The religious life, to some imaginations, presents itself as inclining largely to the side of the passive and the negative. It is abstinence from evil quite as much as eager realization of good. On this view, an air of cloistered sanctity hangs about it: it is full of prayers and mystic raptures: its eye is fixed within, or, if not within, only upon God. It is sweet rather than strong: more meditative than active: a faint fragrance exhales from it, but it does not forget itself to grapple with wrong, or descend upon the arena of human woes and oppressions, full of the heat of battle, or, with a careless heroism, spend itself to the last for the kingdom of God. I do not deny the reality and the sweetness of this type of goodness; but it is not the only type, and much less the type produced by the contagion of Christ upon a strong nature and an eager vitality. I have said that the abundant physical gift of life may carry with it a certain temptation to an unsympathizing self-sufficiency. It is difficult not to be proud of an untiring energy, and faculties that are always abreast of the demands made upon them, and an immunity from pain and languor which is like a double portion of strength. But what if all these things are only a larger gift to lay upon the altar of humanity? What if strength be used only to follow with swifter stride in the self-denying footsteps of Christ? What if the sense of joyous energy only fortifies the soul against disappointment, and makes light of hindrances, and enables patience to have her perfect work? We envy the strong because we think they can do more than we, and enjoy more than we--in a word, because they live more than we. Let us envy them, if at all, because they have more than we to give to God and men, and answer with a fuller and more eager impulse to the breath of inspiration, and can throw a less infinitesimal weight into the scale of the Divine purpose.