THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES GIFT OF MABEL R. GILLIS Meets every Sabbath Afternoon, ut ]J o'clock. 5 LIBRA.!?. -y K.ECa-TJOL.^^TIOKrS. K 1. Punctuality at the opening of School entitles each Scholar to one Book. 2. Kvery Book drawn must he returned in one week. 8. Every Book to be neatly and carefully preserved from injury. SUNDAY AFTERNOONS. A BOOK FOR LITTLE PEOPLE. By E. F. BURR, D. AUTHOR OF " EOOE C(BHTM." ETC. N EW NELSON & PHILLIPS. CINCINNATI: HITCHCOCK & WAXDEN. SUNDAYrSCHOOL DEPARTMENT. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by NELSON & PHILLIPS, in the Oflice of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. OOI^TE^TS. PACK L THE SOUL 5 II. THE ANGELS 34 HI. Gk>D 56 IV. THE EMPIRE OP GOD 79 V. THE LAWS OP GOD 103 VI. THE WORD OP GOD. . , .124 SUNDAY AFTERNOONS, I. THE SOUL. IF I should ask you to tell me the names of all the things you have ever seen, you would think it very strange, and perhaps would say, " Why, sir, I could not begin to do such a thing. There are houses, flowers, trees, cattle, birds, men, lightning, fires, clouds, rivers, hills, fruit, grain, sun, moon, stars and ten thousand things besides. Why, sir, I could not be- gin to tell all the things I have seen, they are so many." You are right. Neither you nor the greatest man can tell even all the wonder- ful things, above, beneath, around you, that can be seen in a single day. How beauti- ful many of these things are ! Did you 6 SUNDAY AFTERNOONS. never take up a little flower, or a little shell, or a little butterfly, and hold it close to your eyes and see what soft, rich colors, and what bright, wavy, graceful lines there were all about it ? How grand many of these things are the great hills with their tops in the clouds ; the great rivers, bearing up the heavy vessels as if they were so many feathers, and sweeping them off into the broad sea ; the great world itself, which, as you have been told at school, is thou- sands of miles around and holds hundreds of millions of people ; above all, the glo- rious sun in the sky, a million of times larger than this world, and so bright that the strongest eyes dare not look it full in the face ! How awful are some of the things you now and then see for just think of the lightning as it shoots its forked tongue toward you ; the storm that, black as night, comes down on the woods, and makes them toss and break in the roaring wind ! And then what wise and beautiful contrivances there are in almost every thing The Soul. 7 you see in the bird that darts so swiftly through the air ; in the fish that cuts the water so easily ; in the squirrel that runs so nimbly from stone to stone and from branch to branch ; in your own bodies, with hands to catch, and feet to run, and eyes to see, and ears to hear, and tongue to talk, and a hundred other things to do as many other things with ! Now I want you to attend well to what I am about to say to you. I am about to say a very important thing, one which many older persons than you need to hear. It is this. These things which you see are not the only real things ; nor are they even the most beautiful, grand, important, and nicely made of real things. I know of something that is greatly better in all these respects. People sometimes call it spirit. No eyes such as we have ever saw it : no such eyes ever can see it. It is every- where about you, and yet, however sharp you may look, you will never be able to catch the first glimpse of it. Your eyes are 8 SUNDAY AFTEKNOONS. bright and young ; whatever eyes can do no doubt they can do ; but this I know, t that they never yet saw that wonderful thing called spirit, and never will see it. You can see what it does very often you can heai' and feel what it does almost every moment ; but, as to the thing itself, you cannot ever set eyes or hands on it. And yet it is a real thing as real as any rock or tree a very beautiful, and grand, and important thing, too, and full of marks of glorious wisdom much more so than such things as flowers, mountains, storms, suns. You cannot think how great and impor- tant a thing this same spirit is, and how important it is that you should know about it, though you cannot see it. It is because it is so important that I will now try to tell you something about it as well as I can. There are different sorts of spirit, just as there are different sorts among the things that you see. There is the black iron, the white silver, and the yellow gold ; there is The Soul. 9 the common stone of the field and street, the white, smooth marble which you see in the church-yard, and the dazzling diamond set in the crown of a king ; there is the dull clod that the plow turns over, the flesh of your cheek, soft and red with youth, and the quick, bright lightning that plays and darts so fiercely about the edge of the thunder-cloud : these all are things that can be seen, only different sorts of them. Just so there are very different sorts of spirit, and especially three sorts which we happen to know very well. One is called soul, another is called angd, and still another is called God. I will not speak to you about all of these just now : only about the first, the soul. You have heard this word before many a time ; but not so many, I dare say, that you cannot hear it many more times without hearing it too much. Somewhere within your body I will not undertake to say where is a some- thing which you cannot see any more than 10 SUNDAY . AFTERNOONS. if it were at the other side of the world ; which has no weight, nor color, nor size, nor shape that we know of, but which is very, very active, and can think and feel and choose. This is what looks out at your eyes, and pictures itself in your whole face, and speaks in the words you use. This is what sets your hands and feet in motion, makes you able to play or work or study, makes you able to see and hear and smell and taste. Without the soul within you, you would be like a dead person stiff, silent, doing nothing, knowing noth- ing. When you look at a watch you see the hands moving over its white face, and the faint tick never fails to reach your ears at every second ; but what makes the watch go and beat the time is not any thing that you see ; it is something inside that keeps silently pulling on the wheels ; it is the spring all covered up out of sight. And what puts all the motion and sound into that body of yours is not any thing that you see, but that unseen thing within The Soul. 11 which thinks, feels, and chooses, and which men call the soul. I say that you do not see your soul. No wonder, for it is within you. But you might even take a human body all to pieces, and watch very carefully while doing it, and yet you would not find the soul anywhere. Your eyes are not sharp enough to see such things, just as they are not sharp enough to see the air in this room and a great many things besides. No, you can neither see nor handle the soul ; but still we can know perfectly well that every body has a soul living in it just as a man does in a house. Suppose you should stand before a house and see smoke coming out of the chimney ; see windows and doors and blinds open and shut ; see curtains let down and raised ; see lights shining through the windows,* and moving about from room to room, and sometimes making shadows, as of persons, across the panes ; hear music coming from it in many well-known tunes you would have no 12 SUNDAY AFTERNOONS. doubt somebody lived in the house, though you never happened to see any one plainly showing himself at the