One of the saddest things in the world to-day is the principle under which those are living who are unwilling to bear these crosses and to bring home into their lives the wholesome spiritual stimulus that this roughening of life alone can give to them. We have reacted too far from the old monastic idea. Men speak with scorn now of those men and women who went away into monasteries and convents, despising the joys of the world for the sake of their souls. But these men and women were infinitely better than the great multitudes who go out into the world to-day, despising their souls for the sake of the joys of the world. If a man or woman wants to do any despising it is better to despise the world than the soul. It were well for us to go back a little to the spirit of the mediæval time. When that spirit was pure and good the world’s richest service flowed out from it. The glory of life for us consists in finding the rough, the morally austere things in life and then fearlessly and unhesitatingly doing them. There is no splendour in the easy indulgent way. The splendour lies in finding the hard thing to be achieved and revelling in it. Many years ago I clipped this story from the editorials of what was then our ablest newspaper: “A young Briton named Felix Oswald became interested a while ago in the geology of Turkish Armenia. He made long journeys through that country and finally came home with an important amount of valuable new material. It was not matter, however, that would find favour in the eyes of the general publisher and Mr. Oswald had to undertake its publication himself. He had the type set at the lowest rates in a small town. There were 516 pages of print and the author undertook the large task of doing the printing himself. He hired a hand press and after weeks of hard work he had produced 101 copies of the book. Feeling certain that this edition would fill the demand he went about the next large job, which was the hand colouring of all his maps and profiles. Then the copies were bound and the book was out. “Leading geologists say that the work is one of the best of its kind. The small edition is exhausted and the book will not be reprinted. The editor of _Petermann’s Mitteilungen_, believing that a wide circle of geologists would be glad to have the important results of Oswald’s investigations, has just printed in his periodical an extended résumé of them together with some of the maps. The University of London has crowned the work with its approval by conferring the degree of Doctor of Science upon the author. Oswald has certainly earned the congratulations of all who admire the qualities of courage, perseverance and intelligent devotion to a special task.”