A man does not have to go to Armenia to find the hard thing to do, although there are harder and nobler tasks waiting there to-day than Oswald undertook, tasks that are crosses in the divinest sense, scarred with sorrow and grief. And perhaps there are some among us here now who are bearing crosses and finding them beyond their strength. But they are not to be mourned over. They were not of our making, were they? If they were of our making, perhaps there is some penitence to be felt, some restitution to be made. If they were not of our making, we may be sure that they were built just for our shoulder, that One who knew us made them that we might carry them, and become under them what we could never become without them. And if we have no such cross, out from our smooth and easy living, our cozy shelters in which we have been kept and are kept now, One is calling us to come whose ancient word we hear to-day: “I came not to send peace, but a sword. Whosoever would be my disciple must love nothing as much as me, and must be willing to rise up and follow me.” For men and women who will do this in the full and joyous spirit of Francis of Assisi but in the forms suitable to our modern life the summons of God and the world is clear. LECTURE II THE CONSERVATION AND RELEASE OF MORAL RESOURCES One of our most familiar national ideas during recent years has been the conservation of our natural resources, our mines, our forests, our water power, the agricultural capacities of our soil. It would have been a good thing if this idea had occurred to us fifty years earlier. But it is an idea which always comes late to a young nation. So long as the population is sparse and the supply of good land unlimited and it is an easy thing to pick up a living from the surface of the ground, perhaps it is too much to expect that any people would be careful and frugal. But when the population has increased and begins to press against the means of subsistence, when the good public lands are exhausted and a mere living becomes harder for the masses of the people to secure, then any nation awakens to wisdom and turns from recklessness and prodigality.