"Only he that uses shall even so much as keep. Unemployed strength steadily diminishes. The sluggard's arm grows soft and flabby. So, even in this lowest sphere, the law is inexorable. Having is using. Not using is losing. Idleness is paralysis. New triumphs must only dictate new struggles. If it be Alexander of Macedon, the Orontes must suggest the Euphrates, and the Euphrates the Indus. Always it must be on and on. One night of rioting in Babylon may arrest the conquering march. Genius is essentially athletic, resolute, aggressive, persistent. Possession is grip, that tightens more and more. Ceasing to gain, we begin to lose. Ceasing to advance, we begin to retrograde. Brief was the interval between Roman conquest of Barbarians, and Barbarian conquest of Rome. Blessed is the man who keeps out of the hospital and holds his place in the ranks. Blessed the man, the last twang of whose bow-string is as sharp as any that went before, sending its arrow as surely to the mark."--_Roswell W. Hitchcock_. CHAPTER IV. VICARIOUS LIVES AS INSTRUMENTS OF SOCIAL PROGRESS. The eleventh chapter of Hebrews has been called the picture-gallery of heroes. These patriots and martyrs who won our first battles for liberty and religion made nobleness epidemic. Oft stoned and mobbed in the cities they founded and loved, they fled into exile, where they wandered in deserts and mountains and caves and slept in the holes of the earth. Falling at last in the wilderness, it may be said that no man knoweth their sepulcher and none their names. But joyfully let us confess that the institutions most eminent and excellent in our day represent the very principles for which these martyrs died and, dying, conquered. For those heroes were the first to dare earth's despots. They won the first victory over every form of vice and sin. They wove the first threads of the flag of liberty and made it indeed the banner of the morning, for they dyed it crimson in their heart's-blood. In all the history of freedom there is no chapter comparable for a moment to the glorious achievements of these men of oak and rock. Their deeds shine on the pages of history like stars blazing in the night and their achievements have long been celebrated in song and story. "The angels of martyrdom and victory," says Mazzini, "are brothers; both extend protecting wings over the cradle of the future life."