appreciated the beauty and richness of humanity, that it is very near
the Infinite, very near to God. These two facts--we are the children
of God, and God is our Father--make us look very differently at
ourselves, very differently at our neighbors, very differently at God.
We should be surprized, not at our good deeds, but at our bad ones.
We should expect good as more likely to occur than evil; we should
believe that our best moments are our truest. I was once talking with
an acquaintance about whose religious position I knew nothing, and he
exprest a very hopeful opinion in regard to a matter about which I was
myself very doubtful.

"'Why, I said to him, 'You are an optimist.'

"'Of course I am an optimist,' he replied, because I am a Christian.'

"I felt that as a reproof. The Christian must be an optimist."

Men and brethren, I set these words over against those of his Master
with which I began, and the two in essence are one. "The words that I
speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life." There is a life
nobler and diviner than any that we have dreamed of. To the poorest
and meanest of us, as to the best and most richly-dowered, it is alike
open. To turn toward it, to reach up after it, to believe in its
ever-recurring nearness, and to glorify God in attaining to it, this
is the calling of a human soul.

Now then, what, I ask you, is all the rest of religion worth in
comparison with this?--not what is it worth in itself, but what is its
place relatively to this? This, I maintain, is the supreme question
for the episcopate, as it ought to be the supreme question with the