Trade has ceased to be a thing of individual energy, talent, and commercial alertness. It has risen to great proportions. The large trader is in control of national conduit, as well as of national expense. There is a great deal more in business than the art of making money. Business is, at the roots, a way of making nations; of developing the resources of a country, of handling its industries, of protecting its commerce, of enlarging its institutions, of uplifting its training, aspirations, and ideals. Traffic is educational. Imports influence the national life. We may import opium or Bibles, whiskey or bread-stuffs, locomotives or dancing pigs. The sceptre held by Tyre and Venice is passing into our own hands. But trade, to-day, is a matter of the imagination, as well as of the stock-book. 11 needs a great imagination to handle the present-day problems of business and finance. The prosperity of a nation depends largely on the intelligence, integrity, and magnanimity of its business men. To be narrow-minded in business, is not only intellectual astigmatism, it is poor commercial policy. To make use of present opportunities to control present advantages needs a great education and a large human experience. It is the man of insight, of sympathy, of economic ideals, who will lastingly control our national prosperity and advance our industrial wealth. With all this demand, the business man still stands largely in a class by himself, a class apart from the great leaders of the world. He is not yet received into the spiritual circles of the race. He goes about the world, sits on boards and committees, fills directorships and trusteeships, pays pew-rent, and runs towns. But when the spiritual conclaves of the world take place, when the things of life and death are inquired into, when words are said of the higher conduct of the life of man, if he draw near inquiringly or unguardedly to the sacred place, scholar and poet, priest, saint, and proud hand-worker alike rise up and say, Go away. It wears upon the heart--this spiritual isolation of the business man. Does not he often say sadly to himself, They only want my money? Why must he go away? What has he done, that he must be waved down? If we discover why he must go away, we shall discover the meaning of that great caste-line which has long been drawn, and ought no longer to be drawn, between trade and letters, trade and the Church, trade and social prestige. The reason he must go away is this: He has never ruled the higher history of man; he does not yet quite belong to the ideal-makers of the race. Understand, I am not now speaking of the new business man, the exceptional one, upright, cultured, altruistic, whom you and I may know; I am speaking of a broad class-line, a class distinction.