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ought. Once Italy and Greece and Central Europe made one vast storehouse filled with precious art treasures. But men turned the cathedrals into arsenals of war. If the clerks in some porcelain or cut-glass store should attend to their duties in the morning, and each afternoon have a pitched battle, during which they should throw the vases and cups and medallions at each other, and each night pick up a piece of vase, here an armless Venus and there a headless Apollo, to put away for future generations to study, we should have that which answers precisely to what has gone on for centuries through hatreds and class wars. An outlook upon society is much like a visit to Lisbon after an earthquake has filled the streets with debris and shaken down homes, palaces, and temples. History is full of the ruins of cities and empires. Not time, but disobedience, hath wrought their destruction. New civilizations will be reared by coming generations; uprightness will lay the foundations and integrity will complete the structure. The temple is righteousness in which God dwelleth.

FOOTNOTES:

Northampton Antiquities. Clark.

CHARACTER: ITS MATERIALS AND EXTERNAL TEACHERS

CHARACTER: ITS MATERIALS AND EXTERNAL TEACHERS

Dying, Horace Greeley exclaimed: "Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident, riches take wings, those who cheer to-day will curse to-morrow, only one thing endures--character!" These weighty words bid all remember that life's one task is the making of manhood. Our world is a college, events are teachers, happiness is the graduating point, character is the diploma God gives man. The forces that increase happiness are many, including money, friends, position; but one thing alone is indispensable to success--personal worth and manhood. He who stands forth clothed with real weight of goodness can neither be feeble in life, nor forgotten in death. Society admires its scholar, but society reveres and loves its hero whose intellect is clothed with goodness. For character is not of the intellect, but of the disposition. Its qualities strike through and color the mind and heart even as summer strikes the matured fruit through with juicy ripeness.

Of that noble Greek who governed his city by unwritten laws, the people said: "Phocion's character is more than the constitution." The weight of goodness in Lamartine was such that during the bloody days in Paris his doors were unlocked. Character in him was a defense beyond the force of rock walls or armed regiments. Emerson says there was a certain power in Lincoln, Washington and Burke not to be explained by their printed words. Burke the man was inexpressibly finer than anything he said. As a spring is more than the cup it fills, as a poet or architect is more than the songs he sings or the temple he rears, so the man is more than the book or business he fashions. Earth holds many wondrous scenes called temples, battle-fields, cathedrals, but earth holds no scene comparable for majesty and beauty to a man clothed indeed with intellect, but adorned also with integrities and virtues. Beholding such a one, well did Milton exclaim: "A good man is the ripe fruit our earth holds up to God."

Character has been defined as the joint product of nature and nurture. Nature gives the raw material, character is the carved statue. The raw material includes the racial endowment, temperament, degree of vital force, mentality, aptitude for tool or industry, for art or science. These birth-gifts are quantities, fixed and unalterable. No heart-rendings can change the two-talent nature into a ten-talent man. No agony of effort can add a cubit to the stature. The eagle flies over the chasm as easily as an ant crawls over the crack in the ground. Shakespeare writes Hamlet as easily as Tupper wrote his tales. Once an oak, always an oak. Care and culture can thicken the girth of the tree, but no degree of culture can cause an oak bough to bring forth figs instead of acorns. Rebellion against temperament and circumstance is sure to end in the breaking of the heart. Happiness and success begin with the sincere acceptance of the birth-gift and career God hath chosen.

Since no man can do his best work save as he uses his strongest faculties, the first duty of each is to search out the line of least resistance. He who has a genius for moral themes but has harnessed himself to the plow or the forge, is in danger of wrecking both happiness and character. All such misfits are fatal. No farmer harnesses a fawn to the plow, or puts an ox into the speeding-wagon. Life's problem is to make a right inventory of the gifts one carries. As no carpenter knows what tools are in the box until he lifts the lid and unwraps one shining instrument after another, so the instruments in the soul must be unfolded by education. Ours is a world where the inventor accompanies the machine with a chart, illustrating the use of each wheel and escapement. But no babe lying in the cradle ever brought with it a hand-book setting forth its mental equipment and pointing out its aptitude for this occupation, or that art or industry. The gardener plants a root with perfect certainty that a rose will come up, but no man is a prophet wise enough to tell whether this babe will unfold into quality of thinker or doer or dreamer. To each Nature whispers: "Unsight, unseen, hold fast what you have." For the soul is shadowless and mysterious. No hand can carve its outline, no brush portray its lineaments. Even the mother embosoming its infancy and carrying its weaknesses, studying it by day and night through years, sees not, she cannot see, knows not, she cannot know, into what splendor of maturity the child will unfold.

