other men are better than you are? Keep that fear, but only that it may
be the food of a diviner hope, that all the world may see in you the
thing that man was meant to be, that is, the Christ. Ah, you say, that
great world, it is too big; how can I stretch my thought and imagination
and conscience to the poor creatures in Africa and everywhere? Then
bring it home. Ah, this dear city of ours, this city that we love, this
city in which many of us were born, in which all of us are finding the
rich and sweet associations of our life, this city, whose very streets
we love because they come so close to everything we do and are, cannot
we do something for it? Cannot we make its life diviner? Cannot we
contribute something that it has not to-day? Cannot you put in it, some
little corner of it, a life which others shall see and say, "Ah, that
our lives may be like that!" And then the good Boston in which we so
rejoice, which we so love, which we would so fain make a part of the
kingdom of God, a true city of Jesus Christ, we shall not die without
having done something for it.

I linger, and yet I must not linger. Oh, my friends, oh, my fellow-men,
it is not very long that we shall be here. It is not very long. This
life for which we are so careful--it is not very long; and yet it is so
long, because, long, long after we have passed away out of men's sight
and out of men's memory, the world, with something that we have left
upon it, that we have left within it, will be going on still. It is so
long because, long after the city and the world have passed away, we
shall go on somewhere, somehow, the same beings still, carrying into the
depths of eternity something that this world has done for us that no
other world could do, something of goodness to get now that will be of
value to us a million years hence, that we never could get unless we got
it in the short years of this earthly life. Will you know it? Will you
let Christ teach it to you? Will you let Christ tell you what is the