joys and accept privation, suffering, death, when duty calls,--such purposes and dispositions as these are unquestionably a true rule of life. The main theme to be illustrated in these pages is that this ideal and rule is in itself an all-sufficient principle. Fidelity to the best we know, and search always for the best, is the natural road to peace and joy, the sure road to victory. It is the key which opens to man the treasury of the universe. To enforce and vivify this conception,--this interpretation of the key of life as consisting in fidelity to certain ideals of character,--we go back to the memorable examples of the past. We use those examples, partly to show how the spiritual laws always worked, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever; and partly to show how as time advanced the laws have been understood with growing clearness, and applied with growing effectiveness. The same stars shone above the sages of Chaldea as shine above us, but our astronomy is better than theirs. The sages of Greece, the prophets of Palestine, the heroes of Rome, the saints of the Middle Ages, the philanthropists and the scientists of to-day, each made their special contribution to the spiritual astronomy. From age to age men have read the heavens and the earth more clearly, and so made of them a more friendly home. Just as, too, there come times of momentous progress in the physical world; the establishment of the Copernican theory, the discovery of a new continent, the mastering of electricity,--so there are periods of swift advance and discovery in the spiritual life, and such a birth-hour, of travail and of joy, comes in our own day.