At Appleton Chapel last evening Rev. Lyman Abbott delivered a masterly sermon on the Bible taken as a whole. He said: The Bible differs from all other religious books in that from Genesis to Revelations it has the golden thread of promise running through it. The Bible is not merely one book; it is a library in itself consisting of sixty-six books written by forty or fifty different authors, and yet though it took fifteen centuries to compose it, it has a unity that none other possesses. It is this unity of promise that bids us hope for a better time to come.

Now the question is not who wrote these books nor when they were written nor whether the authors were inspired but are the promises true, in a word are the promises God's, and not merely those of an old Hebrew preacher? Of the many reasons for believing these promises true I shall tonight consider but one, the fact that today those very promises are being fulfilled. I turn to one of these promises. "And God said let us make man in our image after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth."

This promise was made when the most enlightened people in the world worshipped idols, the sun, the moon, the Nile and the crocodile that burrowed in its mind and the cattle that browsed on its banks, even the beetle that rolled its ball of earth in the dusty roads at their feet Now man calls lightning down from the sky and bids it play for him, he marries fire and water, and makes their child steam do his work. So it is with the other promises.

Christianity is pre-eminently a religion of the future, a religion of hope. It is said that on all the beautiful columns of the Greeks the word hope was never seen, while the walls of the dark and gloomy catacombs were radiant with promise.

It is generally conceded that of all torments remorse is the worst. Lady Macbeth in vain tried to wash from her hands the blood stains, and Bill Sykes could not escape the eyes of Nancy. They gazed up in to his from the clear waters, they looked down from the blue sky, and as he threw himself in a frenzy on the ground and buried his face in his hands, they peered out of the depths of the earth. But the Christian need not fear remorse; his thoughts are not for the past but for the future. He knows that his sins are abundantly forgiven.

Life opens with a cry and ends with a sigh, and throughout it all there is a minor key. Every one has his troubles; each life its rainy and gloomy days. But God paints the rain-bow only on the clouds, and the Christian rejoices in those trials that give him a greater supremacy over himself and open larger possibilities for the future.

During the evening the choir sang the following anthems: The Lord is My Shepherd. - Wareing. Come Now, Let us Reason Together.