window or coming out at the door. Even if you should find the door locked, and, on breaking it open, should find nobody in any of the rooms, you would still be sure that -somebody has been living there and has either hid or slipped out at the back door while you were getting in especially if you should find all sorts of furniture about, and even fires burning, table set. food all ready to be eaten, and should hear sounds as of feet going away. You would say, " Sure enough some one has been living here, but for some reason does not wish to be seen." So we know by a thousand signs that something lives in our bodies, very differ- ent from them, that thinks, feels, chooses, remembers, hopes, fears, loves, hates, en- joys, suffers, is bad or good. It speaks in the face, shines in the eyes, talks with the tongue, works with the hands, walks with the feet, does right or wrong with the The Soul. 13 whole body : and when learned people look into the body they find it all fitted up as splendidly for a soul to live in as ever a palace was for a king. Now there are some things that I wish to tell you about this soul that lives in the body just as if it were a house. We do not know all about it although it is so near us, and we carry it about with us all the while. For example, we do not know what it is made of, what shape it has, how it moves the hands and feet and other parts of the body, how it sees with the eyes and hears with the ears, how it is fastened to the body, or exactly in what part of the body it lives. A great many such things we do not know. But many other things we do know, and I will now tell you some of them. Souls are very many as many at least as there are living human bodies in the world. Each of us has a soul in his body. Every little child, however small and wherever living, has a soul, as well as 14 SUNDAY AFTERNOONS. every grown-up person. All the black people, such as live in Africa ; all the red people, such as once lived here and were called Indians ; all the olive people, such as live in some parts of Asia ; these all have souls as well as white people. So have all poor and homely and ignorant and bad persons, as well as the rich and fair and wise and good all the poor heathen away at the ends of the earth, worshiping idols, as well as such people as live here and fill our churches on Sundays. Do not forget this ; for some persons act as if they thought that only a few have souls a few rich or great or wise people. And most men seem to forget for a large part of the time that they themselves and their chil- dren, to say nothing about the heathen, have souls to be taken care of. You your- self are in danger of living just as if you have no soul. So I charge you to remem- ber that there is a soul within every human body. These souls are not all exactly alike. The Soul 15 Very far from it. They differ as much from each other as do the bodies in which they live. One is large, another small. One is strong, another weak. One is swift, another slow. Some are bright and strong and swift for some things, others for other things. One seems made to fill great places and do great things, another seems made for a small place and work. Indeed, souls differ as much as do houses and trees ; and you know that scarcely any two of these are exactly alike. We could not bring all our souls to be exactly alike if we should try. Some seem to try, but they never succeed. And it is not best that they should. We need to have souls differ from each other so that they may fill different places and do different sorts of work. So they are made very unlike as to what they are able to do, and as to what they like to do. Every teacher or father has to remember this very often. And now you understand a part of the reason why ministers and Sunday-school teachers 16 SDTSTDAY try to talk to children and others in so many different ways. It is because souls differ as much among themselves as do the leaves on the trees when the first frosts have touched them. What different colors, as well as shapes and sizes and ways of hanging ! No two are alike. All souls began only a little while ago. If I should ask you how old you are, you would answer, six, ten, fifteen years, as the case may be. This tells how old your body is, and it also tells how old your soul is. It is a new thing. A very short time ago nobody knew any thing about it it did not know any thing about itself. There was no thinking, no feeling, no choosing, no any thing that belongs to it now. But on a sudden it began to be. Almost as it were yesterday, your soul awoke in its fresh, new body remember- ing nothing, and looking out through the windows of your new eyes on a world that seemed quite new and strange. It felt it- self just beginning to live. And it was. The Soul. 17 Some souls in the world are older than yours, but none of them go back very far. A hundred years ago scarcely a single one of them was to be found. I am speaking now of souls that are living at the present time in the millions of human bodies all over the world. And, for my part, I do not believe that there is a human soul anywhere that is much more than six thousand years old. Perhaps this seems a long time to you, but it does not to me. At any rate, you will agree with me that it is but a very short time since your soul began. When souls begin to be, every thing about them is very weak and small. You know how weak the body of the little babe is. It cannot walk ; it cannot hold itself up ; it cannot even creep at the very first. Some one must do every thing for it, it is so helpless. If left to itself it would die. Now the soul of this babe is just as weak as its body. It knows scarcely any thing, it can do scarcely any thing. And when 18 SUNDAY AFTERNOONS. the babe becomes the little child that runs about, its knowledge and strength of all sorts, though greater, are still small. They grow somewhat as the little body grows ; but every child is far from having as large and strong a soul as a full-grown man. So the laws put him under the care of parents and others, who are to teach him, and show him what he must do, and bring him up. God also does the same. And, instead of being headstrong and wise in their own conceit, he bids them be mod- est, respectful, teachable, and obedient as becomes mere beginners in life. I have O known some children who seemed to think themselves as wise as Solomon, and who scorned to be taught and governed by anybody. And they were very unlovely and very foolish. I hope you will not be like them. On the contrary, always re- member that all young souls are small and weak. Souls not only begin very small and weak, but, what is a great deal worse, they The Soul. 19 begin very sinful. You know all too well what it is to be sinful what it is to do wrong, and what it is to find it easier and pleasanter to do wrong than to do right. You have tried it. And all have tried it from the time they were born. Among all the millions of souls that have lived, there have been only three that be- gan good, and only one soul that both be- gan and continued good. I think you do not need to have me tell you who these were. All the rest have been bad at the beginning, and more Or less bad all their days. And, to-day, there is not a single soul in all the world but is sinful and always has been. The best children have evil hearts. You do a great many wrong things, and always have done them ; and it is because your soul is out of order, in- clined to do evil rather than good ; as we say, corrupt. I will not now try to tell you how this