By Rev. B. M. ADAMS.

Before I announce the text I desire to clear the road for it a little. We are never reasoned out of that we are never reasoned into. A prejudice is an unreasoning thing, and oftentimes even the Scripture, holy as it is and much as we reverence it, excites prejudice. We say, “Well, I don’t know whether that can be or not.” The truth is, we read our Bibles small, when we ought to read them large. I ask you this morning to disabuse your minds of all prejudice against my subject, and wait until I am through. Do not wait until I am through, but if God sends a word to you, be hospitable to it, open to it your heart. If it is true, accept it; if it is not true, reject it.

The text that I shall read is in Genesis, seventeenth chapter and first verse: “And when Abram was ninety years old and nine, the Lord appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I am the Almighty God, walk before me, and be thou perfect.”

The word perfect is the one that excites prejudice. Now, open the door, and if there is anything in it that is good and for your peace, take it. I most devoutly pray that God will help me to present this passage so it will do you and me good.

“And when Abram was ninety years old and nine, the Lord appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I am the Almighty God, walk before me, and be thou perfect.” It is followed by several other passages, referring to the covenant which God would make with him. You know something of the history of Abram, how God spoke to him in Ur of the Chaldees and called him out to go into a land that he knew not of. It appears that he listened to the call, and started with his family for his destination, “not knowing whither he went.” The Lord directed him. But he hesitated, so Stephen says, on the borders of the Land of Canaan, in which were located the Canaanites, the Perizites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, who were hostile, cruel, rapacious tribes. For some reason, not unlikely Abram’s love for his father, he tarried on the border of the land, and did not go over into it immediately. He hesitated, as hundreds and thousands of God’s people have hesitated on the brink of some great cross, or some great necessity. Abram was my brother, and yours.

He hesitated until his father Terah died, and then went over into the Land of Promise. After going up and down the land for some time, until two-thirds of his life was gone, this appearance came to him. I do not know how God appeared. If that poor slave-woman says the Lord spoke to her, and her hoe-handle shone with his glory, and she heard a voice, “Thy sins are forgiven,” I can not dispute it. God can speak to every heart, and he has his way of doing it. God appeared to Abram, God spoke to him. This is the record, “God appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I am the Almighty God, walk before me, and be thou perfect.”

This word “perfect” charmed Abram. He opened his heart unto it like a rose to the sun. It is a singular thing that this word perfect excites prejudice in Christian people concerning its attainment. Yet it is the word. It has been impressed upon me for one reason, perhaps, because it is in the line of the Chautauqua idea. There are three thoughts at Chautauqua, aspiration, inspiration, attainment. In other words, seeking perfection, looking after it, striving for it. The artist sets before his mind perfection, the mechanic seeks perfection, the statesman and the social economist seek perfection, the housekeeper seeks perfection, the farmer seeks perfection, all classes and kinds of people are seeking this one thing. Why should it be ruled out in religion? Can you answer? It is impossible that there should be such a thing as perfection of the artist or mechanic, for God is the only perfect artist and mechanic, but it is not impossible for men to please God; it is not impossible for them to be so perfect as to please him.

Look at the limitation of the text. It does not say, “walk before your fellow-men and be perfect.” I will defy you to do that. The Lord Jesus Christ could not walk perfect enough to please men, and they hung him between two thieves. You may not be able to please your husband, or your wife, or your employer, in all things. No one Christian ever walked so straight as to give perfect satisfaction all around. They that will walk and live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. Our dear brother said this morning, “When you please everybody, look out, there is something wrong.”

The man that is at the bottom does not please the man at the top. He who is at the bottom of the ladder does not know how it looks at the top, but the man at the top understands the bottom, because he has been there. You have seen the boys chase a wagon, and one only is swift enough to get on, and the others, filled with envy, cry, “cut behind.” That is human nature. The unsuccessful throw stones at the successful; the people who are up are envied by those who are down. Mark the limitation of the text, not walk before your fellow-men, or even before yourselves to give satisfaction. I thank God for this part of the passage, “Walk before me and be thou perfect.”

God is not hard to please. God is not so hard to please as men; it is easier to please God than to please men. The most unselfish things you do sometimes are the things that are most misunderstood. But when God sees you with a serious intent to please him, he is pleased with it. Let me illustrate this: God calls that perfection which is our best, doing the best we know how, and trusting simply in him, is what God in this text calls perfection. I will venture in the presence of a great deal of scholarship present here this morning, to say that the word perfection means vital conviction. The margin puts it “sincere,” “sincerity.” The true thought is, being true to your best thought, and that pleases God.

