There is also another kind of challenge that in a way is even more taxing and searching: the silent appeal that comes from those who are spiritually dead, from those who are sunk in sloth or sensuality, or who waste their precious days in the pursuit of trivial, frivolous ends, and from the insensitive consciences of the self-righteous and the self-complacent. In the Bible we read that the prophet Elisha once threw himself on the body of a dead child, in order with his own life to kindle there the life that seemed extinct. In some such way in public addresses, in which it is not the word but the personality behind the word that counts, the speaker is bound to throw himself body and soul, as it were, upon those who are spiritually numbed, and to _enhance the life within himself_ in order to stir up life in them. All of which means that the task of edifying others involves continuous efforts at self-edification. _The Solemnizing of Marriages._ In solemnizing marriages I had the experience that some of those at which I had officiated ended disastrously,—there had been no real marriage at all. Though such instances were not numerous in my own experience, yet the statistics of divorce prove that the number of unfortunate marriages in this and other countries is very large, and is increasing. What are the foundations of a permanent relation such as would tend to the development of personality in and through marriage? was the question urged upon me. Here is a social tie in which two individuals, and later the offspring, are combined in the closest propinquity. How can an ethical theory of marriage be reached, that is, a theory dependent on the idea of the joint realization of the highest end of life by the members of the family group? This ethical theory of marriage will be set forth in a subsequent part of this volume. Here I wish again to mark the retroactive effect of the function I was called upon to exercise in the Ethical Society on the development of theory. The most incisive effect of my practical experience, however, was the being compelled to encounter the effect of _frustration_. How reluctant is the natural man to face this fact! How he shrinks, and puts up screens between his face and the head of Medusa! In my earliest marriage addresses I remember how I used to describe the relation as one in which each of the partners receives the cup of happiness at the hands of the other. The second time I performed the ceremony, the bride was the only child of excellent friends, whose life was completely wrapped up in their one daughter. She was a charming young girl, and the bridegroom was a fine-grained person entirely devoted to her. That marriage feast I shall never forget. A little less than a year after, the young wife having died in child-birth, I was called in to speak at her bier. Where, then, was the exchange of happiness? How suddenly had the house of bliss fallen into ruins! A similar experience that