Man beholds his fellows as one beholds a volume written in a foreign language; the outer binding is seen, the inner contents are unread. Within general lines phrenology and physiognomy are helpful, but it is easier to determine what kind of a man lives in the house by looking at the knob on his front door than to determine the brain and heart within by studying the bumps upon face and forehead. Nature's dictum is, "Grasp the handle of your own being." Each must fashion his own character. Nature gives trees, but not tools; forests, but not furniture. Thus nature furnishes man with the birth materials and environment; man must work up these materials into those qualities called industry, integrity, honor, truth and love, ever patterning after that ideal man, Jesus Christ.

The influences shaping nature's raw material into character are many and various. Of old, the seer likened the soul unto clay. The mud falls upon the board before the potter, a rude mass, without form or comeliness. But an hour afterwards the clay stands forth adorned with all the beauty of a lovely vase. Thus the soul begins, a mere mass of mind, but hands many and powerful soon shape it into the outlines of some noble man or woman. These sculptors of character include home, friendship, occupation, travel, success, love, grief and death.

Life's first teacher is the external world, with its laws. Man begins at zero. The child thrusts his finger into the fire and is burned; thenceforth he learns to restrain himself in the presence of fire, and makes the flames smite the vapor for driving train or ship. The child errs in handling the sharp tool, and cuts himself; thenceforth he lifts up the axe upon the tree. The child mistakes the weight of stone, or the height of stair, and, falling, hard knocks teach him the nature and use of gravity. Daily the thorns that pierce his feet drive him back into the smooth pathway of nature's laws. The sharp pains that follow each excess teach him the pleasures of sound and right living. Nor is there one infraction of law that is not followed by pain. As sharp guards are placed at the side of the bridge over the chasm to hold men back from the abyss, so nature's laws are planted on either side of the way of life to prick and scourge erring feet back into the divine way. At length through much smiting of the body nature forces the youth into a knowledge of the world in which he lives. Man learns to carry himself safely within forests, over rivers, through fires, midst winds and storms. Soon every force in nature stands forth his willing servant; becoming like unto the steeds of the plains, that once were wild, but now are trained, and lend all their strength and force to man's loins and limbs.

Having mastered the realm of physical law, the youth is thrust into the realm of laws domestic and social. He runs up against his mates and friends, often overstepping his own rights and infringing the rights of others. Then some stronger arm falls on his, and drives him back into his own territory. Occasional chastisement through the parent and teacher, friend or enemy, reveal to him the nature of selfishness, and compel the recognition of others. Thus, through long apprenticeship, the youth finds out the laws that fence him round, that press upon him at every pore, by day and by night, in workshop or in store, at home or abroad. Slowly these laws mature manhood. When ideas are thrust into raw iron, the iron becomes a loom or an engine. Thus when God's laws are incarnated in a babe, the child is changed into the likeness of a citizen, a sage or seer. Nature, with her laws, is not only the earliest, but also the most powerful, of life's instructors.

Temptation is another teacher. Protection gives innocence, but practice gives virtue. For ship timber we pass by the sheltered hothouse, seeking the oak on the storm-swept hills. In that beautiful story of the lost paradise, God pulls down the hedge built around Adam and Eve. The government through a fence outside was succeeded by self-government inside. The hermit and the cloistered saint end their career with innocence. But Christ, struggling unto blood against sin, ends His career with character. God educates man by giving him complete charge over himself and setting him on "the barebacked horse of his own will," leaving him to break it by his own strength. Travelers to Alaska tell us that the wild berries attain a sweetness there of which our temperate clime knows nothing. Scientists say that the glowworm keeps its enemies at bay by the brightness of its own light. Man, by his love of truth and right, becomes his own castle and fortress. Cities no longer depend upon night-watchmen to guard against marauders and burglars. Once men trusted to safes and iron bars upon the windows. Now bankers ask electric lights to guard their treasure vaults.

For centuries Spain's paternal laws have compelled each Spaniard to ask his church what to think and believe. This method has robbed that people of enduring and self-reliant manhood, and made them a race of weaklings. For over-protection is a peril. Strength comes by wrestling, knowledge by observing, wisdom by thinking, and character by enduring and struggling. Exposure is often good fortune. Every Luther and Cromwell has been tempted and tempered against the day of danger and battle. As the victorious Old Guard were honored in proportion to the number and severity of the wars through which they had passed, so the temptations that seek man's destruction, when conquered, cover him with glory. Ruskin notes that the art epochs have also been epochs of war, upheaval, and tyranny. He accounts for this by saying that when tyranny was hardest, crime blackest, sin ugliest, then, in the recoil and conflict, beauty and heroism attained their highest development.