happened. It is enough for the present for you to know that it did happen, and that nothing worse could pos- 20 SUNDAY AFTEENOONS. sibly have befallen us. There is no trouble like a bad heart. It is much worse than a sickly body. People are sometimes born with this, and we are sorry for them. But a sickly, corrupt, sinful soul a soul that is all the while trying to be wrong and do wrong, as water tries to run down hill is much worse. All our other troubles come from this. If there had never been any sin there would never have been any sor- row. All the pains and groans and tears we know of came from this root. I hope you will remember this also, and always think it a very sad thing to have a sinful soul. And it would be a much sadder thing than it is if one could never get rid of this sinful ness ; but this every one can do by degrees. By degrees he can get the better of this soul-sickness, just as we sometimes get the better of a sickness of the body. We call a doctor, we take some medicine, we get a good nurse, and after a while we begin to mend. We have less and less pain, our eyes grow brighter, The Soul. 21 the color comes back to our cheeks, our appetite comes slowly back, we get new strength day by day, at last we walk abroad and go about our business as usual. We are well. So we can get the better of our sins, and indeed of almost every thing about the soul that we do not like. I have told you how weak and narrow the soul is at first. But souls are growing things. They can be made to grow without stopping as long as we live. Your body must stop grow- ing after a little while, but your soul can grow and grow and still grow without end. It will never get so large and strong that it cannot be larger and stronger. It O O can always be wiser and better and more powerful to-day than it was yesterday. I do not say that it will certainly improve in this way, only that it can do so. There is nothing that need hinder. If it should live forever it could grow forever. The trees grow about so tall and then stop : they never grow any more, though they 22 SUNDAY AFTERNOONS. live a thousand years afterward. So with every sort of animals each has a certain small size which it never goes beyond, however long it lives. Nothing can keep such things growing. No care, no food, no rest, no nursing. They will even become smaller and weaker as they become old ; but the soul every soul, your soul can be so managed that every year it lives shall see it brighter and fairer and stronger and larger. It is more elastic than any thing we know of. It is like a certain tent which we read about in the fables. It could always be stretched a little more. To-day it covers but a single man. By and by it will cover his whole family. When that family has grown into a tribe the tent will still be found capacious enough to cover them all. And when the tribe has become a nation and fills all Arabia with its people, all its millions will be sheltered just as well by that ever- growing silk as was the first man who used it. The Soul 23 Now I come to something that makes this fact very important. This is that souls will have an opportunity to grow and improve forever. They have but a short life to look backward to, but they have a very long life to look forward to. Just think of it this young soul of yours is to live FOREVER, FOREVER ! It has no death about it. You could not kill it if you would ; nor could the strongest man that ever breathed. Sickness cannot touch it. It cannot be pierced, or crushed, or burned, or drowned. Battles and armies even, with their sharp swords and shotted cannon, cannot make an end of it or even hurt it. Hundreds after hundreds of years will pass, thousands after thousands, mill- ions after millions, and yet not one wonder- ful soul of all the many now on the earth will have ceased to be, or even have grown old. They will be as fresh as ever ; nay, fresher and stronger and more active as the ages go by ! Is it not a great thing to think of that these souls of ours that so lately 24 SUNDAY AFTERNOONS. began will go on living, acting, thinking, feeling, growing without end ? But though all our souls will live for- *_? ever, none of them will live alwavs, or / / even a great while, in the bodies we now have. Sometimes a man's house is burned and then he moves into another. Always it grows old and crazy, and at last falls down, and then the man is found living in another. So it will be with the body- houses which our souls live in. Some of them will go to pieces before their time burned up by fevers, torn down by what people call accidents perhaps before an- other year has gone. Others will last several years, growing larger, stronger, and firmer at first, and then weaker and weaker, till at last they will become so old and tottering that our souls can stay in them no longer. The same day and hour that they fall the souls will go out to find somewhere else to live. Where will they go ? Go somewhere they must, for they must live and live for- The Soul, 25 ever, and they can no longer live in their old homes. Where will they go ? Now it so happens that I can answer this ques- tion just as well as if I had already seen souls go out of their bodies and had fol- lowed them. I have been told by One who knows One that it were wicked and dreadful not to believe that they will go to one of two places. One of these places is that " Happy Land " of which you have so often suns;. It is a most beautiful O place. You never dreamed of any thing half so beautiful. Your parents and oth- ers that love you could not wish any thing better for you than that you might go at last to live in such a place. A man once had a chance to look at it, and it seemed to him as though it were all covered with O gold and precious stones, while waters clear as crystal sparkled, and green fields smiled, and glorious trees waved leaf and fniit over beautiful people with crowns on their heads and dresses white as snow, and the strangest, sweetest music fell upon his ear. 26 SUNDAY AFTEENOONS. You cannot think how happy and how good the souls are that get to this won- derful place. They never do any thing wrong. They know nothing'about trouble. To live is a wonderful joy : they could not be happier. This is one place to which our souls may go when they leave the bodies in which they now live. Then there is another place, just as unlike this as unlike can be. Instead of being the brightest and loveliest place that ever was, it is the darkest and most frightful. Instead of o being the happiest and holiest, it is the most wretched and wicked. There is nothing like it for badness among all bad places. It almost makes me faint to speak about it, and even to think about it. You could not wish anybody any thing worse than that he might live forever in such a place. O, it is so horrible and wicked ! To one or the other of these places all our souls must go when they leave their bodies. But very likely this answer will not satisfy you. It ought not to satisfy The Soul. 27 you. Of course you want to know to which of these two places the one so glo- rious and the other so dreadful your soul will have to 2:0 when you die. Well, O / ' I can answer this question too, and you can make sure it will be a right answer, for I had it from One who knows all about such things, and who would not deceive me on any account. You ask me to which of those two places, the one so bright and the other so bad, your soul will go when the breath leaves your body. I answer, that depends on how you behave while the soul is still in