Wisdom is habited in plainest garb, and she walks modestly, unheeded of the gaping and wondering crowd. She rules over the kingdom of little things, in which the lowly-minded hold the places of privilege. Her secrets are revealed to the careful, the patient, and the humble. They may be learned from the ant or the flower that blooms in some hidden spot or from the lips of husbandmen and housewives.

He is wise who finds a teacher in every man, an occasion to improve in every happening, for whom nothing is useless or in vain. If one whom he has trusted prove false, he lays it to the account of his own heedlessness and resolves to become more observant. If men scorn him, he is thankful that he need not scorn himself. If they pass him by, it is enough for him that truth and love still remain. If he is thrown with one who bears himself with ease and grace, or talks correctly in pleasantly modulated tones, or utters what can spring only from a sincere and generous mind-there is opportunity. If he chance to find himself in the company of the rude, their vulgarity gives him a higher estimate of the worth of breeding and behavior. The happiness and good fortune of his fellows add to his own. If they are beautiful or wise or strong, their beauty, wisdom, and strength shall in some way help him. The merry voices of children bring gladness to his heart; the songs of birds wake melody there. Whoever anywhere, in any age, spoke noble words or performed heroic deeds, spoke and wrought for him. For him Moses led the people forth from bondage; for him the three hundred perished at Thermopyla; for him Homer sang; for him Demosthenes denounced the tyrant; for him Columbus sailed the untraveled sea; for him Galileo gazed on the starry vault; for him the blessed Savior died. He knows that whatever diminishes his good-will to men, his sympathy with them, even in their blindness and waywardness, makes him poorer, and he therefore finds means to convert their faults even into opportunities for loving them more. The rivalries of business and politics, the shock of conflicting aims and interests, the prejudices and perversities of men, shall not cheat him of his own good by making him less just or kind. He stands with the

Eternal for righteousness, and will not suffer that fools or criminals divert him to lower ends.

If we have but the right mind, all things, even those that hurt, help us. "That which befits us,' "That which befits us," says Emerson, "embosomed in beauty and wonder as we are, is cheerfulness and courage, and the endeavor to realize our aspirations. The life of man is the true romance which when it is valiantly conducted, yields the imagination a higher joy than any fiction." May we not make the stars and the mountains and the all-enduring earth minister to tranquillity of soul, to elevation of mind, and to patient striving? Have not the flowers and the human eye and the look of heaven when the sun first appears or departs, power to show us that God is beautiful and good? Shall not the great, calm Mother whose fair face, despite the storms and battles of all the ages, is still full of repose and strength, teach us the wisdom of brave work without noise or hurry? It seems scarcely possible to live in the presence of nature and not be cured of vanity and conceit. When we see how gently and patiently she effaces or beautifies all traces of convulsions, agonies, defeats, and enmities, we feel that we are able to overcome hate and envy and all ignoble passions.

Since life is great, nay, of inestimable value, no opportunity by which it may be improved can be small. Higher things remain to be done than have yet been accomplished. God and His universe still wait on each individual soul, offering opportunity. In the midst of the humble and inevitable realities of daily life each one must seek out for himself the way to better worlds. Our power, our worth will be proportionate to the industry and perseverance with which we make right use of the ever-recurring minor occasions whether for becoming or for doing good. Opportunity is not wanting-there is place and means for all -but we lack will, we lack faith, hope, and desire, we lack watchfulness, meditation, and earnest striving, we lack aim and purpose. Do we imagine that it is not possible to lead a high life in a lowly room? That one may not be hero, sage, or saint in a factory or a coal-pit, at the handle of the plough or the throttle of the engine? We are all in the center of the same world and whatever happens to us is great, if there be greatness in us. The dis

believers in opportunity are voluble with excuses. They cannot; they have no leisure; they have not the means. But they can if they will; leisure to improve one's self is never wanting, and they who seek find the means. There is always opportunity to do right though he who does it stand alone, like Abdiel,

“Among innumerable false, unmoved,

Unshaken, unseduced, unterrified."

Let a man but have an aim, a purpose, and opportunities to attain his end shall start forth like buds at the kiss of spring. If we do not know what we want, how shall anything be made to serve us? The heedless walk through deserts in which the observant find the most precious things. Little is to be hoped for from the weavers of pretexts, from those who tell us what they should do, if circumstances were other. What hinders helps, where souls are alive. Say not thou lackest talent. What talent had any of the great ones better than their passionate trust in the efficacy of labor?

