Having published in our last number the last discourse, but one, delivered in Copley Hall, we feel that, partly as a matter of historical interest, the publication of the last discourse delivered in the Mother Church under the old order of services may not be amiss, the more so as it is in some sense a sequel to the former one. This discourse also was taken down in short hand, and preserved,— of which fact we were not aware until a short time since, when the young lady who was good enough to take and preserve them made it known to us. The text was:
"And as ye go, preach, saying, The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. Heal the sick; cleanse the leper, raise the dead, cast out devils."
'"These words constitute the golden text of our last Sabbath's Bible lesson, and they are indeed a golden text. Were they written in letters of flaming gold across the sky they would not have too high a place, nor would they have any deeper or vaster significance for the human race than as here recorded as the utterance of the great Teacher nineteen hundred years ago. Golden words are these, and they become pure gold in human consciousness just in the degree in which they are received into that consciousness and assimilated and lived and brought forth in fruits and in actions. On last Sabbath we spoke from the words uttered by Jesus when he 'began' to do his first preaching (according to the record) and when he said, 'Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand,' and we endeavored to show how widely had this conception of the kingdom of heaven been departed from by the current views and preaching, since the time of their utterance and the present age. We endeavored to show that the kingdom of heaven was not afar off, an almost incomprehensible and inconceivable place of the future, but that it was a living, vital, present fact, and it may be made so, and can be made so, just in the degree in which humanity awakens to the fact that heaven is here and now.