your body. Remember that all depends on how you behave ivhile the soid is still in your body. If you be- have in a certain way, your spirit will surely go to the beautiful land and stay there forever. It is what you are doing now that will settle where your soul will go. If you will be sorry for the wrong things you have done, and will pray Jesus, the Christian's Saviour, to forgive you, and will sincerely set yourself to love and serve 28 SUNDAY AFTERNOONS. him as long as you live, nothing more will be needed. Your precious soul will go up straight as a ray of light to Para- dise (for that ^is one of the names of the happy country) the moment you breathe your last. But if you do not choose to do this, and die without having done it whether that be to-morrow or fifty years hence the consequence will be that your precious soul will go down straight to that dark country of which I have told you, never more to come back. So I have an- swered your question. I said to you that spirit was a far more wonderful and important thing than any thing you can see, look where you will. You see that this is true even of souls- true of your soul. There is nothing that you have ever seen, or that others ever saw, half so grand, so wonderful, so pre- cious, as is that unseen, thinking something that hides within your young body. It is that which does all your planning, feeling and choosing for you. It is that which The Soul 29 knows and remembers ; which loves and hates, fears and hopes ; which does right and wrong, and can do either to almost any extent ; which feels happiness and misery, and can feel either to almost any extent ; which, though it has only just be- gun to be, will be forever either in a happy or wretched place, according as it shall choose to act in this world. Said I not truly that among things that your eyes can see there is nothing that for a moment can be thought worth so much as this ? Now you see why it is that ministers preach and urge so Sabbath after Sabbath : it is because the people have souls, pre- cious, undying, sinful, endangered souls. Now you see why missionaries are sent to distant countries: it is because the heathen living there have souls precious, undying, sinful, endangered souls. Now you see why Sunday-schools are held, and so many good books and papers made for children. It is because they all have souls precious, undying, endangered souls. 80 SUNDAY AFTEENOONS. Now you see why it is that your good parents and other friends are at times so concerned about you, and pray for you so earnestly. It is because you have a soul within you a precious, undying, endan- gered soul. Now you see why it is that I am writing this to you. Surely I should not have thought of writing to you at all, much less of writing to you about spirits and souls, had I not known that in every child lives a soul precious, wonderful, endless, and in danger of being endlessly miserable and sinful, one which you need to think of, and value, and care for more than any thing else. And now what I want of you is, that you take care of this soul of yours that is worth so much. If you do not take care of it, there is no use in your taking care of any thing else. Suppose a house is on fire. It is getting very hot, and all about the doors and the windows and the roof the flames are bursting out. You wonder why the little boy that you know to be in The Soul. 31 the house does not come out. You see him running by the windows every now and then. Why does he not come out ? Suppose now you should find out that he was looking for pins, and bits of ribbon, and other such little things trying to make sure of as many of them as he could what would you think of him ? You would say he was a very foolish boy, would you not ? What good will his pins and ribbons do him if he burns up ? Let him come out let him save himself and when he is far from danger he can go hunting his little things wherever he O O pleases. So I say to you, before all things save your souls. This is the thing to be done before play, before work, before study, before every thing. If you should never get to that " Happy Land " little- good would any thing do you. But I hope you will try to get to it. And if you try, and try, and go on trying, you will succeed. It is not so hard a thing for those of your age to be sorry for their sins and learn to 32 SUNDAY AFTEENOONS. love and please Christ as it is for those who are older. Will you not do it ? This will save that soul of yours that is so precious. This will make it happy forever in that beautiful country to which it will go as soon as your body dies. There are many bright and beautiful children there. No words can tell how they shine and sing, with crowns on their heads and harps in their hands ! I hope to see them some day ; and I hope also to see you among them, as bright and fair and happy as any. What a pity if you should miss such a glorious place you whom the Saviour meant when he said so kindly, " Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not : for of such is the kingdom of God." There was once a great king who had many beautiful jewels and robes and crowns and scepters, and he thought that they should not always lie in a dark room and be seen by scarcely anybody ; so he had them all brought into the center of a great building and placed on tables right The Soul. 33 under a great window in the roof, so that all his people and people from other lands might come and see them. I went with many others, and I saw well all those beau- tiful and costly things. But I noticed that the king was very careful of his treas- ures. He plainly did not mean that any of them should be stolen or harmed. There was a strong iron railing about them. There were soldiers to watch and keep off the crowd. We could not touch any thing. We could only -see the splen- did show. That was all right. I did not blame the king. He did as he should have done. It was proper that his care of his treasures should be as great as their great value. See how you should do ! A soul is a far richer and fairer and more costly treasure than ever shone in the robes and thrones and diadems of kings. You should take great care of it. You should fence it off from harm as with sol- diers and with rails of iron, for if you should lose it the loss could never be made good. 34 SUNDAY AFTERNOONS. II. THE ANGELS. rflHERE are things about you besides I what you can see things just as real as trees and hills and stars. I mean spirits. These wonderful beings do all the thinking and wishing and willing, all the knowing and feeling, all the loving and hating, all the hoping and fearing, all the right-doing and wrong-doing, that is done any where and yet you never saw them, and never can see them with such eyes as you now have. We know of at least three sorts of spir- its souls, angels, and God. When I last met you I spent the time in telling about souls those beings which, hidden in our bodies, do all our thinking and wishing and willing. I will now tell you about another kind of spirits, namely, angels. The Angels. 