The important thing is to have an aim and to pursue it with perseverance. What is the aim the wise should propose to themselves? Not getting and possessing, but becoming and being. Man is not only more than anything that can belong to him; he is greater than planets and solar systems. We easily persuade ourselves that were circumstances more favorable we should be better and happier. It may be so, but the mood is weak and foolish. There is never a question of what might have been where true men think and act. The past is irrecoverable. It is our business to do what we can here and now, and regrets serve but to enfeeble and distract us. boundless good lies near each one, and though a thousand times it has eluded us, let us believe that now we shall hold it fast. From failure to failure we rise toward truth and love. The ascent is possible even for the lowliest of God's creatures. When, indeed, we look backward through long years of life, lost opportunities rise before us like mocking fiends crying, Too late, too late, Nevermore, nevermore; but the wise heed no voice that bids them lose heart. They look ever forward, they press

The

toward the mark, knowing that the present moment is the only opportunity. Now is the day of salvation, now is the day of doom. The individual is but as a bubble that rises from out the infinite ocean of being and bursts in the inane; but his life is nevertheless enrooted in the Absolute, and all the circumstances by which his existence is surrounded and attended are but meant to awaken in him a knowledge and appreciation of his abiding and inestimable worth. They all, therefore, are or may be made opportunities. The paramount consideration is not what will procure for him more money, finer houses, better machines, more rapid or more destructive engines, but what will make him wiser, stronger, holier, more loving, more godlike. The useful is not the best; or shall I say that the most useful is that which serves divine ends, which though it provide not bed or board, illumines, exalts, and enriches the life of man? Emerson rightly affirms that they are beggars who live but to the useful.

All things exist for God and to educate man into his likeness. If one were but high and pure enough he would scatter blessings as the flower fragrance, and all who came near him would depart made sweet and rich as the air the flower has kissed. To rise daily out of one's self toward truth and beauty and goodness is the secret of becoming day by day more like unto God.

We imagine that we lack material things, but what we really need is more and diviner life. Money is but a remedy for poverty, and poverty is but one of many evils; and if we give our hearts chiefly to riches, we leave ourselves exposed to all the ills that make man miserable,

save one.

We find ourselves where we seek ourselves-in matter or in mind, in the low world of mere sensation and base desire, or in that where souls are transfigured by truth and love. Perfection, indeed, is beyond our reach, but they who seriously strive to become perfect acquire excellences and virtues, taste a peace and a joy of which the many have hardly a conception. When we act in the light of the ideal of human perfection, all the ways of life become plain, and opportunity is ever present and appealing. We find it in youth and in age, in glad days and in sad days, in health and in sickness, in poverty and in

wealth, in the panorama of nature with its change of seasons, its sunsets and dawns, its mountains and oceans, its plains and rivers, and in the only less marvelous world of literature and art. What are the senses but permanent opportunities, inviting us to look that we may see and know, to listen that we may hear and understand? What is success but a command to attempt still higher things? What is failure but an exhortation to the all-hoping heart of man to make another venture? At whatsoever moment we awaken to the meaning and worth of life there is work for us to do. No one, it may be, will pay us for it, but God and nature are always with us, assisting us in every effort to become wise, strong, and virtuous. cannot do great things, there is ever-present opportunity of doing small things well; and great occasions come to those alone who make good use of the hundred minor offices and occurrences with which the lives of all are filled. If we fail in the dangers and temptations which none escape, it is because there is some fault in our daily life, in our habitual state.

Everything has a meaning, has truth and nourishment. for those who are wholly alive, and opportunities come crowding in upon them-opportunities to learn, to admire, to love, to cheer, to console, to enlighten and guide. Is there not always opportunity to deny one's self, to refrain from facile and cheap pleasures that we may make ourselves capable of pure joy? Pleasure is the bait on Nature's hook and they who bite are caught. Pleasure is death's forager. If we are but true and high in the common affairs, nothing shall have power to harm us. Is opportunity lacking to be polite, obliging, discreet and amiable, to listen with attention or to speak what is better than silence, to observe carefully, to bear bravely and to do right? Is it difficult to find occasion for being sincere and honest? Honesty is the best policy, because an honest man, whether or not he get place or money, is a genuine man, self-approved, and pleasing to God. In poverty he is rich, in prison he is free. Whatever his outward fate and fortune, failure cannot touch him, for to be a genuine man is the highest we may know on earth. Is opportunity lacking to speak truth and to live within one's means to obey the two great commandments, Do not lie,