Studying the rise of the Dutch republic, Motley notes how the shocks and fiery baptisms of war changed those peasants into patriots. This explains society's enthusiasm for its hero, all scarred and gray. We admire the child's innocence, but it lacks ripeness and maturity; it is only a handful of germs. But every heart kindles and glows when the true hero stands forth in the person of some Paul or Savonarola, some Luther or Lincoln, having passed through fire, through flood, through all the thunder of life's battle, ever ripening, sweetening and enlarging, his fineness and gentleness being the result of great strength and great wisdom, accumulated through long life, until he stands, at the end of his career, as the sun stands on a summer afternoon just before it goes down. All statues and pictures become tawdry in comparison with such a rich, ripe, glowing, and glorious heart, clothed with Christlike character.

Life's teachers also includes newness and zest. First, man lives his life in fresh personal experiences. Then, by observation, he repeats his life in the career of his children. A third time he journeys around the circle, re-experiencing life in that of his grandchildren. Then, because the newness has passed away and events no longer stimulate his mind, death withdraws man from the scene and enters him in a new school. Vast is the educational value therefore attaching to the newness of life. God is so rich that no day or scene need repeat a former one. The proverb, "We never look upon the same river," tells us that all things are ever changing, and clothes each day with fresh fascination. "Whilst I read the poets," said Emerson, "I think that nothing new can be said about morning and evening; but when I see the day break I am not reminded of the Homeric and Chaucerian pictures. I am cheered by the moist, warm, glittering, budding, melodious hour that breaks down the narrow walls of my soul, and extends its life and pulsations to the very horizon."

Thus, each new day is a new continent to be explored. Each youth is a new creature, full of delightful and mysterious possibilities. Each brain comes clothed with its own secret, having its own orbit, attaining its own unique experience. Ours is a world in which each individual, each country, each age, each day, has a history peculiarly its own. This newness is a perpetual stimulant to curiosity and study. Gladstone's recipe for never growing old is, "Search out some topic in nature or life in which you have never hitherto been interested, and experience its fascinations." For some, once a picture or book has been seen, the pleasure ceases. Delight dies with familiarity. Such persons look back to the days of childhood as to the days of wonder and happiness. But the man of real vision ever beholds each rock, each herb and flower with the big eyes of children, and with a mind of perpetual wonder. For him the seed is a fountain gushing with new delights. Every youth should repeat the experience of John Ruskin. Such was the enthusiasm that this author felt for God's world, that when he approached some distant mountain or saw the crags hanging over the waters, or the clouds marching through the sky, "a shiver of fear, mingled with awe," set him quivering with joy--such joy as the artist pupil feels in the presence of his noble master, such a kindling of mind and heart as Dante felt on approaching his Beatrice. Phillips Brooks grew happier as he grew older, and at fifty-seven he said: "Life seems a feast in which God keeps the best wine until the last." Up to the very end the great preacher grew by leaps and bounds, because he never lost that enthusiasm for life that makes zest and newness among life's best teachers.

Solitude is a wise teacher. Going apart the youth grows great. Emerson speaks of sailing the sea with God alone. The founders of astronomy dwelt on a plain of sand, where the horizon held not one vine-clad hill nor alluring vista. Wearying of the yellow sea, their thoughts journeyed along the heavenly highway and threaded the milky way, until the man became immortal. Moses became the greatest of jurists, because during the forty years when his mind was creative and at its best, he dwelt amid the solitude of the sand hills around Sinai, and was free for intellectual and moral life. History tells of a thousand men who have maintained virtue in adversity only to go down in hours of prosperity. That is, man is stimulated by the crisis; conflict provokes heroism, persecution lends strength. But, denied the exigency of a great trial, men who seemed grand fall all to pieces. Triumphant in adversity, men are vanquished by drudgery. An English author has expressed the belief that many men "achieve reputations when all eyes are focused upon them, who fall into petty worthlessness amid obscurity and monotony. Life's crowning victory belongs to those who have won no brilliant battle, suffered no crushing wrong; who have figured in no great drama, whose sphere was obscure, but who have loved great principles midst small duties, nourished sublime hopes amid vulgar cares, and illustrated eternal principles in trifles."

