"Have life more abundantly." Man is not fated to a scant allowance nor a fixed amount, but he is allured forward by an unmeasured possibility. Personality may be enlarged and enriched. It has been said that Cromwell was the best thing England ever produced. And the mission of Jesus Christ is to carry each up from littleness to full-orbed largeness. It has always been true that when some genius, e.g., Watt, invents a model the people have reproduced it times innumerable. So what man asks for is not the increase of birth talent, but a pattern after which this raw material can be fashioned. Carbon makes charcoal, and carbon makes diamond, too, but the "sea of light" is carbon crystallized to a pattern. Builders lay bricks by plan; the musician follows his score; the value of a York minster is not in the number of cords of stone, but in the plan that organized them; and the value of a man is in the reply to this question: Have the raw materials of nature been wrought up into unity and harmony by the Exemplar of human life? Daily he is here to stir the mind with holy ambitions; to wing the heart with noble aspirations; to inspire with an all-conquering courage; to vitalize the whole manhood. By making the individual rich within he creates value without. For all things are first thoughts. Tools, fabrics, ships, houses, books are first ideas, afterward crystallized into outer form. A great picture is a beautiful conception rushing into visible expression upon the canvas. Wake up taste in a man and he beautifies his home. Wake up conscience and he drives iniquities out of his heart. Wake up his ideas of freedom and he fashions new laws. Jesus Christ is here to inflame man's soul within that he may transform and enrich his life without. No picture ever painted, no statue ever carved, no cathedral ever builded is half so beautiful as the Christ-formed man. What is man's value to society? Let him who knoweth what is in us reply: "What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" FOOTNOTES: [1] Northampton Antiquities. Clark. CHARACTER: ITS MATERIALS AND EXTERNAL TEACHERS "Character is more than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live, as well as to think. Goodness outshines genius, as the sun makes the electric light cast a shadow."--_Emerson._ "What the superior man seeks is in himself; what the small man seeks is in others."--_Confucius._ "After all, the kind of world one carries about in one's self is the important thing, and the world outside takes all its grace, color and value from that."--_James Russell Lowell._ "Sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny."--_Anon._ "So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom."--_Psalm 90._ II CHARACTER: ITS MATERIALS AND EXTERNAL TEACHERS