When Nestor stood forth before the Greek generals and counseled attack upon Troy, he said: "The secret of victory is in getting a good ready." Wendell Phillips was once asked how he acquired his skill in the oratory of the lost arts. The answer was: "By getting a hundred nights of delivery back of me." Shakespeare tells us all that the clouds give in rain what they get in mist, which is the poet's way of saying that what he gave in inspiration he got by way of perspiration. Some years ago a young man asked a distinguished scholar and writer what he thought of the higher education. "If I were twenty, and had but ten years to live," answered the publicist, "I would spend the first nine years accumulating knowledge and getting ready for the tenth." Indeed, the measure of influence in any man is the measure of his reserves. The youth who will rule to-morrow is the youth who to-day is storing up resources of knowledge and wisdom, of self-reliance and courage. All history does but repeat the principle. Surveying the past, we note that the nations that have made great contributions to civilization have been isolated. Our historians tell us that the Hebrew gave conscience and morals, the Greek reason and culture, the Roman law and government, the Teuton liberty and the rise of woman. But, singularly enough, not one of these nations lived in an open, extended country. Each forceful race has dwelt upon some island or peninsula. The Hebrew was shut in between the desert and the sea, and there restrained until he accumulated his moral treasure. He was compelled to fall back upon his own resources. By practice he found out that it was not best to steal; that society lived more happily and peacefully when the property of each individual was respected. Similarly, God gave him the work of formulating each of the ten commandments. Slowly the moral treasure grew. The jurist gave law, the poet sang songs, the prophet poured out his rhapsody, the patriot and martyr died for principle, and the roll of the heroes lengthened. At last the pages of Jewish history were filled with names glowing and glorious as the nights with stars. Then came Jesus Christ, filling all the land with spiritual energies. Soon the pressure of moral forces was so strong as to break through all restraints. Then these moral treasures poured forth over all the earth. Having given the two thousand years before Christ to accumulating its moral energies, the Hebrew race acquired momentum enough to continue the civilizing tide through the two thousand years after Christ. Similarly Greece, the mother of the arts and sciences, was shut in between the mountains and the sea until the intellectual tides grew deep and strong.