"Take the animal world. What can you do to make up for the lack of life in a dog? I read the other day of a lady who had a pet dog. She loved it to distraction. It died. Whatever could she do with it to make up for its loss of life? Well, she might have preserved it, stuffed it, jewelled its eyes, and painted its skin. But had she done so, these things would have been a disappointing substitute. So she buried it, and committed suicide in her grief, and was buried by its side. "Take the loss of human life. What is the use of a dead man? Go to the death-chamber. Look at that corpse. The loved ones are distracted. What can they do? They may dress it, adorn it, appeal to it. But all that human skill and effort can conceive will be in vain. All that the broken hearts can say or do must soon terminate, as did Abraham's mourning for Sarah, when he said, 'Give me a piece of land that I may bury my dead out of my sight.' Nothing can make up for the lack of life. "But this is specially true of the Spiritual Life of which we are speaking. Take this in its application to a Corps. If you want an active, generous, fighting, dare-devil Corps, able and willing to drive Hell before it, that Corps must be possessed, and that fully, by this spirit of life. Nothing else can effectively take its place. No education, learning, Bible knowledge, theology, social amusements, or anything of the kind will be a satisfactory substitute. The Corps that seeks to put any of these things in the place of life will find them a mockery, a delusion, and a snare; will find them to be only the wraps and trappings of death itself. "And if it is so in the Corps, it is so ten thousand times more in the Officer who commands that Corps--in you! "Spiritual Life is the essential root of every other qualification required by a Salvation Army Officer. "With it he will be of unspeakable interest. "He will be a pleasure to himself. There is an unspeakable joy in having healthy, exuberant life. "He will be of interest to those about him. Who cares about dead things? Dead flowers--throw them out. Dead animals--eat them. Dead men--bury them. Dead and dying Officers--take them away. Give them another Corps. "If he is living he will be of interest to all about him. Men with humble abilities, if full of this Spiritual Life, will be a charm and a blessing wherever they go. Look at the lives and writings of such humble men as Billy Bray, Carvosso, and Hodgson Casson. Their memory is an ointment poured forth to-day after long years have passed away.