Last evening the preacher in Appleton Chapel was the Rev. W. de W. Hyde, D. D., President of Bowdoin College. His text was as follows: "Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good." (Romans, xii., v. 21).

In these days, said Dr. Hyde, we cannot conquer evil by epicurianism or by stoic unconsciousness. Mere animals, it is true, are innocent of moral evil, and so are those who seek to destroy evil by animalism. Many have written foolish novels trying to prove this, Walt Whitman being among those who have done so.

In the child we see the beginnings of many forms of wickedness; he has faults which would be inexcusable in older people, but they are naughtiness rather than wickedness. In the man, however, these faults show meanness and smallness. There is not a single sin which is not mean. Avarice shows a mean spirit in the relations between a miserly landlord and his tenants; the drunkard is mean in the neglect of his family. In short, committing sin shows the choice of what is petty, mean, and small in place of what is generous and grand.

Those who err cannot be converted all at once and forcibly. They must be gradually raised to a sense of their wrong. The miser must be shown how much good can be done with the money which he has hoarded for himself. The drunkard should be shown the necessity of good fellowship and harmony in his own family.

Only as we enter into the consciousness of the will of God can we resist the sordid temptations that beset us.