Responsibility is a teacher of righteousness. God educates men by casting them upon their own resources. Man learns to swim by being tossed into life's maelstrom and left to make his way ashore. No youth can learn to sail his life-craft in a lake sequestered and sheltered from all storms, where other vessels never come. Skill comes through sailing one's craft amidst rocks and bars and opposing fleets, amidst storms and whirls and counter currents. English literature has a proverb about the incapacity of rich men's sons. The rich man himself became mighty because he began in poverty, had no hand to help him forward, and many hands to hold him back. After long wrestling with opposing force he compacted within himself the strength and foresight, the frugality and wisdom of a score of ordinary men. The school of hard knocks made him a man of might. But his son, cradled in a soft nest, sheltered from every harsh wind, loving ease more than industry, is in danger of coming up without insight into the secrets of his profession or industry.

Responsibility alone drives man to toil and brings out his best gifts. For this reason the pensions given to scholars are said to have injured some men of genius. Johnson wrote his immortal Rasselas to raise money to buy his mother's coffin. Hunger and pain drove Lee to the invention of his loom. Left a widow with a family to support, in mid-life Mrs. Trollope took to authorship and wrote a score of volumes. The most piteous tragedy in English literature is that of Coleridge. Wordsworth called him the most myriad-minded man since Shakespeare, and Lamb thought him "an archangel slightly damaged." The generosity of his friends gave the poet a home and all its comforts without the necessity of toil. Is it possible that ease and lack of responsibility, with opium, helped wreck him? What did that critic mean when he said of a rich young friend, "He needs poverty alone to make him a great painter?" It is responsibility that teaches caution, foresight, prudence, courage, and turns feeblings into giants.

The extremes and contrasts of life do much to shape character. Ours is a world that moves from light to dark, from heat to cold, from summer to winter. On the crest to-day, the hero is in the trough to-morrow. Moses, yesterday a deserted slave child, to-day adopted by a king's daughter; David, but yesterday a shepherd boy with his harp, and to-day dwelling in the King's palace; men yesterday possessed of plenty, to-day passing into penury--these illustrate the extremes of life. These contrasts are as striking as those we find on the sunny slopes of the Alps. There the foothills are covered with vineyards, while the summits have everlasting snow. In Wyoming hot springs gush close beside snowdrifts. During man's few years, and brief, he experiences many reverses. He flits on between light and dark. It is hard for the leader to drop back into the ranks. It is not easy for him who hath led a movement to its success to see his laurels fall leaf by leaf. After a long and dangerous service men grown old and gray are succeeded by the youth to whom society owes no debt. Thus man journeys from strength to invalidism, from prosperity to adversity, from joy to sorrow, or goes from misery to happiness, from defeat to victory.

Not one single person but sooner or later is tested by these alterations. God sends prosperity to lift character to its highest levels. It is an error to suppose that the higher manhood flourishes in extreme poverty. Watkinson has beautifully said that "humility is never so lovely as when arrayed in scarlet; moderation is never so impressive as when it sits at banquets; simplicity is never so delightful as when it dwells amidst magnificence; purity is never so divine as when its unsullied robes are worn in a king's palace; gentleness is never so touching as when it exists in the powerful. When men combine gold and goodness, greatness and godliness, genius and graces, human nature is at its best." On the other hand, adversity is a supplement, making up what prosperity lacks. The very abundance of Christmas gifts ofttimes causes children to forget the parents who gave them. Some are adorned by prosperity as mountains are adorned with rich forests. Others stand forth with the bareness, but also with the grandeur and enduring strength, of Alpine mountains. Character is like every other structure--nothing tests it like extremes.

When friendship and love have enriched man, and deepened all the secret springs of his being, when grief hath refined and suffering mellowed him, then God sends the ideals to stimulate men to new achievements. An ideal is a pattern or plan held up before the man's eye for imitation, realization and guidance. In the heart's innermost temple of silence, whither neither friend nor enemy may ever come, there the soul unveils its secret ideal. The pattern there erected at once proclaims what man is and prophesies what he shall be. In old age men think what they are, but in youth, what we think, we come to be. Therefore must the pattern held up before the mind's eye be of the highest and purest. The legend tells us of the master's apprentice, who, from the small bits of glass that had been thrown away constructed a window of surpassing loveliness. The ideal held up before the boy's mind organized and brought together these broken bits, and wrought them into lines of perfect beauty.