There are a great many things, of course, that are impossible to us. We can not have absolutely perfect actions, because there is no such thing as a perfect judgment, there is no such thing as a perfect intellect, we do not see clearly. God knows all about that; he understands it. See in the 103d Psalm the wonderfully comforting words he says: “Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him. For he knoweth our frame, he remembereth that we are dust.”

Take a teacher: he has a boy that wants to learn to write. He sets him a copy of straight marks, and the little fellow is bound to do his best. Watch him as he goes through his contortions. The teacher tells him how to hold his pen, but he never holds it right; it is covered with ink; he sets his mouth and takes aim at his copy. He works slowly down the page, and there is a blot here and a blur there, and a great many crooked marks upon it, but the teacher knows he has done his best, and he says “well done.” The next time he does a little better. Finally, after a week upon straight marks, (there are none of them really straight or true) he brings in the book, and the teacher says it is perfect. It is far from perfect, but it is the best that little fellow can do.

I remember sitting in a house once when the mother said to the boys, (three of them were there), “It is time to bring in the wood.” The oldest was about sixteen, the next about twelve, and the youngest boy was five. They all went out. The big boy, perhaps to show off before the new minister, came in with an enormous load, piled it up, and turned around to me with pride in his face. The mother looked on with approval. The second came in with only half as large an armful, and the mother looked approvingly at him. The last one came in with but two sticks, and they were so crossed that he had great difficulty in holding them, and finally they slipped through his arms, and the little fellow fell down with them. His mother ran to him and kissed him, and said, “You have done better than they all.”

I thought is not that about the way our Heavenly Father does, when he sees us trying to be right and perfect, trying to keep step with the picket line of our best right, when he says, “Walk before me?” Faber says, “There is no place where earthly sorrows are so felt as up in heaven; there is no place where earthly failings have such kindly judgment given, for the love of God is broader than the measures of man’s mind, and the heart of the eternal is most wonderfully kind.” God is not severe, he is an easy master, a blessed keeper. “Walk before me,” said he to Abram, “and be thou perfect; be true to your best convictions.”

May I ask you to follow me a moment or two, to see how eminently common sensed these demands God makes upon us are, and how widely they are endorsed by our own internal consciousness?

There are two relations that we hold: one Godward, and the other manward. In our relation to God what does he ask of us? What does the sum total come to? God asks, first, a perfect consecration; second, a perfect faith, and third, a perfect love. This idea of perfect consecration is in the realm of human possibilities. Let me look at it. Does anybody doubt that a man may be perfectly consecrated to his business? Don’t we know men that are lost, that are really dying, wrecking body, soul, and spirit, all that they have, in business; business in the morning, noon, and night, so driven with business that they are not acquainted with their own children? When I was pastor in an inland city, I knew a great big boy of eighteen, who went to his mother one day, and whined out, “I wish you would ask father to get me a new coat.” “But why don’t you ask him yourself?” said she. “I am not acquainted with him.” That father had been so driven with business that his son was not acquainted enough with him to ask him to get him a new coat. Is not that true? Don’t we know men, in merchandise, in all the walks of life, that are thoroughly consecrated to business? Don’t you know some women that are so absolutely consecrated to the idea of keeping their house in order, that they do not care for their souls? In calling off their minds from this everlasting housekeeping, this C. L. S. C. is a blessing to some women. Don’t you know women, and some men, who are entirely consecrated to fashion, and run after it at the expense of body, soul, and spirit? Does anybody doubt the possibility of people being consecrated to an idea? Take the inventor, Goodyear. He lived in the city of New Haven, where I am acquainted. It is said that this idea of hard rubber took such possession of him that it took all he had. One day, when his money and credit were all gone, he took his axe and split up the bedstead, his bureau, and the chairs for his fire, and did not succeed after all, until sometime after that. If a man is capable of this kind of consecration in a merely worldly aspect, I ask, is it not possible for him to be entirely consecrated to God?

