How lamentable for a human life to end and find at the final judgment that all its days were of less value to the world than that of a coral polyp! How wonderful for one to be made out of dust, and after a while to crumble back into dust, and yet, refusing to grovel in the dust, leave the world richer, and better, and more beautiful, so that people of another age will breathe his name in reverence as they behold that which he hath wrought. Professor Finsen, the inventor of the “light cure,” was an invalid for many years, yet he labored like a slave, in the severest self-denial, to bring his invention, without compensation, to the service of the world’s sick and suffering. He had but one dread and that was the regret of dying, and leaving his little five-year-old boy without any memory of his father. He desired to live long enough to impress his face and life upon the memory of his son, that, in the after years, the growing man would never forget the one who toiled so earnestly for him. He did not want to be forgotten. How little did he dream of the immortality that was his! He found an unquarried statue in the sunbeam where others had overlooked it. Through ceaseless toil he brought it within the vision of the world and gained a name that countless ages will not forget. How wonderful to be the son of such a man! And though the image of the father’s face be blotted from the memory, the statue that he carved will help and heal the generations. How wonderful to be the son of such a man, but how much more wonderful it is to be the man himself! To fight with optimistic heart against the ravages of disease, to overcome the natural yearnings of a father’s heart, to endure the most slavish toil without thought or hope of compensation, to be a sick man fighting for others who were sick; a dying man making battle against disease that others may not taste of death! This is the joy unspeakable, to know that life is not in vain, but everlastingly worth while. The visions shall not fade as summer clouds at twilight time, but shall live in that which is as imperishable as marble. Each one can say with deep resolve: “Men shall behold the beauty of my soul by beholding the beauty of my daily life. Since words are blossoms, I shall, with gracious speech, show my friends how choice a garden I have planted in my heart. Since every blossom bears a seed I shall take pleasure in planting them within the hearts of others, that the beauty of my life may live in them. Out of the marble block that it has been mine to break from its hiding place, I shall carve the image I have treasured so long within my heart.” To do this is to find a joy unspeakable. Life is not useless, but gloriously worth while. Eating, and drinking, and toiling for that which is far more than life, one can never die. VI THE AGES TO COME