he parts, no provided safety for the head which does not
number all the hairs. The Old Testament doctrine of a special and
minute providence over the chosen nation is expanded by Christ's loving
teaching and ministrations into an equal care for the personal
individual (Matt. vii, 11; xviii, 19; Heb. iv, 16). The cold glacial
period of human fear that poured its ice floe over the mind of man,
making him feel like an orphaned race in a godless world, has retired
before the gentle beams of the Sun of Righteousness, and the winter is
past, the flowers appear on the earth, the time of the singing of birds
and hearts has commenced.

It is everywhere recognized that the great outcome of a man's life is
not the title to a thousand acres. He is soon dispossessed. It is not
all the bonds and money he can hold. A dead man's hands are empty. It
is not reputation that the winds blow away. But it is character that
he acquires and carries with him. He has a fidelity to principle that
is like Abdiel's. He is faithful among the faithless. He has
allegiance to right that the lure of all the kingdoms of the earth
cannot swerve for a moment. He counts soul so much above the body that
no fiery furnaces, heated seven times hotter than they are wont, sway
him for a moment from adherence to the interests of soul as against
even the existence of the body.

Now, how has such an eminence of character been attained? Not
altogether by individual evolution. Ancestral tendencies, parental
example, the great force of strong, eternal principles, the moral
muscle acquired in the gymnasium of temptation, and confessedly and
especially a spiritual force vouchsafed from without, have wrought out
this greatest result of heaven and earth. Of some men you expect
nothing but goodness and greatness. They would belie all the
tendencies of their blood to be otherwise than good. Some are
constantly trained under the mighty influences of great principles that
sway men as much as gravitation sways the worlds. What could be
expected of the men of '76 when the air was electric with patriotism?
What could be expected of men whose childhood was filled with the
sacrifices of men who made themselves pilgrims and strangers over the
earth, from England to Holland and thence over the drear and
inhospitable sea to America, for the sake of liberty? What could be
expected of men whose whole ancestry was cut off by the slaughter
following the revocation of th