Take the second thought, a perfect faith. There is not a woman, if she is the woman she ought to be, that is married, who has not had a perfect faith in some man, or she would not have been married. That woman has had perfect faith in that man, and that man has had perfect faith in that woman. We show it in the use of money. We do not discover any want of faith, except now and then we find a counterfeit. We pay a debt with our money with perfect faith. We get on the railroad and check our baggage; wise people do, although once in a while people take all their luggage in the cars, a bandbox, bundles, and satchels with them, and it is a great deal of trouble to them. So people try to get to heaven. Why not check the baggage? We find it at Chautauqua, or Lakewood, or New York.

You say, “I don’t know about faith.” But you have faith in some men, and some men would trust you forever. There are some men I would trust to the end of time. So it is with friendship; you have perfect faith in men. Children have perfect faith in their fathers until they are deceived. When I used to look up to my father, I believed that he could do anything. When I went to him with my griefs, I knew, I trusted they would be right; I believed in him with all my heart. I say if men are capable of perfect faith in each other in the domestic and social relations, they are capable of perfect faith in God. I say these things are written down in common sense and in the constitution of humanity.

Third, perfect love. Suppose I go into yonder house, and I see a lady with a sweet baby in her arms, a year old it may be, just coming to the cunning stage. I see that woman kiss that child. I say, “Mother, you think a good deal of that baby.” “Yes,” she says, “I love her with all my heart.” Suppose I say, “I doubt it, madam, I don’t believe you do.” She would turn to me with supreme contempt, and say, “There is the orifice left by the carpenter in the side of the room for such as you.” I am dismissed. It is a slander upon her. I see her at night, when that babe is sick. I see her on her knees praying, with tears running down her cheeks, “God, spare my babe!” Day after day, night after night, she does not sleep. You say it is not a perfect love. I say it is a perfect love, as perfect a love as she can have for the child.

Do you say men can not have a perfect love for a profession, so that they can take all and risk all, that they have so poor an ideal that they can not face the responsibility? Do you say there is no such a thing as perfect patriotism, perfect love for one’s country? I believe there is no greater thing than this on earth, that a man lay down his life for his friends. A few years ago, how many men laid down their lives for their country. We know there is such a thing as a perfect love. When that man to-day stands by the side of that woman and gives her himself, and she gives him herself, it is a slander to say that he and she do not love each other perfectly. You may say it is imperfect, to be sure; it is limited by human weakness (we are all earthly and of the earth), but, as far as human ability goes, it is perfect. Can not we have a perfect love toward God? We are capable of it on the human plane; we are capable of it on the divine plane. I think you have laid aside prejudice against my doctrine, and I speak with frankness, I think that God demands a perfect consecration, a perfect faith, and a perfect love, and we are capable of each.

Let us examine the manward relation. It may be stated thus: I think it embraces three things. First, perfect truth; second, perfect honesty; third, perfect consecration. The thing we can not abide is a lie. When a man tells a lie, he is like a horse that slips his halter once, you buckle it up two or three holes tighter next time, so he shall not slip it again. If he tells a barefaced lie once, you fail to trust him again; he loses your respect. God desires truth in the inward parts, God asks that we shall be true to him, that when we know what is right, we shall try to do according to our best ability.

The second thing we require is honesty in dealing and words. Let me tell you, friends, the thing the world does not forget, is the sin of not paying your debts. I do not care, though your profession may be like a great four-story brownstone front house, and you may have a cupola on the top, if you do not pay one hundred cents on a dollar, your profession is not worth the paper on which it is written. You may be a fornicator, or an adulterer, if you pay one hundred cents on a dollar, the world will give you a free pass. One of the crying sins that the world does not forget, is that some Christians do not pay their debts. A preacher may preach like an angel, and if anybody says, “He owes me so and so, and I can’t get my money,” his sermons do not amount to a great deal. Perfect honesty, this is one of the things that the Christian Church needs to look at. I remember a farmer in Dutchess County, when I was pastor there, who had a fashion of throwing an extra bag of oats on every load of oats sold, especially when sinners came. A wild young sinner said to him one day, “What do you do that for?” “Well,” said he, “I may have made a mistake in measuring up those oats, and as I am going to a country that I shall never return from, and I shall meet you at the Judgment Day, where I am afraid you will be on the left side, I want things to be perfectly square with you and your kind.”