Thus by his inner aspirations, man lives and builds. The inner eye reveals to the toiler a better tool or law or reform, and the realization of these visions gives social progress. The vision of conscience reveals new possibilities of character, and these give duty. The vision of the heart reveals new possibilities of friendship, and these give the home. As the sun standing upon the horizon orbs itself, first in each dewdrop, and afterward lifts the whole earth forward, so the ideal repeats itself, first in the individual heart, and afterward lifts all society forward. Thus unto man slowly building up his character comes the supreme ideal, when Jesus Christ stands forth fully revealed in His splendor. He is no empty abstraction, no bloodless theory, but bone of our bone, brother of our own body and breath, yet marred by no weakness, scarred by no sin, tossing back temptations as some Gibraltar tosses back the sea's billows and the bits of drift-wood. Strong, He subdued His strength in the day of battle, and bore Himself like iron. Yet He was so gentle that His white hand felt the fall of the rose leaf, while He inflected His gianthood to the needs of the little child. Nor could He be holden of the bands of death, for He clove a pathway through the grave, and made death's night to shine like the day. "I have but one passion," said Tholuck. "It is He! it is He!" As Shakespeare first reveals to the young poet his real riches of imagination, as Raphael first unveils to the young artist the possibilities of color, so man knows not his infinite capabilities until Jesus Christ stands forth in all His untroubled splendor. Having Him, man has not only his Teacher and Saviour, but also his Master and Model, fulfilling all the needs of the highest manhood and the noblest character.

FOOTNOTES:

ASPIRATIONS AND IDEALS

"As some most pure and noble face, Seen in the thronged and hurrying street, Sheds o'er the world a sudden grace, A flying odor sweet, Then passing leaves the cheated sense Balked with a phantom excellence.

'So in our soul, the visions rise Of that fair life we never led; They flash a splendor past our eyes, We start, and they are fled; They pass and leave us with blank gaze, Resigned to our ignoble days."

"Contentment and aspiration are in every true man's life."

"We figure to ourselves The thing we like, and then we build it up-- As chance will have it, on the rock or sand; For time is tired of wandering o'er the world, And home-bound fancy runs her bark ashore."

ASPIRATIONS AND IDEALS.

Man is a pilgrim journeying toward the new and beautiful city of the Ideal. Aspiration, not contentment, is the law of his life. To-day's triumph dictates new struggles to-morrow. The youth flushed with success may couch down in the tent of satisfaction for one night only; when the morning comes he must fold his tent and push on toward some new achievement. That man is ready for his burial robes who lets his present laurels satisfy him. God has crowded the world with antidotes to contentment and with stimulants to progress. The world is not built for sluggards. The earth is like a road, a poor place for sleeping in, a good thing to travel over. The world is like a forge, unfit for residence, but good for putting temper in a warrior's sword. Life is built for waking up dull men, making lazy men unhappy, and the low-flying miserable. When other incitements fail, fear and remorse following behind scourge men forward; but ideals in front are the chief stimulants to growth. Each morning, waking, the soul sees the ideal man one ought to be rising in splendor to shame the man one is. Columbus was tempted forward by the floating branches, the drifting weeds, the strange birds, unto the new world rich in tropic-treasure. So by aspirations and ideals God lures men forward unto the soul's undiscovered country. In the long ago the star moving on before guided the wise men of the East to the manger where the young child lay; and still in man's night God hangs aspirations--stars for guiding men away from the slough of content to the hills of paradise. The soul hungers for something vast, and ideals lure to the long voyage, the distant harbor, and are the stars by which the pilgrim shapes his course.

Life's great teachers are friendship, occupation, travel, books, marriage, and chiefly heart-hungers. These yearnings within are the springs of all man's progress without. Sometimes philosophers say that the history of civilization is the history of great men. Confessing this, let us go on and note that the history of all great men is the history of their ideal hours, realized in conduct and character. Waking at midnight in his bleak garret, the vision splendid rose before John Milton. The boy of twelve would fain write a poem that the world would not willingly let die. He knew that whoever would write a heroic poem must first live a heroic life. From that hour the youth followed the ideal that led him on, pursuing knowledge unceasingly for seven years, never closing book before midnight, leaving Cambridge with the approbation of the good, and without stain or spot upon his life. Afterward, making a pilgrimage to Italy for study in that land of song and story, he heard of the civil wars in England, and at once returned, putting away his ambition for culture because he thought it base to be traveling in ease and safety abroad while his fellow-citizens were fighting for liberty at home. When he resisted a brutal soldier's attack who lifted his sword to say, "I have power to kill you," the scholar replied: "And I have power to be killed and to despise my murderer." Growing old and blind, and falling upon evil days and tongues, out of his heroic life he wrote his immortal poem. Dying, he still pursued his ideal, for moving into the valley and shadow, the blind poet whispered: "Still guides the heavenly vision!"

