once, father, mother, brother, friend and model for our aspiration. Next to being great ourselves is the appreciation of the greatness of others. The man who feels the moral worth of one truly good, has the possibilities of moral force in his own soul. There is nothing humiliating in the homage which we pay to great men. It is the love of the same, an inspiration of hope that we may attain the same. In human life, every great object of desire is a goal, a prize to be struggled for. Every one, in order to be meritorious, happy, and progressive, ought to have some aim which he earnestly desires to compass; some ideal which he deeply proposes to achieve. We can improve ourselves by thinking, wishing, willing ourselves on a nobler, higher plane, dwelling less on self, more on religion, science, soul, art, tenderness, charity, justice, and all that is good, grand, high, beautiful and true. We can, by watchfulness and exercise of the will, make our characters grow by degrees into the ideal which we set before us. GIFTS WILL AVAIL BUT LITTLE IF UNIMPROVED. Use can almost change the stamp of nature. Every person should endeavor to be equal to opportunities; but how few are wise or practical enough to utilize them, even under the most favorable conditions. Nature helps her children when they help themselves. Those faculties will be strong which are most used. Man is helped through the law of accumulation and accretion. The discharge of feeling into action renders the subsequent discharge of feelings more easy. We gain mental and moral power much as we do physical-by increase of exercise. Our aspirations after the best will assist us in attaining them. For action, was existence given. He alone can claim his name who writes, With fancy high, and bold and daring flights. Passivity will never accomplish anything. Desire must be accompanied by work. Men and women fail through feebleness of will. Once rouse the enthusiasm of the will, and courage can be systematically disciplined and resolved. A great part of courage is having done the thing before. Man undertakes by reason. Let business vex him, avarice blind, Let doubt and knowledge rack his mind; Let error act, opinion speak, And want afflict, and sickness break, And anger burn, dejection chill, And joy distract, and sorrow kill, Till armed by care, and taught to KNOW, Time draws a sure, destructive blow. We do not possess what we do not use. Our minds, left to sloth and inactivity, soon lose their vigor; but, when they are kept in exercise, after performing what is before them, and are tasked with new requisitions, it is not easy to assign limits to their ability. Whatever task we have to perform we do it by our will power. MIND IS WAITING FOR SOME MOVING FORCE. Many faculties are dormant for lack of exercise. How many minds are treasures of innate powers, waiting to become conscious of their capabilities. When the mind is stimulated to normal action, when the intellectual faculties ance. are in high action, nearly every fountain yields them assistThis is the way nature helps great minds when they are willing to help themselves. We are to earn the joys of a higher life by using all our gifts in this life. A satisfied man wants nothing, and makes no exertion; but a man of powerful desires is likely to bless the world with developments of great magnitude. Consequently, he who would enjoy true and high inspiration should propound to himself the following questions, then give the world appropriate answers through a true and high life: 1. What do I live for? Is it merely for personal interest and happiness? or do I love the neighbor and identify my interest, my justice, and my joy, with the universal interests of mankind? Are my social faculties in a balanced condition? Do I sufficiently love my own personality? Do I obey the laws of nature in regard to food, exercise and slumber? Am I, in any sense, intemperate? Do I seek the society of the gay and superficial, to the neglect of personal culture and important studies? Am I depriving myself of the true joys and inspirations of God, by disobedience to the laws of my being? 2. Are my intellectual faculties properly balanced? Do I yield myself sufficiently to reflection? Have I a materialistic intellect which goes no deeper than the externals, the forms and symbols of thought? Or do I penetrate the causes of things? 3. Are my moral and spiritual faculties properly balanced? Do I venerate justice as a principle? Are my aspirations after justice and equity confined to the ordinary and selfish circle of my own wants and requirements? or do I expand my reverence and application of justice to the circumference of all human rights and demands? The true character and brain-building means living and constructing for posterity. The problem of the age that educators are to solve, with all the light that experience, aided by physiology and reflection, can give, is how to build the best brains out of the materials given to work with. CULTIVATE A WEALTH OF CONSCIOUSNESS. No person educated to realize all the noble capacities of the human spirit can consent to pass a life unworthy of innate powers and capabilities. All the expenditure of a cultivated man upon himself is like the expenditures upon a temple, public and beneficent. Judgment declares what is true according to the iron bands of thought, and is educational and cumulative, but reason is man's total being. It is not the mere ability to reason correctly, but it is the power to practice what reason and judgment dictates that marks the man of character. It depends entirely on your constitution, education and state of mind, whether you be master or servant--a circumstance or a centerstance, whether you be a thing or a power. Man alone is capable of knowing the difference between himself and his circumstance. When a circumstance is realized to be a circumstance, and when a man's spirit feels itself to be a centerstance, a sun-center, around which all circumstances and satellites are destined to revolve in orbital obedience, then is born within him the first assurance of his implanted kingship. This sense of supremacy may come in such memorable moments as when a man is driven to his highest mental point through excitement; sometimes through sublime indignation, at the climax of which comes the terrific fire and the thunder shock from the soul's Sinai; then descends a flash of celestial lightning from the spirit's heaven, and in an instant is born a strong divinity within the soul which brings mountains to the valley, and raises that which was low instantly to the level of its will. It is rarely that an appeal so sublime as this comes to human nature; but something of it is known in nearly all private lives. There comes to every one a moment of decision which will demand and compel the culmination and climacteric determination of all the consciousness, of all the powers of the soul. The reality of things as they are is of an unspeakable value. It is coming to be seen and acknowledged that what is physically and scientifically true, cannot be morally and theologically false or impracticable. We expect to require of every thing a continual manifestation or representation of its characteristics, but when we come to man we seldom manifest the same rationality. It is the mission of every man to develop his entire HOOD -not mortgaged to the shadowy, dreamy past, with face turned immovably backward-or the subject of some eternal SAY SO. Be braver, man! Trace to their source thy thoughts- But felt and comprehended by the soul, Which will a part of them, as they of thee, Become an eternal and unfading fact. WE SHOULD BE ETHICAL AS WELL AS PRACTICAL AND CON STRUCTIVE. All should come under the Divine law of pervasive truth. In the realms of nature many a man who has achieved eminence, if not immortalized himself, has spent his hours of recreation in cultivating the imagination and enlarging the faculties of the mind. The brain is a physical organism, and admits of as systematic and thorough cultivation as do the muscles of the |