"Without this life an Officer will be of no manner of use. No matter how he may be educated or talented, without life is to be without love; and to be without love, the Apostle tells us, is to be only as 'a sounding brass.' But it is not that of which I want to speak just now. "Spiritual Life is essential to the preservation of life. "The first thing life does for its possessor is to lead him to look after its own protection. When the principle of life is strong, you will have health and longevity. When it is weak, you have disease. When it is extinct, you have decay and rottenness. "Only vigorous Spiritual Life will enable a Salvation Army Officer to effectually discharge the duties connected with his position. "Life is favorable to activity. It is so with all life. Go into the tropical forests, and see the exuberant growth of everything there. Look at the foliage, the blossom, the fruit. Look at the reptiles crawling at your feet, and take care they do not sting you. Look at the birds chattering and fluttering on the trees, and they will charm you. Look at the animals roving through the woods, and take care they do not devour you. "Contrast all this movement with the empty, barren, silent, Polar regions, or the dreary, treeless sands of the African desert. "Go and look at the overflowing, tirelss activity of the children. Why are they never still? It is the life that is in them. Go to the man at work. With what glee, and for what a trifling remuneration, he sweats, and lifts and carries the ponderous weights. Go to the soldier in the military war. How he shouts and sings as he marches to deprivations, and wounds, and death. "Even so with Spiritual Life. It never rests; it never tires; it always sees something great to do, and is always ready to undertake it. What is the explanation? How can we account for it? The answer is, Life--abundant life. "It is only by the possession of Life that The Salvation Army Officer can spread this life. "That is, reproduce himself, multiply himself, or his kind. This reproduction or multiplication of itself is a characteristic of all life. "Take the vegetable kingdom. Every living plant has life-producing seed, or some method of reproducing itself. The thistle: who can count the number of plants that one thistle can produce in a year? One hundred strawberry plants can be made in ten years to produce more than a thousand million other strawberry plants! "Take the animal kingdom. Here each living creature has this reproductive power. They say that a pair of sparrows would in ten years, if all their progeny could be preserved, produce as many birds as there are people on the earth--that is, 1,500,000,000. 'Ye are of more value than many sparrows.'