Have you no idea of the coming of such a time?  Then you do not believe the Bible.  All the Bible is full of promises on this subject, and as the ages roll on the time will come when men or fortune will be giving larger sums to humanitarian and evangelistic purposes, and there will be more James Lenoxes and Peter Coopers and William E. Dodges and George Peabodys.  As that time comes there will be more parks, more picture-galleries, more gardens thrown open for the holiday people and the working-classes.

I was reading only this morning in regard to a charge that had been made in England against Lambeth Palace, that it was exclusive; and that charge demonstrated the sublime fact that to the grounds of that wealthy estate eight hundred poor families have free passes, and forty croquet companies, and on the hall-day holidays four thousand poor people recline on the grass, walk through the paths, and sit under the trees.  That is Gospel—­Gospel on the wing, Gospel out-of-doors worth just as much as in-doors.  That time is going to come.

That is only a hint of what is going to be.  The time is going to come when, if you have anything in your house worth looking at—­pictures, pieces of sculpture—­you are going to invite me to come and see it, you are going to invite my friends to come and see it, and you will say, “See what I have been blessed with.  God has given me this, and so far as enjoying it, it is yours also.”  That is Gospel.

In crossing the Alleghany Mountains, many years ago, the stage halted, and Henry Clay dismounted from the stage, and went out on a rock at the very verge of the cliff, and he stood there with his cloak wrapped about him, and he seemed to be listening for something.  Some one said to him, “What are you listening for?” Standing there, on the top of the mountain, he said:  “I am listening to the tramp of the footsteps of the coming millions of this continent.”  A sublime posture for an American statesman!  You and I to-day stand on the mountain-top of privilege, and on the Rock of Ages, and we look off, and we hear coming from the future the happy industries, and smiling populations, and the consecrated fortunes, and the innumerable prosperities of the closing nineteenth and the opening twentieth century.

While I speak this morning, there lies in state the dead author and patriot of France, Victor Hugo.  The ten thousand dollars in his will he has given to the poor of the city are only a hint of the work he has done for all nations and for all times.  I wonder not that they allow eleven days to pass between his death and his burial, his body meantime kept under triumphal arch, for the world can hardly afford to let go this man who for more than eight decades has by his unparalleled genius blessed it.  His name shall be a terror to all despots, and an encouragement to all the struggling.  He has made the world’s burden lighter, and its darkness less dense, and its chain less galling, and its thrones of iniquity less secure.  Farewell, patriot, genius of the century, Victor Hugo!  But he was not the overtowering friend of mankind.