Do you know that it means not alone the giving of alms to the poor, the answering of the appeal that comes from the street, but it means that you shall see to it that there are no paupers in this Christian land; that there shall be no necessity for orphan asylums; that no child shall feel the need or want of a mother's love. It means that into the houses of opulence and into the homes of comfort these little waifs shall be taken, and fed upon the honey-dew of love until they do not know what orphanage means. It signifies that there shall be asylums - not prisons, but such sweet places as love may enter with divinest ministration to heal the wounded spirits of those who came into the world deformed in soul, as many do in body.

It is the boast of your Christian civilization that eyes have been given to the blind; that skillful letters and printed pages have been fashioned, and so arranged that the tender touch of the blind may be able to catch the ideas conveyed; that music can be taught, until those without vision may have a second sight and inspiration through music. Ears have been given to the deaf and voice to the mute, and out of the silence have come forth the wonderful heart-beats that throb for utterance. But more than this: the imbecile and idiot, under the skillful manipulation of men of divinest wisdom and charity, have found voice, and tongue, and inspiration; the prison-house of the spirit set free, the chained faculties made subservient to the soul that was within. But crime, and sin, and wretchedness alone have remained, bare and barren plague-spots upon Christian society because of the want of Christian charity.

To teach the blind to see is a great act of virtue; but the spiritually blind may have their other senses crushed as well as their eyes burnt out. To teach the deaf to hear has been a great act of civilization, but he who is morally deaf, who is morally infirm, he must be branded with another scourge, a greater indignity put upon him because he cannot hear a word of truth. To teach the lame to walk, and fashion appliances whereby they may do so, is a great virtue, and shows the skillful mechanical surgery of this century. But he who morally falters by the wayside, whose limbs are too weak to bear him through the surging crowd of human temptations, he is denounced and condemned to death. Christians teaching the Golden Rule apply the severity of the Mosaic law, and this is called charity.

We say to you that the physically lame, and physically blind, and physically deaf, and the physically hungry need your charity: but more than this, more than the demand of the spirit, the highest and holiest desire of the soul of man is life. Those who morally and spiritually are incapable, and yet from whom you turn with scorn and scoffing, not caring to find the cause of their malady near the cure for it, but only intent upon putting them out of the way - yes, put them out of the way until by the reaction that comes from the invisible world, and until by the power of that protest that rises up in humanity, human society perceives the eharael house in which it lives.

O it means that broad charity that extends its mantle not only over the feeble in body and those who are infirm, but the feeble in mind and spirit. And more than this, it comes straight home to your individual lives. You have charity for the man, perhaps, who wrongs your neighbor, who commits some injustice to another, or who, indeed, in the hour of madness or moral infirmity slays another man; but he who wrongs you let him beware ! The mantle of charity which you have extended to him who wrongs your neighbor has not sufficient scope to reach the one who does you an injustice.

0 whiteness of charity ! Thou wouldst turn thy face away at such false name as is given to thee, when he to whom an injury is given inflicts the last penalty of the law, and says: " Let us have Christian charity for all our fellow-sinners."

Nay, the first, the final, the whitest blossoming of charity is from within. "Forgive your enemies; do good to them that hate you." The Golden Rule is not intended for you to apply for the benefit of your neighbor, but yourselves. It is you that should return the good for the evil; it is you that are to overcome evil with good; it is you that are to find out these wrongs and infirmities and seek to assuage them; it is you that are summoned by this voice of the spirit to the state and feeling of charity.

You see why it is a gift now. You understand why it is more valuable than all others. For you may have the gift of tongues bestowed upon you; the gift of healing, the power of working of miracles may come from above, but charity can only come from within. It must be the outgrowth of your own nature; it must be that sublime and perfect whiteness that, while it sees the error and still understands that it is not good, has no word of condemnation.

