Vesper Service.

Rev. Brooke Herford spoke at the Vesper Service yesterday afternoon on the influence of good men and good things. He mentioned an incident that once occurred at a meeting which one of the Wesleys was conducting. Two boys, who had a supply of stones and intended to help break up the meeting were much struck with the preacher's face and one said to the other that he was "no man." This boy, at the end of the meeting, went up and laid his hand on Wesley's arm and then said, in surprise, "he is a man" Wesley turned and laid his hand on the boy's head and through the influence which had begun with his first sight of the preacher's face the boy became later one of Wesley's so-called "brown-bread preachers."

Dr. James Martineau, the well-known teacher and writer, has a wonderful personal influence. The mere sight of him seems to make a man half afraid but at the same time better. This latent power for good that seems to be in some men is almost entirely unconscious. A light and strength is shed from them continually and is the overflow of their own full store. That this is unconscious is almost an indispensable condition, since self-consciousness only acts as a check on power, and clouds the brightness that might be shining if this were resolutely conquered.

Every good thing has its share of influence which may be small and quite unnoticed by itself, but let a man associate with great books and thoughts and the sum of many single changes in his character will be plainly seen. There is no reason for discouragement because we seem to move slowly even with the hardest and truest work. Every good thing that comes may be depended upon absolutely to give some of its own beauty to the soul it touches. And if we think as little as possible about their influence but give our energy to keeping these noble men and things always before us we shall come to be more and more like them as surely as there is a law of canse and effect.