For nothing is so easily wrecked as the soul. As mechanisms go up toward complexity, delicacy increases. The fragile vase is ruined by a single tap. A chance blow destroys the statue. A bit of sand ruins the delicate mechanism. But the soul is even more sensitive to injury. It is marred by a word or a look. Men are responsible for the ruin they work unthinkingly! To-day the engine drops a spark behind it. To-morrow that engine is a thousand miles away. Yet the spark left behind is now a column of fire mowing down the forests. And that devastating column belongs not to another, but to that engine that hath journeyed far. Thus the evil man does lives after him. The condemnation of life is that a man hath carried friction and stirred up malign elements and sowed fiery discords, so that the gods track him by the swath of destruction he hath cut through life. The praise of life is that a man hath exhaled bounty and stimulus and joy and gladness wherever he journeys. To-day noble examples and ten thousand precepts unite in urging every one to become a great heart. Every individual must bring together his little group of pilgrim friends, companions, employes, using whatever he has of wisdom and skill for guiding those who follow him on their desert march. For happiness is through helpfulness. Every morning let us build a booth to shelter someone from life's fierce heat. Every noon let us dig some life-spring for thirsty lips. Every night let us be food for the hungry and shelter for the cold and naked. The law of the higher manhood asks man to be a great heart, the shadow of a rock in a weary land. THE INVESTMENT OF TALENT AND ITS RETURN. "The universal blunder of this world is in thinking that there are certain persons put into the world to govern and certain others to obey. Everybody is in this world to govern and everybody to obey. There are no benefactors and no beneficiaries in distinct classes. Every man is at once both benefactor and beneficiary. Every good deed you do you ought to thank your fellowman for giving you an opportunity to do; and they ought to be thankful to you for doing it."--_Phillips Brooks_. "Pity is love and something more; love at its utmost."--_T. T. Munger, "Freedom of Faith._"