We demand this of our fellow-men, and God demands it of us toward our fellow-men. Look at this man Abram. The Lord had given him the land, but he took pains particularly to buy a burying place, and have the money carefully weighed. When he had a battle with the confederated kings and brought Lot and his family back again, and the king of Sodom wanted to give him all the spoil, he stood up in all his manly integrity and refused to take it. Walking alone with God, he could do without it. I tell you the man who walks in this ideal, walking before God in his perfect truth and honesty, need not fear the forces of the world; he need not fear to be burned at the stake; he can afford to have his name pitched out of the world as an enthusiast; he can afford to be despised.

The third thing is perfect magnanimity, which is nothing more or less than true gentlemanliness. I love to read the Bible because it introduces me to so many gentlemen. As a celebrated infidel writer says about Christ, “he was the first gentleman of the age.” What is it? It is a gentlemanliness, a true magnanimity to our fellow-men, making arrangements for the good of other people rather than ourselves, living not for ourselves but for those about us, being polite and careful in all the arrangements of our lives, loving our neighbors as ourselves.

See that man sitting in the cars, who has paid for but one seat. He occupies one seat with his feet and the other two with his baggage. People come in and say, “Is this seat taken?” He says, “Yes.” I heard a man ask one of these fellows not a long time ago, “Is this seat taken?” “Yes.” “Whom is it taken by?” “A person.” “Who is the person? Have you paid for more than one seat?” I was glad to see the man have to take up his baggage. Did you ever see a man carve a beefsteak who cuts off the tough pieces for his wife and children and keeps the tenderloin for himself? A gentleman will see that all the rest are taken care of, and he generally comes out about as good as the rest; he may lose sometimes, but he wins in many things. Emerson says a man can not afford to lose his self-respect. I often think what even some Christian men must think when they look into the looking-glass and contemplate themselves; if they would have any recollection of themselves and their meanness they would not consult the looking-glass.

With these two points—first of all, godward, a perfect consecration, a perfect faith, a perfect love, which we must admit, in our inner consciousness, is possible to us; in our manward relation, perfect truth, perfect honesty, perfect magnanimity. I believe this covers the ideal. We can understand the meaning when God says to every man, “Walk before me, and be thou perfect.” But some one says: “Mr. Adams, you don’t make any allowance for the weakness of human nature.” I do. Weak human nature! It is God that recognizes it in us, and it is God that requires these things as belonging to it, belonging to weak human nature. “But you don’t know about our surroundings,” you say. I may not; yet even in your surroundings you admit that this is an ideal that is in the reach of every one. “But you don’t make any theological distinctions.” I often think of what Dr. Hitchcock said before the Union Theological Seminary: “Young gentlemen, study theology, yes, study theology, but preach the Gospel.” I study theology, but I try to preach the Gospel, theology or no theology. You say: “This will not stand the straight-edged, extreme sanctification view.” I don’t care about the extreme sanctification view. There are two kinds of spurious sanctification, one so high that no one can get to it, and the other so low nobody wants it. This kind of the text is in reach of every one and what every one ought to want.

I propose to show how you may all reach it. (May the Lord help me!) I think I find it in one single expression in this text, “Walk before me, and be thou perfect. I am the Almighty God.” That is, “I am the Almighty God, to help you walk before me.” If you please God, you can take the risk about the rest. Do you say, “I am weak.” God answers it with his omnipotence. Do you say, “I am poor.” God answers it with his riches. Do you say, “I am without any useful gift, or I have peculiar surroundings.” God answers it with that one expression, “I am the Almighty God, walk before me, and be thou perfect.”

You remember that interview that God had with Moses when he was about to send him into Egypt. How often God says, “I am the Almighty God. I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” What did he say that to him for? That he might encourage him to believe in him; trust him, and encourage him to go out under his might. I believe “I am the Almighty God” answered every excuse of Moses. If we put this matter in the hands of God, with perfect consecration, faith, and love toward God, and perfect truth, honesty, and magnanimity to our fellow-men, it will become easy to us, it will become the joy of our lives, and God will put us down in his blessed book as among his perfect ones.

Mark what God calls perfect is so different from what men require. We hear some persons say, “Well, C. is about perfect.” You go out and tell that thing to somebody that knows her, and does not like her very much. If I should believe the things I hear said about some men, they should be put in jail. But you can not find out that way: look up to God! Knowing how imperfect we are, and how poor we are, in all these relations of our hearts and lives, God has put it down, “I am the Almighty God. I am able to make you what you want to be.” That is what he said to Abram. Look at him. You recollect at one time in his life, under great pressure, he told a lie. And yet Abram filled the ideal, but it was in spite of that. Noah was perfect, but he got drunk. Job was perfect, and upright, and eschewed evil. If anyone will read over carefully the Book of Job, (and I recommend you to read it), he will find a perfect answer for all the skepticism of this present age. Job went so far as to curse the day in which he was born, and the day when it was said a man-child is born, and yet he was a man that was perfect in his generation, and that pleased God. He came out of that immature condition of ignorance of God.

