What then is to be the test of inspiration? How are we to know what is inspired from what is not? There is no absolute and infallible test. The rule I have generally followed is what may be termed, the test of reproduction. The test of the perfect life of an oak is the production of an acorn that will produce another oak. The test of all complete and perfect animal life is its power to reproduce itself in the perpetuation of its own species. The test of inspiration is whether or not it reproduces its kind:--Does it inspire? Who can read the Twenty-third Psalm, or the Sermon on the Mount, the parable of the Lost Sheep, or the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians without feeling the spirit of inspiration in his own soul? Therefore these must be inspired, because they inspire others. Who can read Emerson's essay on Spiritual Laws, or The Over-Soul, and not be inspired? or Longfellow's Resignation? or Bryant's Lines to a Water-fowl, or Thanatopsis, and not be inspired? Then these must have been inspired, or they could not inspire. Who today can sing the Star Spangled Banner, Geo. F. Root's Battle Cry of Freedom, or Julia Ward Howe's Battle Hymn of the Republic, without feeling a thrill of inspiration that stirs the very depths of the soul? Then, these must have been inspired. Time and space fail me to mention even any of the great orators of history from Demosthenes to Woodrow Wilson, who by the power of their eloquence have been able to so inspire men to action as to change the course of empires and the destiny of nations. The secret of all this is that these men were themselves inspired,--not by some miraculous supernatural influence,--but by the natural intensity of their own earnestness, sincere devotion to, and all-absorbing interest in the cause they espoused, until they _lost themselves_ in their cause, and became thus inspired, and inspired others. Yes, inspiration is as common and potent in the world today as it ever has been in any age of the past. Its spirit still "enters into holy souls, making them friends of God and prophets."