And last evening,--That the motive of the Christian life, the true reason why we should become Christians, and live as Christians, is that other men may receive the blessing; that it may widen on, through us, into unknown ages. It was a carrying out of St. Paul’s thought, spoken to the Ephesians, about the Gentile world and the “ages to come.” It is the grandeur of Christianity that it will not permit us to shut ourselves up in our own personal or local interests,--that it belongs to the whole race, and unites us to every human heart. A note from Mrs. Garfield this morning. Though so nearly a stranger, she lets me in, a little way, to the sacred seclusion of her sorrow,--“this valley and this shadow,” as she calls it. She cannot see why the blow had to fall upon her,--nor can we see why the country needed it. The blasphemous conceit of the assassin, who claims to have been inspired by the Deity, makes it all the more perplexing. One good thing ought to come of this trial,--that we should all of us try to know clearly what we mean, when we claim close relations with the Divine Being. Too many, perhaps all of us, sometimes, use His name insanely, and therefore irreverently, in our thoughts, and to cloak our errors to ourselves. Begin this morning Max Müller’s “Science of Religion,” which I have never yet thoroughly read. January 1, 1882. Heard the midnight toll of the passing Old Year at Trinity Church last night. It was good to be there, and to come out into the clear starlight and moonlight of the New Year, with the great company that had reverently gathered in the church to watch the coming in of 1882,--another Year of Our Lord. Rev. Mr. ----’s sermon was appropriate, but that old, sad, haunting thought seemed to me to be too painfully impressed,--that, whatever we do, the scars of our past sins eternally remain,--that the losses caused by our wrong-doing can never be made up. Is it the true reading of God’s forgiveness in Christ? Is not the uplifting power of the new love with which His Spirit floods our life, something nobler than we should have known, except for the pain, and the wounding, and the loss that came of sin? For the evil that has come to others through us, may not a flood of good out of the heart of our loving Christ overflow all, and lift them, with us, to a higher stratum of life?--I must believe it--that righteousness in human souls will obliterate the past evil. If it is to be remembered no more, it must not _be_ there,--or some better thing must have come in its place. We cannot tell how far God’s love may extend, what miracles it works. The chapter about the New Jerusalem coming down from God out of heaven, was read as the year was passing, and Mr. Brooks made that the point of his remarks,--that the coming year might be the New Jerusalem to us. In that light all darkness may surely be forgotten.