rulers, and on the same platform, we must at last come before the throne of God to answer for what we have done for the bettering of the condition of the five hundred thousand people in Brooklyn. Alas! if on that day it be found that your hand has been idle and my pulpit has been silent. O, ye who are pure, and honest, and Christian, go to work and help me to make this city pure, and honest, and Christian.

Lest it may have been thought that I am this morning preaching only to what are called the better classes, my final word is to some dissolute soul that has strayed here to-day. Though you may be covered with all crimes, though you may be smitten with all leprosies, though you may have gone through the whole catalogue of iniquity, and may not have been in church for twenty years before to-day-before you leave this house you may have your nature entirely reconstructed, and upon your brow, hot with infamous practices and besweated with exhausting indulgences, God will place the flashing coronet of a Saviour's forgiveness. "O, no!" you say, "if you knew who I am and where I came from this morning, you wouldn't say that to me. I don't believe the Gospel you are preaching speaks of my case." Yes it does, my brother. And then when you tell me that, I think of what St. Teresa said when reduced to utter destitution, having only two pieces of money left, she jingled the two pieces of money in her hand and said: "St. Teresa and two pieces of money are nothing; but St. Teresa and two pieces of money and God are all things." And I tell you to-day that while a sin and a sinner are nothing, a sin and a sinner and an all-forgiving and allcompassionate God are everything.

Who is that that I see coming? I know his step. I know his rags. Who is it? A prodigal. Come, people

of God, let us go out and meet him. Get the best robe you can find in all this house. Let the angels of God fill their chalices and drink to his eternal rescue. Come, people of God, let us go out to meet him. The prodigal is coming home. The dead is alive again, and the lost is found. Hallelujah!

"Pleased with the news, the saints below

In songs their tongues employ;
Beyond the skies the tidings go,
And Heaven is filled with joy.

"Nor angels can their joy contain,
But kindle with new fire;
The sinner lost is found,' they sing,
And strike the sounding lyre."

CHAPTER XV.

SAFEGUARDS OF YOUNG MEN.

"Is the young man Absalom safe?"-II. Sam. xviii: 29. The heart of David, the father, was wrapped up in his boy Absalom. He was a splendid boy, judged by the rules of worldly criticism. From the crown of his head to the sole of his foot there was not a single blemish. The Bible says that he had such a luxuriant shock of hair, that when once a year it was shorn, what was cut off weighed over three pounds. But, notwithstanding all his brilliancy of appearance, he was a bad boy, and broke his father's heart. He was plotting to get the throne of Israel. He had marshalled an army to overthrow his father's government. The day of battle had come. The conflict was begun. David, the father, sat between the gates of the palace waiting for the tidings of the conflict. Oh, how rapidly his heart beat with emotion. Two great questions were to be decided: the safety of his boy, and the continuance of the throne of Israel. After awhile, a servant, standing on the top of the house, looks off, and he sees some one running. He is coming with great speed, and the man on the top of the house announces the coming of the messenger, and the father watches and waits, and as soon as the messenger from the field of battle comes within hailing distance the father cries out. Is it a question in regard to the establishment of his throne? Does he say: "Have the armies of Israel been victorious? Am I to continue in my

imperial authority? Have I overthrown my enemies?" Oh! no. There is one question that springs from his heart to the lip, and springs from the lip into the ear of the besweated and bedusted messenger flying from the battlefield-the question, "Is the young man Absalom safe?" When it was told to David, the King, that, though his armies had been victorious, his son had been slain, the father turned his back upon the congratulations of the nation, and went up the stairs of his palace, his heart breaking as he went, wringing his hands sometimes, and then again pressing them against his temples as though he would press them in, crying: "O Absalom! my son! my son! Would God I had died for thee, O Absalom! my son! my son!"

My friends, the question which David, the King, asked in regard to his son is the question that resounds to-day in the hearts of hundreds of parents. Yea, there are a great multitude of young men here who know that the question of the text is appropriate when asked in regard to them. They know the temptations by which they are surrounded; they see so many who started life with as good resolutions as they have who have fallen in the path, and they are ready to hear me ask the question of my text: "Is the young man Absalom safe?" The fact is that this life is full of peril. He who undertakes it without the grace of God and a proper understanding of the conflict into which he is going must certainly be defeated. Just look off upon society to-day. Look at the shipwreck of men for whom fair things were promised, and who started life with every advantage. Look at those who have dropped from high social position, and from great fortune, disgraced for time, disgraced for eternity. To prove that this life is an awful peril unless a man has the grace of God to defend him, I point

to that wreck of Friday at Ludlow street Jail, showing on what a desolate coast a strong craft may crash and part. Let there be no exhilaration over that man's fate. Instead of the chuckle of satisfaction, let there be in every Christian soul a deep sadness. The fact is, that there are tens of thousands of men in this country who, under the same pressure of temptation, would have fallen as low. Instead of bragging and boasting how you have maintained your integrity, you had better get down on your knees and thank God that His Almighty grace has kept you from the same moral catastrophe. There is no advice more appropriate to you and this whole country this morning than the advice of the Scripture, which says: "Let him that standeth take heed lest he fall." All my sympathies are for the afflicted family of that dead prisoner. For the last seven years some of them I know have endured an inquisition of torture. May the God of all comfort help them in this day when there are so few to pray for them. In the presence of this Christian assemblage I invoke the God of all compassion to have mercy upon those bereft children. It is hard to see our friends die, even when they die in Christian triumph and with all blissful surroundings; but alas! when to the natural anguish is added the anguish of a moral and a lifetime shipwreck. Ah! my friends, let us remember that that man made full expiation to society for his crimes against it. Let us remember that by pangs of body that no doctor could arrest, and by horrors of soul which no imagination can describe, he fully paid the price of his iniquity. Let others do as they may, I will not throw one nettle or one thistle on that man's grave. But, my friends, no minister of religion, no man who stands as I do, Sabbath morning and Sabbath night and Friday night, before a great