receive increase of life, wisdom, virtue, and happiness. Be persuaded within thy deepest soul, that moral evil can never be good, and that sin can never be gain. So act that if all men acted as thou, all would be well. If to be like others is thy aim, thou art predestined to remain inferior. To be followed and applauded is to be diverted from one's work. Better alone with it in a garret than a guest in a banquet hall. Let thy prayer be work and work thy prayer, As God's truth and love are everywhere, And whether by word or deed thou strive In Him alone thou canst be alive. If thou hast done thy best, God will give it worth. If thou carest not for truth and love, for thee they are nothing worth; but it is because thou thyself art worthless. Wisdom and virtue is all thou lackest; of other things thou hast enough. When the passion for self-improvement is strong within us, all our relations to our fellow-men and nature receive new meaning and power, as opportunities to make ourselves what it is possible for us to become; and as we grow accustomed to take this view of whatever happens, we are made aware that disagreeable things are worth as much as the pleasant, that foes are as useful as friends. The obstacle arrests attention, provokes effort, and educates. It throws the light back upon the eye, and reveals the world of color and form; from it all sounds reverberate. We grow by overcoming; the force we conquer becomes our own. We rise on difficulties we surmount. What opposes, arouses, strengthens, and disciplines the will, discloses to the mind its power, and implants faith in the efficacy of patient, persevering labor. They who shrink from the combat are already defeated. To make everything easy is to smooth the way whereby we descend. To surround the young with what they ought themselves to achieve is to enfeeble and corrupt them. Happy is the poor man's son, who whithersoever he turns, sees the obstacle rise to challenge him to become a man; miserable the children of the rich, whose cursed-blessed fortune is an ever-present invitation to idleness and conceit. O mothers, you whose love is the best any of us have known, harden your sons, and urge them on, not in the race for wealth, but in the steep and narrow way wherein, through self-conquest and self-knowledge, they rise toward God and all high things. Nothing that has ever been said of your power tells the whole truth, and the only argument against you is the men who are your children. Education is always the result of personal influence. A mother, a father in the home, a pure and loving heart at the altar, a true man or woman in the school, a noble mind uttering itself in literature, which is personal thought and expression,--these are the forces which educate. Life proceeds from life, and religion, which is the highest power of life, can proceed only from God and religious souls. Not by preaching and