35 A long time ago some soldiers were standing before a cave. They had been standing there all night to keep the dead person who had been laid in it from being carried away. Just as morning was com- ing it was Sunday morning that was just beginning to touch the hills in the east they suddenly heard a great noise and the ground shook under their feet, and they saw something like a man come down from the sky close to them, with a face bright as lightning and dress white as snow. They were so frightened, soldiers as they were, that they fainted away. But some good women who came along had better courage, and, though they did not dare to speak to so bright a being, they heard what he said to them. He told them what they c'ame to the place for; that the dead body they expected to find was alive again and gone, and that if his friends would 2:0 to a certain mountain v&-* they should see him. This was an angel, or, rather, it was the body which an angel 36 SUNDAY AFTERNOONS. had put on. As nobody has ever seen a soul, only the body in which it lives, so nobody has ever seen angels, only the bodies which they have worn. But, for all that, we know a good deal about them, and you should understand that they are as much grander and brighter than our souls as that lightning-body which the soldiers saw was grander and brighter than such bodies as we have. The angels are much more knowing than we are. They are a great deal wiser and stronger. I do not suppose that a whole army of men would be able to stand against one of them. Indeed, I happen to know that one night a single angel killed near two hundred thousand men ; and it was done so quietly and easily that those sleeping by the side of the slain knew nothing of it till the morning came. Then they awoke and found the cauap filled with dead. The angels are not obliged to creep along the ground as we do. They can fly through the sky swifter than any bird, The Angels. 37 swifter than any cannon-ball, swifter even than the swift lightning. We cannot get away from the earth if we try ; the most we can do is to travel a little on it, and now and then go up a few hundred feet in a balloon. But the angels can fly away to the sun and stars, and can pass from star to star almost as quickly as you can think of its being done. If you want to go into a room you have to open a door or win- dow ; if you want to go to the other side of a hill you have to go over or around it ; but an angel can pass right through walls of wood or stone just as if they were so much air. Did you never read how it happened once in the olden time ? Some friends of Jesus were together in a room, and the doors and windows were all shut and fast- ened for fear of the Jews. All at once Jesus stood in the midst of them. How did he get in ? No door had opened, nor window. Could you have looked at the bolts and bars you would have found them 38 SUNDAY AFTERNOONS. quite untouched. Yet there he was. This shows you how easily angels may go any- where among us, and that not even the thickest prison walls can shut iu or out these wonderful spirits. The angels are very old. Long ago, when the world was young, men them- selves lived almost a thousand years trees are now standing which must have stood more than three times that great time and O how long, long a time that does seem to you, stretching out and out as if it would never end ! But I have no idea this is any thing like as long as the angels have lived. I cannot say exactly how old they are, but I think that the youngest of them is older than the world counting from the time when men began to live on it. Six thousand years, at least, have the angels lived it may be six hundred thou- sand and, what is even more wonderful, they show no sign of being old at all. They are just as fresh and strong as they ever were. They were never so wise, so The Angels. 39 active, so mighty as they are at this mo- ment. They are actually getting stronger and stronger every day, instead of weaker and weaker. " Is this so ? " you say ; " then very likely they will never die. This growing; stronger for six thousand O ~ O years and more does not look like dying." You are right. The angels will live always life-time after life-time, century after cen- tury, world-life after world-life, I had almost said eternity after eternity. Are they very many, these angels ? O yes, wonderfully many ! There is no counting them, they are so many. Not long ago we were every day hearing of our great armies at Washington and else- where, all ready to fight for and against their country. Could you have seen them you would have said, " What a sight of people ! " And then almost every country in Europe has armies nearly as large as we once had. But put theirs and ours to- gether and they would not equal the mighty armies of the angels. Sure I am 40 SUNDAY AFTERNOONS. they are many times more than all the people of the world. They are like the leaves on the trees or the sands on the sea-shore. Did you never hear of a little boy whom his father took one day to the beach to gather the yellow shells and play in the soft white sand and how the child took up a handful of the sand and tried to count all the little grains and how he soon became quite discouraged and gave up the counting, and said, " Father, there is no end of them ! " Suppose he had tried to count all the sands on all the sea-shores of the world ! As well might one try to count the angels. There are two sorts of angels, living in two very different places. One sort are perfectly good beings, and these live in Heaven, that beautiful place to which good men go when they die. The other sort are very bad beings, and these live in Hell, that dreadful place to which bad men go at last. Once there was only one kind of angels. They were all good and all The Angels. 41 lived in Heaven. But a great many of them in some way became wicked, and after that they were cast out of their glo- rious home and were obliged to go and live in a place as bad as themselves. And that is very bad. Neither bad nor good angels are bad or good like men. The good are perfectly good and the bad are well-nigh perfectly bad the one sort white as the whitest snow, the others black as ink. And so the place where the good angels live Is the brightest and most beau- tiful that ever was known, and the place where the others live is the dreariest and worst nothing like it anywhere. But you must not think that the angels stay in these places all the while. These places are only their homes. They go and come, just as men do. A man leaves his house and is gone all day perhaps a good many days and yet people call it his home, and say that is where he lives. Perhaps he goes a great distance say to New York or Washington perhaps he travels about on 42 SUNDAY AFTEKNOONS. the other side of the ocean for a whole year, and yet people say this is his home, this is where he lives. In the same way we say that Heaven is the home of the good angels, and Hell the home of the bad, though none of them stay in these homes all the while, but, on the contrary, fly about and go away to very distant places, and stay away for a long time. I have no doubt that both kinds of them come as far as us, and make a long tarry too especially the bad angels, because our world is so much pleasanter than theirs ; but still Heaven is the place to which the good angels belong, and Hell is the place to which belong the bad angels. The angels are not all equally great and strong and wise and high. It is with them as it is with men. Some men are strong, and some are very weak. Some know much, and some very little. Some are beautiful, and some are very homely. Some are private soldiers, some captains, some generals, and some kings and empe- The Angels. 