The Newtown bee., 1897-01-08

Of course not, except in the most second. ary and subsidiary way, and yet it is the diamond and the truffies that the world looKs at. Thank God! the "Angelus" has it's word for us, and the picture of the "Reapers" has it's mes- sage of beauty, even if we have no rings, and must live on baked beans and cod fish. Let me say to you, my daer friends if there is any gal reward of genius, any real pleasure or fruit of power or of learning, which you do not have. it is because you will not take It. Here in l these common ways of ours, here in ! these common days of ours, all beautiful things, all true things, all that is great and good, may surely enter, and will with us abide.
 Yes, and here is the best word, even the blessing of the righteous man? the blessing of him who has done good and not evll all the days of his life, even the blessing of that one comes into our hearts, and is our blessing, as we learn ] to love the righteous, and to receive them and to long after their accomplis h
 ments of good. This is what we mean by receiving Christ, and this being blessed with the blessing of Christ. We are weak and have failed. We have done wrongly. We have touched evil, and been defiled thereby. Christ comes before us, the all pure and the all beau tiful. We see in Him the real beauty of holiness which we have missed. We love it. We welcome the word of such character into our hearts and into our homes. We see and know that such is none other than the revelation of God. WE WOULD BE CHRIsT-LIKE OURSELVES. We in our unworthineas receive thus the righteous one, and God breathes the peace and the joy of those who are righteous into our souls. We nave been unable to express our deslres after goodness, just as we have been unable to Eexpress our thoughts of beauty; here is the poet of goodness, here the artist of righteousness who expresses our thoughts of the best, the holiest and the [purest for us. As we receive his life land word, we receive his blessing; inst as when we receive the word which Michael Angelo has to tell us of beauty we receive it's blessing. Jesus Christ
 was the prophet, the poet, the artist of our higher life. That better life then we receive as we make ourselves hos pitable unto Him. Down here along the shore of the Sound there are great number of clear, beautiful springs. Sailing as boy oyer its waters we knew l where, at this place and at that one, we Icould go ashore, and find plenty of fresh, delightful water, but sometimes the water broke forth at too low level be- low the line of the tides. then all it's Isweetness was pulluted and spoiled: the tspring was salt and blackish, all unfit to drink then if you went up the bank little ways, aud hollowed out basin above the level Of the sslt water, there you were sure to fiod again the clear fresh water. Something like that is Christ's message to our lives. We break ont so often at too low level in our Hives. Our life Is distasteful, unpleas- ant, perhaps even bad and unhealthy
 we are down too low. Christ caused the fountain of life to break forth higher up, above the line Of warldliness. and se above the line of bitterness and discon. tsns. He has led U up to whers lifs ' 's| . r E||i '