Did men but know it, this is the secret of all heroic greatness. Here is that matchless old Greek, Socrates, sitting in the prison talking with his friends of death and immortality, of the truth and beauty he hopes to find beyond. With one hand he rubs his leg, chafed by the harsh fetters, with the other he holds the cup of poison. When the sun touched the horizon he took the cup of death from the jailer's hand, and with shining face went down into the valley, and midst the thick shadows passed forever from mortal sight, still pursuing his vision splendid. And here is that pure-white martyr girl, painted by Millais, staked down in the sea midst the rising tide, but looking toward the open sky, with a great, sweet light upon her face. Here is Luther surrounded by scowling soldiers and hungry, wolfish priests, looking upward and then flinging out his challenge, "I cannot and I will not recant, God help me." Here is John Brown, with body all pierced with bullets and grievously sore, stooping to kiss the child as he went on to the gallows, with heart as high as on his wedding day. And here is that Christian nurse who followed the line of battle close up to the rifle-pits, and kindled her fire and prepared hot drinks for dying men; who, when asked by the colonel who told her to build those fires, made answer: "God Almighty, sir!" and went right on to fulfill her vision. And here is Livingstone, with his grand craggy head and deep-set eyes, found in the heart of Africa, dead beside his couch, with ink scarcely dry on words that interpreted his vision: "God bless all men who in any way help to heal this open sore of the world!" Chiefly, there is Christ, who, from the hour when the star stayed by His manger in Bethlehem, and the light ne'er seen on land or sea shone on the luminous and transfigured mount, on to the day of His uplifted cross, ever followed the divine vision that brought Him at last to Olivet, to the open sky, the ascending cloud, the welcoming heavens.

But God, who hath appointed visions unto great men, doth set each lesser human life between its dream and its task. Deep heart-hungers are quickened within the people, and then some patriot, reformer, or hero, is raised up to feed the aspiration. Afterward history stores up these noble achievements of yesterday as soul food for to day. The heart, like the body, needs nourishment, and finds it in the highest deeds and best qualities of those who have gone before. Thus the artist pupil is fed by his great master. The young soldier emulates his brave general. The patriot is inspired by his heroic chief. History records the deeds of noble men, not for decorating her pages, but for strengthening the generations that come after. The measure of a nation's civilization is the number of heroes it has had, whose qualities have been harvested for children and youth.

Full oft one hero has transformed a people. The blind bard singing through the villages of Greece met a rude and simple folk. But Homer opened up a gallery in the clouds, and there unveiled Achilles as the ideal Greek. It became the ambition of every Athenian boy to fix the Iliad in his mind and repeat Achilles in his heart and life. Soon the Achilles in the sky looked down upon 20,000 young Achilles walking through the streets beneath. With what admiration do men recall the intellectual achievements of Athens! What temples, and what statues in them! What orators and eloquence! What dramas! What lyric poems! What philosophers! Yet one ideal man who never lived, save in a poet's vision, turned rude tribes into intellectual giants. Thus each nation hungers for heroes. When it has none God sends poets to invent them as soul food for the nation's youth. The best gift to a people is not vineyards nor overflowing granaries, nor thronged harbors, nor rich fleets, but a good man and great, whose example and influence repeat greatness in all the people. As the planet hanging above our earth lifts the sea in tidal waves, so God hangs illustrious men in the sky for raining down their rich treasure upon society.

Moreover, it is the number and kind of his aspirations that determine a man's place in the scale of manhood. Lowest of all is that great under class of pulseless men, content to creep, and without thought of wings for rising. Mere drifters are they, creatures of circumstance, indifferently remaining where birth or events have started them. Having food and raiment, therewith they are content. No inspirations fire them, no ideals rebuke them, no visions of possible excellence or advancement smite their vulgar contentment. Like dead leaves swept forward upon the current, these men drift through life. Not really bad, they are but indifferently good, and therefore are the material out of which vicious men are made. In malarial regions, physicians say, men of overflowing health are safe because the abounding vitality within crowds back the poison in the outer air, while men who live on the border line between good health and ill, furnish the conditions for fevers that consume away the life. Similarly, men who live an indifferent, supine life, with no impulses upward, are exposed to evil and become a constant menace to society.

