FIFTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART VII. 691 



Here is a foreign tree, that blazes with such dazzling beauty. How are 

 you going to get the blaze out of it? You must cross it. You must saw ofif 

 a limb. You must send down into the stem of the limb— grafting there— 

 not putting in that kind of ''graft" which we hear so much about, but a 

 graft that has life in it. I have seen it done a hundred times in my boyhood. 

 That graft settles itself into the old, bleeding, split, old-fashioned limb, and 

 there comes out a newfashioned fruit. You can not get rid of this doctrine 

 of the new life by conversion from above. 



Somebody wrote me a letter the other day, and said, ' 'I don't like those 

 old hymns. I go to a place which suits me, because they have changed most 

 of the hymns." Yes, I know; they have taken liberties with the verses. I 

 would no more take liberties with another man's poetry than I would take 

 liberties with God's sunshine. He said, ''We do not sing about God's 

 atoning grace at our place, because we don't know that we believe in any 

 God, as the hymn writer did; and we don't know if we believe in Jesus as 

 the Christ. We can not sing, 'There is a fountain filled with blood,' We 

 can not sing 'Rock of ages.' The fact is that we have not very much that 

 we can sing." That is a farmer refusing to make his soul sing of the con- 

 version of native maize to this kind of corn. 



God pity the church where song is not the triumphant voice of the living 

 faith. The great day of the church of Germany came when Luther taught 

 it to sing. The great day of the church in England came when Wesley 

 taught it to sing. But it is a poor song of progress without converting 

 power. 



The fact is that growth in grace, or gracefulness, is a thing of grace. 

 It is something that comes from the outside and above, and appeals to thp 

 inside until it is changed. Don't be afraid of getting too much religion by 

 singing "Saved by Grace." For that is the way God saves all men. It is 

 not of yourself. Oh, no. It is the power of the living God. 



Remember the law of correspondence in all this. Ah, there is an illustra- 

 tion. (At this point in the sermon a pumpkin slipped fiom its place and fell 

 with a thud to the platform.) That is an illustration. It is exactly that. 

 There was something there that was out of, had lost, its true correspondence 

 with its surroundings. Let us stay with that pumpkin for a moment. 

 Suppose you blot the sun out of the universe . * ' Oh , ' ' you say , ' ' the sun is 

 nothing much but a dream man has made of the great mystery." Well, a 

 farmer objects. He says that to him the sun is something which works from 

 above upon everything. It goes through all things, so that nothing has a 

 separate existence of itself. Suppose you take away the sun, and try to rear 

 a pumpkin. The result would be unworthy the dream of a pumpkin, and 

 far less worthy of the farmer. The fact is, the pumpkin must grow under 

 the influence of the sun. It is a testimonial to the existence and power of 

 the sun. It is largely the result of the sunlight, as it lies there on the warm 

 ground. How many experiences it has had with the sun! How it welcomed 

 the sun, as it came streaming down! And it grew, and grew, by a religion 

 of experience in which the sun was God. 



Dear friends, here today not for the first time, to hear the message of the 

 harvest, here is the gospel of experience; here is the gospel of life. Can not 



