These points from the Sermon on the Mount simply state the old principle of the beauty and value of the unnecessary. It is the second mile traveled, the overflowing kindness offered, and the unnecessary act of goodness that sweeten and glorify the years. These things make of life more than a gloomy journey through a valley of trouble. They make it a glad procession across the hills of joy. There is a higher law than that of necessity. Necessity may supply a skeleton for living, but we are not interested in skeletons until they are clothed with flesh and vitalized with life. It represents a framework for existence, but the framework of a building does not seem worth while until it has added to it the complement of walls and the beauty of decorations. It may represent the stage upon which the drama of life is to be enacted, but the stage is empty and bare until the actors come upon it and lend it the enchantment of thought and action. Beyond the line of necessity lie the countless things which weave the web of splendor and throw the magic of enchantment about things. Necessity supplies the substance. The unnecessary adds the glory. The proper question to ask about a course of conduct to be followed or a thing to be obtained is not, then, that as to whether it is necessary. It is that as to whether it is lovely and worth while. We need to remember that if all the unnecessary acts were left undone and all the unnecessary words were left unsaid, the world soon would cease to seem a fit place in which to live. We need to remember that it is the will uncompelled that tames the wilderness, that it is the hand unconstrained that reclaims the desert, and that it is the kindness born of spontaneous impulse which brings into life the uplifting and the helpful. Of course we could get on without all these things. We do not have to have the flowers; we could dispense with the moonbeams; our three meals a day do not depend upon the singing of the birds; the world could no doubt continue on its way if the wind never again whispered a lullaby among the trees. But this is not the kind of world for which the heart longs. The deeper hunger is satisfied only with a world made beautiful with the things that were whispered only into the more sacred chambers of the heart of man—the beautiful and the unnecessary things. Some New Facts About Alcohol (1918) After all, it may not have been so bad a thing that many defenders rose up during the past years to champion the failing cause of alcohol. The debate which has resulted from their mistaken contentions has really led to a determination on the part of people in general to look into the question and to determine for themselves whether alcohol is really a benefit or a menace to the user.