43 rors. They differ among themselves as much as do the lakes and the mountains. We have three small lakes in our own small town, but these would be almost nothing by the side of some of our great western lakes stretching through hundreds of miles. We have our large hills, and any day you can see Mount Archer look- ing down pleasantly on them, as a father does on his children ; but what would the highest of these be by the side of the Rocky Mountains and the Alps, their heads white with everlasting snows? There is just as much difference among the angels in greatness and glory as there is among mountains or lakes or men. Michael is a leader and prince among the good angels, Satan is the leader and prince among the bad angels. And there was a time, now long ago, when these two great spirits, each with an army of lesser spirits under him, fought against each other on the plains of Heaven. Satan was conquered, and he and his fell from Heaven as some 44 SUNDAY AFTERNOONS. of you have seen the shooting-stars fall in November only much more thickly. The sky was all ablaze with them. In this country people often change their homes. A man sells out. He gets together all that he cares about, and puts it on a cart or in a boat, and goes away into another place to live. Still, some per- sons spend their whole lives in one place. The houses they were born in are the houses they live and die in. In England, the country from which our fathers came, it is no uncommon thing to find families which have been living on the same lands and in the same dwellings time out of mind fathers, grandfathers, great-grand- fathers, and away back for hundreds of years. They have never moved. They are proud of it, and hope they will never have any other homes while the world stands. It is not very likely they will have their wish, this is such a changing world. But I can tell you of some beings who never, never change their homes. I The Angels. 45 mean the angels. It is true that the bad angels made a change some thousands of years ago, (and a very dreadful change it was,) but there will be no more changes. They will never have any other home than the dreary, dreadful one they have had ever since. And the angels who kept their goodness will never have any other than the bright, glorious home they have always had. No, from this time forward none of these spirits will ever change their home; and the reason is, that none of them will ever change their character. Bad men often become very good men bad children often become very good chil- dren. Your parents and teachers are hop- ing that those of you who have evil, wicked hearts will one day come to have good hearts instead of the bad. Such things are happening every day, especially among the children who go to the Sunday-school. I have read of a boy so bad that he had to be sent to prison. He would swear and lie and steal, and when a kind man tried 46 SUNDAY AFTEKNOONB. to help him and teach him "better things he had no gratitude, but tried to steal from that best friend. But that friend would not give up the poor wicked boy, and after awhile, though he was so wicked at first, he came to be good. People hardly knew him, the change was so great. It was like 'the change sometimes made in ail old house. The carpenter repairs, takes away, adds, and at last you hardly know the building. It is as good as new. On some accounts it is better than a new house could be. Such was the change in that little boy. He was quite another child, much to the wonder of all who knew him. And all of you can be changed from bad to good in the same way. But such a thing will never happen to the bad angels. They will always stay bad, and the good angels will always stay good. A change there will be, but not of this kind. The good angels will get stronger and stronger in their goodness every day, while the bad angels will be The Angels. 47 getting worse and worse. And so it will be that none of them will ever change their home. If it is Heaven, there they will stay forever. If it is that other world, which it is so hard to name because it is so dreadful, there they will stay forever. Each in the place suited to his character. But now, perhaps, some of you are thinking something like this, " What have we to do with these angels ? What use in our hearing so much about them, if they do not live in this world ? " Let me tell you, by bringing back to your minds what I have already told you. The two worlds where these angels live are the places to which when we die all of us must go. We must have, by and by, one or the other sort of angels for company, and have them for company always. And there is another thing to be thought of. Though the homes of the angels are in o o the two distant worlds I have spoken of, yet these spirits are by no means shut up in them, but spend much of their time in 48 SUNDAY AFTERNOONS. this world right among us. Good angels and bad they are flying about us all the while. They are in the fields where men are at work, in the stores where men buy and sell, in the boats where men are fish- ing, along the roads where men are walk- ing and riding, in the houses where fami- lies sit together, even in the churches where we come to learn and do holy things. They are at our ears, our eyes, our tongues, our hands, our hearts. They put good and bad thoughts into our minds ; they try to get us to do this and to do that ; they help us and they hinder us ; they fight for us and they fight against us. The holy angels try to do us all the good they can the wicked angels try to do us all the hurt they can. N The good spirits want to have us good like them- selves, and do all they can to make us so : the bad spirits want to have us bad like themselves, and do all they can to make us so. And they do not forget the children, down to the youngest. I suppose they The Angels. 49 are just as busy at the ears and in the heart of a child of six years as of a man of sixty the good pulling him upward, and the bad pulling him downward. None of them can make even the smallest child do as they please : all they can do is to tempt him, to persuade him. If he has a mind to refuse them he can do so, and can drive them quite away from him. All he has to do is to say NO to them, and to keep saying it, and they will leave him, whether they are good angels or evil ones. And if he wants to keep them let him say YES to them, and Jceep saying it, and they will stay by him without fail. So you must never think yourselves alone. When your fathers and mothers and playmates are out of sight, and on looking about you every-where, above and below and around, not a sign of a person can be seen, then remember that there are many beings besides those which the eye can see. For aught you can know the air about you may be all alive with people 50 SUNDAY AFTERNOONS. people whom you cannot see, but who can see you and hear you and know all you are doing. It may be as if you were in a city when you seem most alone. Do not forget that the world is full of angels, bad and good, and that at no moment can you be sure that thousands of them are not watching every thing you do. There was once a good man whom a certain king wished to take prisoner. So this king sent a great army to the city where the man was. And when his serv- ant looked over the wall and saw so many waving banners and glittering spears he was much afraid. It seemed as if nothing could save him. Then his master asked God to open his eyes. . All at once, in- stead of finding himself all alone amid a host of enemies, he saw the sky about him filled with protecting angels. Of course he was not afraid any more. When he thought himself all alone there were thou- sands and thousands of angels about him. So it may be with you. The Angels. 51 Besides, do not forget that there is a great struggle going on between the two kinds of angels as to which shall have you with them. 