Yon bright sunshine filling the worlds with splendor on this glorious Sabbath morning teaches you a lesson of charity. Where the mists came rolling in from the ocean, filling all the canyons and covering the hill-sides with a cloud; where, over the broad plain and along the rivers the darkness of the night hovered and the dampness brooded with its wings of shadow - no violence, no struggling, but only the peaceful light of the morning sun gradually, constantly, grandly rolling up from the eastern horizon until, like frightened ghosts of wrong and misery, the mists fled away down the mountain sides, hastened into the valleys, and away ofton the wings of the morning were ushered into oblivion; the sea took back the pinions that it had given for the night, and the drooping flowers that bad received the baptism of dew and of shadow lifted their eyes unto the light of day. Noiselessly, triumphantly, with constant power and calmness the wonderful working of the sunlight goes on in the world, and no man perceives it.

Even thus it is with the light of charity. It vaunteth not itself; it is not puffed up; it sounds no trumpet blasts; it bears no banners; it has no martial music; it makes no parade of the wonders of its power. In this Chistian land, in this nation of civilized and enlightened minds there is room for display; room for banners and martial music; room for those who proclaim that they shall go to Jerusalem for the visible body of Christ; but no room for the spirit of that Christ that would make it impossible for a poor man to starve to death in this city within a week, while fifty thousand dollars are given to those who make boast that Jerusalem is their shrine.

[Refers to the Masonic Triennial in San Francisco, held at the time this discourse was delivered.]

O mockery of Christ ! The visible body that ye seek is here in humanity !

O mockery of the meaning of Christ's words ! Ye rescue Christ from the hands of Pagan and Saracen, such times as ye rescue humanity from the sorrow and pain of wrong and misery that lies at your door.

Ten thousand dollars for native wines ! Not one cent for the wine of the spirit that is to flow out for the healing of the nations.

We make no fault of this; no one can excel in love of fellowship, hospitality, and the graces that belong to human society; but if we have the standard of Christ, let it mean something in our daily lives.

No one regards the past more sacredly than we do. The knight leaving home and fireside and friends to do battle for the right; he, who believing that Jerusalem is the most sacred shrine, following in the Crusades until the wars were ended. But in their very mockery of this, God put his visible sign of disapproval upon the visible Jerusalem, and made the spirit of man everywhere the shrine of the sacred pilgrimage. To do good unto others; to give your lives for their sakes; to make no journey that shall yield unto you physical results, save in the name of its profession.

But when Christ is summoned from the spirit universe, and that lovely light of charity that enfolds and enshines him in the hearts of humanity, we say, let him be summoned fittingly, in the name of that humanity whose light he was, whose child he typified; in the name of that humanity whose love now calls for him at the gates of all temples, beyond all lodges and all wonderful shrines.

O Christ of the spirit! by thy charity, white as snow, in the hearts and lives of the sons of earth, let us have the new1 temple, the new order, the new shrine!

I would rather be with those pleading for the rights of man, than with all kingdoms, and princes, and knights, who, for the past name's sake, see not the humanity pleading at their doors, and see not the signs of the coming of the new Christ, that God thereby may bring again the red cross into the world; for if battle shall come again to earth it will be between that humanity struggling, striving, seeking to rise, and these very powers who would build a citadel for the few and refuse the many the crust of bread which they ask in the name of humanity.

I see the visible form of that Christ before me now; not borne from His cross upon Calvary; not laid away in the sepulcher; not resurrected in bodily form again among the disciples, but the visible risen form in the little children that are around me in the streets, in the little countenances that you see day by day in the pain, and woe, and the misery that walks abroad in this land. And I hear the pleading voice of Him who said: "Inasmuch as you do it unto the least of these it is done also unto me."

So that voice of humanity pleadeth to-day, and that gift of divinest charity asks for a place in your midst. Be you its heralders; be you those who shall welcome its coming, and not the red but the white cross of divinest spiritual love. Let this descend in your midst and make its way in your hearts until there shall be no poor in spirit, none who are famishing for the bread of life, and none, indeed, who lack for that which you can give.