Mark another thing. You remember in this Book of Job, with all the hard things that Job said, you can not find a place where God rebuked him. All he said was, “Stand up, Job, and let me talk to you. You can not understand my providence and government. You must trust me, Job.” So he does with hundreds and thousands. There was David who wrote the prayers and poetry of the ages. What a man he was! Yet he succeeded in pleasing God, not by his sins, but he pleased God. The truth is, the Bible is a record of bankrupt cases of men who were full of the wreck and ruin of sin, and yet grew up into this perfect stature of men in Christ Jesus our Lord. What an encouragement it is for everybody to seek to be perfect before God.

Let me hasten to the conclusion. The first reason why we should be perfect before God is this, that God has agreed to help us, “I am the Almighty God.” He will stand by in every serious and sincere attempt to be his. If you seek to keep step with your convictions, if you seek to be true to your best light, remember that God is with you to help you all he can. I know about the weight of evil; I know that when we strike out for the shore, there is some dreadful undertow that seems to draw us back. I know the earthly is weak and we seem to be drawn down. But I answer the whole of it by this great truth in this text, “I am the Almighty God.” God helps, God will strengthen us.

There is a little thing that occurred in my boyhood, that has been a great comfort to me many times in the hard work I have been called to do. When I was about fourteen years old, and my brother about twelve, my father took us out fishing on Long Island Sound. We had a poor flat-boat called a scow. We were ambitious, like all little boys, and when we turned in to go to the shore, about four miles, I was entrusted with a pair of long oars, and my brother with a shorter pair. We saw near us a boat with two boys in it about our own age, with their father, an admirably built boat, clean in her lines as a yacht. They were looking at our boat, and the man said to my father, in a sneering tone, “You have got a pretty strong crew in there, but I guess we will beat you to town.”

My father said nothing, but he straightened up and looked at his boys. How we pulled! They beat us a good deal of the way; it was their boat; I knew the boys were not any better than we, for I had thrashed the biggest one several times. We pulled away, and they were yet three or four rods ahead, when my father reached out his great hands and put them on mine, I seem to feel them to-day, and as I pulled he pushed. We beat. Many a time I have thought of it when I have been trying my best, my father pushes while I pull. “I am the Almighty God.” That is enough for me. All it means is within my reach; all the possibility it promises is within my grasp; all hope, all blessedness, all might, all victory through my Father in Heaven. “I am the Almighty God. Walk before me, and be thou perfect.”

The second thought is, the glorious independence of such a life as this. The man who walks before God, who is his with devout trust, has this as the center and circumference of his idea: “I will, I must, I shall please God, and he will help me to follow him.” He understands all. A man walks through this world with his conversation in heaven. No room for selfishness, what shall become of me? Suppose that we could interview those five smooth stones that David took out of the scrip against Goliath, that we could endow them with intelligence; every one was willing to be slung against Goliath. I don’t suppose they would have whined and said, “I wonder why he picked out such a crooked stone as that. There is something wrong about that.” But with this idea of walking before God those four stones that lay in the scrip were as happy as they lay there as the one that went whizzing against the giant. Whether we run, or wait, or stand, or go into the fight it is all one. Milton says “they also serve who only stand and wait.” The perfect independence of this life is worth all it costs. Suppose in order to do it we must have the selfish feeling in us, like a cancer, cut out. As Mrs. Browning says, “He who tears his heart in twain, and casts away the baser part, is richer for his loss.” Painful as it may be, before this wonderful and attractive idea, it is cheap.