'The good angels want you, and the bad angels want vou. The one o / want to have you wise and holy, and to take you up with them to the beautiful world where they most delightfully live ; the others want to make you foolish and wicked, and to take you down with them to that wicked world where they are to live forever in shame and punishment. And so they are struggling and pulling you different ways. The reason you do not feel it is that the pulling is on your hearts and wills, and not on your bodies. They are trying to persuade you trying about as hard as they can to have you be their friends and go with them where they will always live. And you must think what you will do must choose on which side you will be. On which side shall we find you ? Would you not rather have the good 52 SUNDAY AFTERNOONS. angels for friends those bright, beautiful beings who love you so much ? To tell the truth the bad angels do not love you at all. They do not love anybody. All they want is to deceive you, and hurt you, and make you wretched forever. They will be as glad as such wicked beings can be to make you as wicked as themselves and drag you down to that black world where they belong, and there torment you us badly as can be without end they hate you so much. But the good angels love you as much as the bad ones hate you. If they can only get you to be on their side and to do as they do to be good liko themselves, and go with them to their golden homes in the sky it will make them very happy. How your parents' faces will sometimes shine upon you with love and joy when they see you doing well, and feel encouraged to think that you will grow up to be a comfort and honor to them ! You would at such times see much brighter faces than those of The Angels. 53 father and mother shining joyfully upon you, if you could then see the good angels which are all about you. The sky is all in a glory with their glad and thankful looks they love you so much. 4 Now which angels would you rather live with always ? What place would you rather live in always the brightest and fairest and happiest world that ever was known, or the blackest and wretchedest ? I know what you would say, "We want to go to the Happy Land. Every one of us wants to find his home at last with those bright angels, brighter than summer or the stars, and who are as loving as they are bright." But, that you may do this, you must begin now to be like the good angels. While you are in this world you must learn to be good like them you must learn to love right-doing and to hate wrong-doing, just as they do. It is not easy for you to do this. You have evil hearts which help the bad spirits to lead you in evil ways. But you can get the 54 SUNDAY AFTERNOONS. better of them if you try hard. There is a great Spirit, far greater than they, stronger and wiser than all of them to- gether, who will help you against them if you will ask Him. There is a great Sav- iour who lores children and is mightier O than all the evil angels and your evil hearts put together, and who will save you from them if you will ask him. I hope to tell you more about these great helpers soon ; but you know something about them already, and when you feel it hard to be good you must not forget to ask them to help you. Ask them to take away your evil hearts. Ask them to take your part against the bad angels and Sa- tan their king. In this way you will drive those evil ones away from you, and the bright, good angels will most gladly take you for their own, and watch over you day and night, and help you to be better and better; and by and by, when you die, they will gather about you in a golden cloud and carry you up with joy- The Angels. 55 ful songs to your home in heaven. And such a home ! I have seen many places which I thought very beautiful. I have seen pictures of places which I thought more beautiful still, and I can shut my eyes and build up in my thoughts glorious palaces and cities and countries far richer and fairer than I ever saw in the finest paintings ; but even these thought-pictures, when we have done our best to make them lovely, give but a very poor idea of that glorious land to which you and I may go if we will. SUNDAY AFTEK NOONS. III. GOD. I SHALL speak to you next about the greatest Being ever known about GOD. This is one of his names, the name we most hear ; but he has many other names, such as Lord, Jehovah, Crea- tor, Almighty. I hope you will remember how I have come to speak to you of this great Being. I first told you of two sorts of things the things that can be seen, and the things that cannot be seen with such eyes as we have. People sometimes call these two sorts of things matter and spirit. I did not say much to you about matter about the trees, the flowers, the fields, the rivers, the mountains, the stars, although these are very curious and beautiful things be- cause they are not so beautiful and im- God. 57 portant as the other sort of things. So I went on to tell you about spirits. I said we knew at least three kinds of spirits souls, angels, and God. Souls I told you about when we first met. At our next meeting I told you about angels. And now I will tell you of the greatest spirit of all, namely, GOD the Being we pray to, the Being we speak of so often in the Church, the Being whose great name wicked people sometimes take in vain. You must not think that I will try to tell you every tiling about God. I could not do it if I wished, for I do not myself know every thing about him. Indeed, I know very little about him compared with what there is to be known He is so great a being. But the little I do know is very important, and I will tell it to you just as a father brings home to his children a few grains of sand from the great sea-shore that winds all around the world. God is like us in some things. Like us, he thinks, feels, chooses; and, like our 58 SUNDAY AFTEKJSTOONS. souls, he cannot be seen with our coarse eyes. But there are many things in which he is very different from our spirits. He has no one body in which he lives. No voice of his goes ringing daily, and almost every moment, through the air as our voices do. Our houses are sounding with words from morning to night ; the streets and fields echo with calls and shouts and talks ; but these are human voices only. Never once have we heard God's voice among them. We turn our ear upward, and then downward ; we set it toward every part of the sky ; we listen with all our might for something that seems like the voice of God. But we hear nothing but the whispering breeze, the humming insects, and the talking or shouting men. He speaks no words that we can hear. God is always silent among us. Years come and go, life-times pass away, and it is all the same the same unbroken still- ness. You never heard God say any thing ; your fathers will tell you that they God. 59 never have heard the tones of his voice ; your forefathers for hundreds of years will say as much. He has been known to speak on the earth ; but the last time of his doing it, so far as we know, was more than eighteen hundred years ago. Then his voice fell from the sky, and some men said that it thundered. But now he is always silent. Very different from us, also, is God in another thing. He can see and do things any distance away just as well as he can nigh. Your souls come and look out at o your eyes, and see the things that are very near you quite plainly ; but as soon as you begin to look a little way off every thing gets dim, and a little farther away you