Two things take one into the inner circle of the ideal-makers of the race--imagination and sympathy. Ideals cannot be bought with gold. The ideal is always founded on integrity, progress, and common-sense. It is preëminently practical, as well: the thing that inevitably must be, now or hereafter, however men laugh it to scorn to-day. Imagination is the faculty of perceiving the higher and final relations of life, the relation of one's work to the progress of the world, and of one's conduct: to spiritual history. What the ideal-maker tries to do is to set holy standards that shall not pass away: to do abiding work, in thought, deed, word; work philosophically planned, and perseveringly carried out; work which he shall do regardless of the outer circumstances of his life--poverty or wealth, of threats, misunderstanding, or hoots of scorn. He is unmoved, both by the rage of the populace and by its most tumultuous applause. He lives for truth, not for personal advance; for progress, not for wealth or honor. What he lays down as a precept, that he tries to live up to, in the way that shall win the approval of the eternal years. Sordidness in commercial life is not necessary: greed is not foreordained. Christianity establishes a new system of trading-philosophy, and a new basis of commercial ethics. There is a god-like way of trade--Christ might Himself have bought and sold--else Christianity fails of its full mission, and there remains a class of the socially lost, of the ethically unsaved. One reason why it is so hard to get business men into the Church, or to interest them religiously in any way, is that ministers, in general, do not understand or appreciate business men. In one of the most stirring sermons I ever heard, occurred this unjust sentence: "Our country has been built up by the martyr, and not by the millionaire." No! Our country has been built up by _both_ the martyr and the millionaire! Christianity projects into the world new ideals of Trade, of Gain, of Competition, Value, and Return for Toil. What is Trade? Is it merely a way of making money? Then there is no ethical basis for it. "The amount of money which is needed for a good life," says Aristotle, "is not unlimited." One concept is: Trade is something which belongs to me. It is that part of the world's exchange which I can get under my personal control. It is the balance between human industries and human needs which I hold for my part of the world, and which others are continually trying to wrest from me, and which I must keep by all means, fair or foul. Competition is the battle of the strongest, the quickest, the meanest! I must know tricks. I must get in with people, get hold of some sort of pull, learn to dissemble, to flatter, manipulate, hedge, dodge. Success is a matter of being sly. Anything is allowable which comes out ahead, which adds to the dollar-pile, or which makes the loudest advertising noise!