eternity will hear the echo.
The best sermon ever preached is a holy life. The best music ever
chanted is a consistent walk.

I saw, near the beach, a wrecker's machine. It was a cylinder with
some holes at the side, made for the thrusting in of some long poles
with strong leverage; and when there is a vessel in trouble or going
to pieces out in the offing, the wreckers shoot a rope out to the
suffering men. They grasp it, and the wreckers turn the cylinder, and
the rope winds around the cylinder, and those who are shipwrecked are
saved. So at your feet to-day there is an influence with a tremendous
leverage. The rope attached to it swings far out into the billowy
future. Your children, your children's children, and all the
generations that are to follow, will grip that influence and feel the
long-reaching pull long after the figures on your tombstone are so
near worn out that the visitor can not tell whether it was in 1885, or
1775, or 1675 that you died.

Still further, I learn from this subject the advantages of concerted
action. If Abimelech had merely gone out with a tree-branch the work
would not have been accomplished, or if ten, twenty, or thirty men had
gone; but when all the axes are lifted, and all the sharp edges fall,
and all these men carry each his tree-branch down and throw it about
the temple, the victory is gained--the temple falls. My friends, where
there is one man in the Church of God at this day shouldering his
whole duty there are a great many who never lift an ax or swing a
blow.

Oh, we all want our boat to get over to the golden sands, but the most
of us are seated either in the prow or in the stern, wrapped in our
striped shawl, holding a big-handled sunshade, while others are
blistered in the heat, and pull until the oar-locks groan, and the
blades bend till they snap. Oh, religious sleepy-heads, wake up! While
we have in our church a great many who are toiling for God, there are
some too lazy to brush the flies off their heavy eyelids.

Suppose, in military circles, on the morning of battle the roll is
called, and out of a thousand men only a hundred men in the regiment
answered. What excitement there would be in the camp! What would the
colonel say? What high talking there would be am