I saw, in some of the picture-galleries of Europe, that before many of the great works of the masters—­the old masters—­there would be sometimes four or five artists taking copies of the pictures.  These copies they were going to carry with them, perhaps to distant lands; and I have thought that your life and character are a masterpiece, and it is being copied, and long after you are gone it will bloom or blast in the homes of those who knew you, and be a Gorgon or a Madonna.  Look out what you say.  Look out what you do.  Eternity will hear the echo.  The best sermon ever preached is a holy life.  The best music ever chanted is a consistent walk.

I saw, near the beach, a wrecker’s machine.  It was a cylinder with some holes at the side, made for the thrusting in of some long poles with strong leverage; and when there is a vessel in trouble or going to pieces out in the offing, the wreckers shoot a rope out to the suffering men.  They grasp it, and the wreckers turn the cylinder, and the rope winds around the cylinder, and those who are shipwrecked are saved.  So at your feet to-day there is an influence with a tremendous leverage.  The rope attached to it swings far out into the billowy future.  Your children, your children’s children, and all the generations that are to follow, will grip that influence and feel the long-reaching pull long after the figures on your tombstone are so near worn out that the visitor can not tell whether it was in 1885, or 1775, or 1675 that you died.

Still further, I learn from this subject the advantages of concerted action.  If Abimelech had merely gone out with a tree-branch the work would not have been accomplished, or if ten, twenty, or thirty men had gone; but when all the axes are lifted, and all the sharp edges fall, and all these men carry each his tree-branch down and throw it about the temple, the victory is gained—­the temple falls.  My friends, where there is one man in the Church of God at this day shouldering his whole duty there are a great many who never lift an ax or swing a blow.

Oh, we all want our boat to get over to the golden sands, but the most of us are seated either in the prow or in the stern, wrapped in our striped shawl, holding a big-handled sunshade, while others are blistered in the heat, and pull until the oar-locks groan, and the blades bend till they snap.  Oh, religious sleepy-heads, wake up!  While we have in our church a great many who are toiling for God, there are some too lazy to brush the flies off their heavy eyelids.

Suppose, in military circles, on the morning of battle the roll is called, and out of a thousand men only a hundred men in the regiment answered.  What excitement there would be in the camp!  What would the colonel say?  What high talking there would be among the captains, and majors, and the adjutants!  Suppose word came to head-quarters that these delinquents excused themselves on the ground that they had overslept