Higher in the scale of manhood are the men of intermittent aspirations. A traveler may journey forward guided by the light of the perpetual sun, or he may travel by night midst a thunder-storm, when the sole light is an occasional flash of lightning, revealing the path here and the chasm there. But once the lightning has passed the darkness is thicker than before. And to men come luminous hours, rebuking the common life. Then does the soul revolt from any evil thought and thing and long for all that is God-like in character, for honor and purity, for valor and courage, for fidelity to the finer convictions deep hidden in the soul's secret recesses. What heroes are these--in the vision hour! With what fortitude do these soldiers bear up under blows--when the battle is still in the future! But once the conflict comes, their courage goes! On a winter's morning the frost upon the window pane shapes forth trees, houses, thrones, castles, cities, but these are only frost. So before the mind the imagination hangs pictures of the glory and grandeur and God-likeness of the higher life, but one breath of temptation proves their evanescence. Better, however, these intermittent ideals than uninterrupted supineness and contentment. But, best of all, that third type of men who realize in daily life their luminous hours, and transmute their ideals into conduct and character. These are the soul-architects who build their thoughts and deeds into a plan; who travel forward, not aimlessly, but toward a destination; who sail, not anywhither, but toward a port; who steer, not by the clouds, but by the fixed stars. High in the scale of manhood these who ceaselessly aspire toward life's great Exemplar.

It is also the office of these divine ideals to rebuke the lower physical life, and smite each sordid, selfish purpose. The vision hour is the natural enemy of the vulgar mood. Men begin life with the high purpose of living nobly, generously, openly. Full of the choicest aspirations, hungering for the highest things, the youth enters triumphantly upon the pathway of life. But journeying forward he meets conflict and strife, envy and jealousy, disappointment and defeat. He finds it hard to live up to the level of his best moods. Self-interest biases his judgment. Greed bribes reason. Pride leads him astray. Selfishness tempts him to violate his finer self. The struggle to maintain his ideals is like a struggle for life itself. Many, alas! after a short, sharp conflict, give up the warfare and break faith and fealty with the deeper convictions. They quench the light that shone afar off to beckon and cheer them on. Persuading themselves that the ideal life is impracticable, they strike an average between their highest moods and their low-flying hours. Then is the luster of life all dimmed, and the soul is like a noble mansion in the morning after some banquet or reception. In the evening, when making ready for the brilliant feast, all the house is illuminated. Each curio is in its niche. The harp is in its place. The air is laden with the perfume of roses. But when the morning comes, how vast is the change! The windows are darkened and the halls deserted; the wax tapers have burned to the socket, or flicker out in smoke; the flowers, scorched by the heated air, have shriveled and fallen, and in the banquet-room only the "broken meats" remain. Gone is all the glory of the feast! Thus, when men lay aside their heroic ideals and bury their visions, the luster of life departs, and its beauty perishes. Then it is that God sends in the heavenly vision to rebuke the poorer, sensuous life and man's material mood. Above the life that is, God hangs the glory, and grandeur, and purity of the life that might be, and the soul looking up scorns the lower things, and hungers and thirsts for truth and purity. Then man comes to himself again, and makes his way back to his Father's side.

Moreover, these vision hours come to men to give them hints and gleams of what they shall be when time and God's resources have wrought their purpose of strength and beauty upon the soul. Man is born a long way from himself and needs to see the end toward which he moves. He has a body and uses a lower life, but man is what he is in his best hours and most exalted moods. The measure of strength in any living thing is its highest faculty. The strength of the deer is swiftness, of a lion strength; but to the power of the foot the eagle adds wings, and therefore is praised for its swift flight. To the wing the bee adds genius for building with geometric skill, and its praise lies in its rare intelligence. Thus man also is to be measured by his highest faculty, in that he has power to see things unseen and work in realms invisible. We are told that Cicero had three summer villas and a winter residence, but he prided himself not upon his wealth, but upon his oratory and eloquence. The grand old statesman of England has skill for lifting the axe upon the tall trees, but he glories in his skill in statecraft. Incidentally man reaps treasures from the fields, finds riches in the forests, and wealth in the mountains; yet his real manhood resides in reason and moral sentiment, and the spirit that saith, "Our Father." For him to live for the body is as if one who should inherit a magnificent palace were to close the galleries and libraries and splendid halls, and opening only the eating-room, there to live and feed.

