all not be as their father was; my
drudgery is not for self, but for love's sake; the sweat of my brow is
oil in the lamp of love; I will light it to-night on the sacred altar
of home." Here is the secret of the rise and reign of the people.
This explains all man's progress in knowledge and culture. As the
fruits and flowers rise rank upon rank in response to the advancing
summer, so all that is most refined and exalted in man's mind or heart
bursts forth in new ideals, reforms, revolutions, in response to the
revelation of that personal presence from whom all hope and aspiration
incessantly proceed.

Hope's noble ministry hath grievous enemies. Among these let us
include a false use of the past. Yesterday contains sins and mistakes,
but multitudes err in dwelling too much upon their wrongs. Each man
hath had his temptations, each his fierce conflicts and defeats, each
bears grievous scars from the battle-field. Yet if one constantly
revives all his old sins life will be filled with hideous specters.
Memory will become a place of torment and a ghastly chamber of horrors.
We shall be the children of despondency and wretchedness. Memory will
be a graveyard; the past will give no light save the "will-o-the-wisp"
light from putrescence and decay. All the springs of joy will be
poisoned by morbid griefs that keep open old wounds. The city hath its
offal heap where refuse matter is destroyed; each home its garret, the
contents cast out at regular intervals; the individual throws away his
old clothes, old tools, old vehicles. Why should not the soul have its
refuse valley--where the past is cast out of life and memory?

Farmers' boys sometimes set steel traps by shocks of corn whither come
quail and prairie chickens. Stepping upon the traps, the cruel jaws
close upon foot or wing and the bleeding bird beats out its life upon
the frozen ground. Memory often with cruel jaws holds men entrapped.
A single error wrecks the whole life. But once forgiven of God let the
sin go. Reflection upon past sins is good only so long as it produces
revulsion from sin, and like a bow shoots the soul toward God and
righteousness. God is like a mother who forgives the child's sin into
everlasting forgetfulness. Man should be ashamed to remember what God
forgets. "I will cast your sins into the depth of the sea." Someone
says: "God receives the soul as the sea the bather, to return it
cleansed--itself unsoiled." Gather up, there