Life would indeed be soon reduced to the level of mere existence. We should still be in the world, but the glow and the loveliness would have departed. Our tables would be bare, because we should eat only what is strictly necessary. Our clothing would be scant and poor, for we should wear only what one must. Our lives would be solitary, for association is a luxury and not a necessity. Kindness is unnecessary, therefore our souls would shrivel and perish. A once cheerful world would have grown dull and dead, and the once joyful privilege of living would have suddenly been transformed into a grievous necessity. It is the unnecessary that changes bare existence into throbbing and purposeful life. A mere earth is changed into a lovely world by processes which might have been dispensed with. A house is transformed into a home by graces which are not the children of necessity. Even Bethlehem and Calvary were not necessary. The glory of their meaning comes rather from the fact that they sprang from good will alone. The power of the Cross springs largely from the fact that it could have been avoided. We appreciate it because the Master faced it willingly. No one cares for the friend who is a friend under the pressure of some necessity. We appreciate the friendship of those who are our friends because they simply want to be. We do not care for the gift offered by some one who felt the force of some compulsion. The impulse is to cast it from us in disdain. We love the gift made by the impulse of a kindly heart, not because it was a necessity but because it was a pleasure. I once sat in a great gathering and heard a man with silver hair offer a bit of advice which sprang from a life of rich experience. “Let us,” he said, “during the week that we are together, make it a point to be a little kinder to one another than is necessary.” Life had taught him that the finer graces and the sweeter instincts are not necessary things. They do not earn salary. They do not satisfy the hunger of the body. They are even sometimes discounted in the calculations of the shortsighted. They are, however, the beautiful things. They garland life and make it lovely. If the men in that gathering were to be kind to one another, it was desirable that they should be so for the sake of kindness, and not for that of compulsion. This was one of the first principles to engage the attention of the Great Teacher. He said to a crowd of people one day that one gets no credit either on the books of heaven or in the courts of his own conscience until he has done a little better than was strictly necessary. It is a little thing to give the coat that is asked for, but it is a worthy thing to give the cloak which is not expected. It is insignificant to travel the mile that is requested, but it is worth while to go the second mile unasked. One deserves no thanks for having loved his friend, for that is easy, but he who learns to love his enemies has achieved something really worth while.