Happy the man who is a good mechanic or merchant; but, alas! if he is only that. Happy he who prospers toward the granary and the storehouse; but, alas! if he is shrunken and shriveled toward the spiritual realm. To all rich in physical treasure, but bankrupt toward the unseen realm, comes some divine influence arousing discontent. Then lower joys are seen to be uncrowned, and sordid pleasures to have no scepter. The soul becomes restless and disappointed where once it was contented. Looking afar off it sees in its vision hours the goodly estate to which God shall some day bring it. Here we recall the peasant's dream. His humble cottage while he slept lifted up its thatched roof and became a noble mansion. The one room and small became many and vast. The little windows became arched and beautiful, looking out upon vast estates all his. The fireplace became an altar, o'er which hung seraphim. The chimney became a golden ladder like that which Jacob saw, and his children, living and dead, passed like angels bringing treasure up and down. And thus, while the human heart muses and dreams, God builds His sanctuary in the soul. The vision the heart sees is really the pattern by which God works. These fulfill the transformation wrought in the peasant's dream.

Seeking to fulfill their noble ministry, ideals have grievous enemies. Among these let us include vanity and pride. When the wise man said, "Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit, there is more hope of a fool than of him," he indicated that he had known fools cured of their folly, but never a vain man cured of his vanity. Pliny said: "It is as hard to instruct pride as it is to fill an empty bottle with a cork in it." Some men are constitutionally vain. They think all creation converges toward one center, and they are that center. The rash of conceit commonly runs its course very early in life. With most it is like the prancing and gayety of an untrained colt; the cure is the plow and harness. Failure also is a curative agent, and so also is success. But chiefly do the ideals rebuke conceit. The imagination is God in the soul, and lifting up the possible achievement, the glory of what men may become, shames and makes contemptible what men are.

Indolence and contentment also antagonize the ideals. Men bring together a few generosities and integrities. Soul-misers, men gloat over these, as money-misers over their shining treasure, content with the little virtue they have. But no man has a right to fulfill a stagnant career; life is not to be a puddle, but a sweet and running stream. No man has a right to rust; he is bound to keep his tools bright by usage. No man has a right to be paralyzed; he is bound to enlarge and grow. So ideals come in to compel men to go forward. It is easier to lie down in a thorn hedge, or to sleep in a field of stinging nettles, than for a man to abide contentedly as he is while his ideals scourge him upward.

Chiefly do the malign elements oppose the ideal life. There is enmity between vulgarity and visions. If anger comes, mirth goes; when greed is in the ascendency, generosity is expelled. If, during a chorus of bird-voices in the forest, only the shadow of an approaching hawk falls upon the ground, every sweet voice is hushed. Thus, if but one evil, hawk-like note is heard in the heart, all the nobler joys and aspirations depart. The higher life is at enmity with the lower, and this war is one of extermination.

Oh, all ye young hearts! guard well one rock that is fatal to all excellence. If ever you have broken faith with your ideals, lift them up and renew faith. Cherish ideals as the traveler cherishes the north star, and keep the guiding light pure and bright and high above the horizon. The vessel may lose its sails and masts, but if it only keeps its course and compass, the harbor may be reached. Once it loses the star for steering by, the voyage must end in shipwreck. For when the heroic purpose goes, all life's glory departs. Let no man think the burial of a widow's son the saddest sight on earth. Let men not mourn over the laying of the first born under the turf, as though that were man's chiefest sorrow. Earth knows no tragedy like the death of the soul's ideals. Therefore, battle for them as for life itself! The cynic may ridicule them, because, having lost his own purity and truth, he naturally thinks that none are pure or true; but wise men will take counsel of aspirations and ideals. Even low things have power for incitement. No dead tree in the forest so unsightly but that some generous woodbine will wrap a robe of beauty about its nakedness. No cellar so dark but if there is a fissure through which the sunlight falls the plant will reach up its feeble tendrils to be blessed by the warming ray. Yet the soul is from God, is higher than vine or tree, and should aspire toward Him who stirs these mysterious aspirations in the heart.

The soul is like a lost child. It wanders a stranger in a strange land. Full oft it is heartsick, for even the best things content it for but a little while. Daily, mysterious ideals throb and throb within. It struggles with a vagrant restlessness. It goes yearning after what it does not find. A deep, mysterious hunger rises. It would fain come to itself. In its ideal hours it sees afar off the vision that tempts it on and up toward home and heaven. The secret of man is the secret of his vision hours. These tell him whence he came--and whither he goes. Then Christ became the soul's guide; God's heart, the soul's home.

THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF CHARACTER

"Though I look old, yet I am strong and lusty: For in my youth I never did apply Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood: Nor did not with unbashful forehead woo The means of weakness and debility; Therefore my age is as a lusty winter, Frosty but kindly."

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