can see nothing at all. Your souls take hold of your hands and work easily on things your hands can reach, but on things miles away they cannot act at all. They have to send messengers. They have to shoot with the cannon. They have to stretch the telegraph wires. That is to say, they 60 SUNDAY AFTEKNOONS. have to make ^connection in some way with the thing to be acted on. But it is not so with God. He can see things equally well a thousand inches and a thousand miles away equally well where he is, and great star-distances away where he is not. He can work on the most far-away things just as well as he can on the nearest just as easily and quickly at the sun, or places in- finitely farther off, as he can just here where he happens to be. Distance makes no difference with his seeing or his doing. A thousand millions of miles counts no more than a foot. It is all the same as if he were every-where at once. It takes some time for the arrow, though shot from a strong bow strongly pulled, to reach its mark. It takes time for even the sun to shoot its swift rays to us. But God can shoot his sight or his power to the end of the universe in no time at all. Before we can think it is there. As soon as it starts it reaches the end of its journey. God. 61 Very much like this is another wonder- ful thing which you ought to think of. God is always seeing and doing. Much of the time we keep our eyes shut and see nothing at all. Much of the time we are tired and can do nothing. But God never sleeps, is never tired. There is no such thing as night to him. He keeps seeing and seeing, doing and doing, day and night, summer and winter, all the same. No doubt it is hard for you to under- stand how all this can be, it is so unlike what you can do. And yet it is not un- like what your heart can do. How it goes on beating all the while, day and night, without ever resting or needing to rest a single moment. Yonder is a man eighty years old, and yet his heart has not once stopped beating since the day he was born, and it is not tired yet. God is like that heart ; or rather, he is like the bright sun and stars that keep always moving and shiningnever once stopping 62 SUNDAY AFTERNOONS. through all the ages, and yet as bright and fresh now as they were when men first saw them. Think of God as a great eye that is never tired of seeing. Think of him as a great hand that is never tired of working. Another thing about God. He is per- fectly liappy. Men sometimes say that they are perfectly happy, but they do not mean what they say. There is always some drawback to their enjoyment, some bitter to their sweet, some sharp stones or thorns on the road they are traveling. And, taking months and years together, we all have something worse to speak of than enjoyments not quite so large and solid as they might be. We have pains, sorrows, sometimes miseries. But God is always as happy as he can be. Tis not with him as it is with us, now content and now " discontented, now happy and now wretched it is perfect bliss all the while. You liave seen the sun when it had not .a single spot or speck of cloud on its bright God. 63 face. You have seen a spring of beauti- fully clear water, not merely half or quar- ter full but running over at the brim. You have seen our Connecticut not merely covering its bed, so that you could see no rocks nor patches of sand, but overflowing all its banks, so that all the low meadows around were covered. Well, such is the happiness of God an unspotted sun, a full spring, an overflowing river. The next thing I shall speak of is often thought very hard to be understood ; but it is too important to be left out in telling about God. God is three. God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Son is he who was in Jesus Christ when he lived on the earth many centuries ago. The Holy Spirit is he who makes bad men good and good men better, especially in what you have heard called revivals of religion. Some- times a great many persons in a place break off their sins and bad characters at the same time, and the Holy Spirit in their hearts is what persuades them to do it. 64 SUNDAY AETEKNOONS. And the Father is he who sent the Son and sends the Holy Spirit. These three are all joined to each other in some way that we know nothing about, so as to make but one being, but one God. You must not think there are three Gods. This would be a very wrong and dangerous thought. There is but one God : only this one is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as closely joined together as are your three powers of thinking, feeling, and choosing. These three powers are not the same, but they are all equally great and honorable, and all belong to one soul. So the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not the same, but they are equally great and honorable, and together make one God. A few years ago and there were no such things as your souls. They have but just begun to be. But there never was a time when there was no God. Go back in your thoughts as far as you can go back hun- dreds of thousands of millions of years and God was living then. Go back as God. 65 many times this great number of years as there are specks of dust in the whole great world we live on God was living then. He has always lived. He never had a be- ginning. What a thing to think of never a beginning, never a beginning ! You must try to get hold of this thought so as to feel how great a difference there is between God and us, who were just noth- ings only a few years ago. A being who never began cannot but be. Nothing can destroy him. He will go on living forever and forever, and it will be because it will not be possible for him to stop living. Our souls, now that they have begun to live, will always keep on living, (in this respect they are like God,) but it will not be because they cannot be made to die. A plenty of power, such as I shall speak of soon, could strike them out of being in a moment more easily than you can lift a finger. God has only to say in his heart, Let them become nothings, and, quick as a flash, our places would be empty. One 66 SUNDAY AFTERNOONS. could never find us again, though he should O ' O go hunting through all the worlds. That word would be the last of us quite blotted out. But God cannot die. He is such a being that he could no more be made to die than two and two could be made to be five. All the power in the world or out of it, all the power you can think of, cannot do such an impossible thing. When we began God made us. He made us, and all things that we see, and all things that are. Himself is the only thing he did not make. All the fields and waters and skies, all the plants and ani- mals and men, all the dust itself which they are made of, all the souls of men, all the angels, all the matter and spirit that have been, are, or shall be you must look to him as the Maker of all. What is of most consequence to be remembered is that he made us, bodies and souls not merely put us together, as a carpenter does a house, but made the very materials which God. 67 he put together. Of course no man can do any thing like this. He cannot make the smallest bit of dust. He can make tools, machines, houses, that are really quite won- derful ; but then he must have something to make his watches and locomotives and palaces out of. Who ever heard of a man making something out of nothing ! This is what only God can do. Of course you cannot understand how he does it. No- body understands this. But a great many things are true which we cannot explain, and this amon