You remember that the River Nile runs one thousand two hundred miles through a desert land without a single affluent. How do you account for it? How does that great river pour its flood through Egypt, and keep alive for one thousand two hundred miles without a single stream to feed it? It is fed away back there in Africa, by those giant lakes, and kept ever full and rich. So it is with the soul that walks with God. Its sources are in God. He draws his sustenance, not from this poor world, but far upon the hillside toward God. As the rivers of Europe, that keep it alive, are kept alive themselves by the tall mountain peaks in Switzerland, so a soul that walks with God, that pleases God, is made a wonderful and everlasting benediction to all around him, while he lives independent of all. I do not say that people who are seeking this sort of thing do not feel or have a need of human sympathy. O, no, they have a great deal of it. I do not say that this ideal is so often found, but I believe it is possible. I believe I have made a testimony for you this morning. I want you to think and remember, if you want to walk before God, he will help you.

Somebody says, “How about the profession of this thing?” The Bible don’t say anything about it. That is a matter for your individual judgment. Your wife will find out about it if you find it. When I hear a man say hallelujah very loud, I want to know always how much he pays toward the Gospel. When I hear a man say he is very happy, or holy, I want to know how he lives at home, how he carves the beefsteak. Abram did not hang out any sign, but he became so powerful that the kings all around wanted to make an alliance with him. If you are keeping step with the best ideal, it will show in the carefulness and kindness of your replies, in the grasp of your hand, in the intelligence and sweetness of your face. O, my friends, may I entreat you to set this before your eyes? I believe it is the ideal of God for man. “Walk before me, and be thou perfect.” He will help you as my father helped me to pull the boat. He will help you as every good, kind and gentle mother helps her child. He will help you every time. It will not be a flash and then over. He will make you happy, joyful and independent by day and night. Never mind the circumstances, you will be wrapped in arms so soft and hovered in a love so deep, it will not leave a desire in your souls unsatisfied; there will be such choral harmonies within, that the babel tongues of this world will not overpower them.

Some one may say, “But, Mr. Adams, how?” I say in a word, go to God and ask him, get yourselves humble; be truly penitent; be honest and sincere. Lay your hand in the hand of the Lord. You need not hypothecate any experience. You can not tell whether you are going to live long or not, but you can live with your hand in his.

If a sinner has heard me this day, he knows that this life is the life he wants. I spoke to a sinner the other day, “John, why don’t you give your heart to God?” “Oh,” said he, “I am sick of you Christians.” Said I, “Don’t you think there are Christians in the world?” “Well, that is a hard question.” “But, don’t you think there are Christians?” “Well,” said he, “I am not going back on my old mother.” “Didn’t you promise her to be a Christian?” “Yes, I believe I did.” “Why don’t you do it?” “Why there are so and so that owe me. I don’t want any of their Christianity, but I believe your kind of Christianity is true.” I believe John will give his heart to God. That is the kind that everybody wants. Nobody wants these poor, barren, lean kind, but we want this royal kind, that which fits and satisfies the feeling of our hearts.

I must close with one remark. It is a great and intense age; it is such an age as has never come to the world before. Some of the preceding ages have surpassed this in some respects, it is true, but men have never achieved as they are doing to-day. This great age demands a great piety; it demands deep, wide-spread spirituality. Let me tell you it again; a great age demands great Christians, Christians like Abram, Christians like Paul, Christians like John. Who will set themselves apart to do battle of the royal sort? To keep step with the spirit of the age? It is an age of culture. Education is the cry. There is such a thing, however, as using up your heart by giving too much education to your head. If you guard your heart with this ideal it will be all right. Oh friends, have your hearts filled with God! Follow this great idea to be perfect before God, that you may stand in the advance of the age, and may even run ahead of it. I say that an age like this, an age of lightning, steam, force, and advance in every department of human knowledge, demands that the men and women of the Christian Church should rise to the loftiest ideal of the Christian life. All the sublime achievements of Christian faith lie in the line of fidelity to your advanced convictions. It is the inspiration of souls, it makes the greatness of life. It is that which has made all the grand Christians in the world. It is that which will make Chautauqua grow from year to year in spiritual development, and surround it with a great light, as an aureola, and place it at the head of this great age.

Men and women of Chautauqua, let an unworthy servant of the Master, my Master the Lord Jesus Christ, whose I am and whom I serve, get down at your feet and beseech you to meet the greatness of this ideal. It is not enough to be a ship, it must be launched. It is not enough to have all these great qualities that God may give to you, you need to be consecrated. Hear the word of God to Abram amidst the din and clatter and roar of this age, hear him say, high out of the clear heavens, “I am the Almighty God, walk before me, and be thou perfect.” And that this may be your and my happy lot, is my earnest prayer.