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We know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffeth up, but love edifieth. If any man thinketh that he knoweth anything, he knoweth not yet as he ought to know. I COR. viii. I, 2.

L

Look straight at all things from the soul,
But boast not much to understand;
Make each new action sound and whole,
Then leave it in its place unscanned.

ANONYMOUS

IFE is the adjustment of our inner state to the outer facts that go by the name of circumstance. Where the mind perpetually adjusts itself to all that happens to it from without, and never forfeits the consciousness of living in God, there is spiritual life. But such an adjustment may be passive,- a mere resignation, bland submissiveness to events, a trust, a dependence, an inactive looking up,- a fatalism, and nothing more. These mental states do indeed indicate some of the highest phases of life, but spiritual life means more: it means ceaseless action. The spirit of man is the highest organism in creation. Nothing can be compared to its mobility, its power of assimilation, its growth, function, fruitfulness, its tendencies and complexities. Action, then, is the substance of living. Whether he heals or teaches, prays or contemplates, fasts or watches, rebukes or consoles, suffers or organizes, lives or dies, the man of God is the man of endless action. Action is the measure of spirituality.

MOZOOMDAR

Others have labored, and ye are entered into their labors.

JOHN iv. 38.

Quit you like men, be strong. Let all that ye do be done in love. I COR. xvi. 13, 14.

Brother There is no payment in the world!
We work and pour our labor at the feet
Of those who are around us and to come.
We live and take our living at the hands
Of those who are around us and have been.
No one is paid. No person can have more
Than he can hold. And none can do beyond
The power that's in him. To each child that's born
Belongs as much of all our human good

As he can take and use to make him strong.
And from each man, debtor to all the world,
Is due the fullest fruit of all his powers,
His whole life's labor, proudly rendered up,
Not as return -can moments pay an age?
But as the simple duty of a man.
Can he do less-receiving everything?

CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN

ESTABLISH something, achieve something,

produce some result, let humanity assimilate thee, and remember thee as a part of itself.

MOZOOMDAR

I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for nought and vanity: yet surely my judgment is with the Lord, and my recompense with my God. ISAIAH xlix. 4.

Build as thou wilt, unspoiled by praise or blame,
Build as thou wilt, and as thy light is given;
Then, if at last the airy structure fall,

Dissolve and vanish, take thyself no shame.
They fail and they alone who have not striven.

THE

T. B. ALDRICH

On the earth the broken arcs;
In the heaven, a perfect round.

ROBERT BROWNING

HERE is no end to the sufficiency of character. It can afford to wait; it can do without what is called success; it cannot but succeed. To a well-principled man existence is victory. He defends himself against failure in his main design by making every inch of the road to it pleasant. There is no trifle and no obscurity to him; he feels the immensity of the chain whose last link he holds in his hand, and is led by it. Having nothing, this spirit hath all.... It makes no stipulations for earthly felicity, does not ask, in the absoluteness of its trust, even for the assurance of continued life. EMERSON

Genuine self-sufficingness is an imperial trait, grounded only in truth and virtue. And it is a noble safeguard against belittling vices.

WILLIAM R. ALGER

A great, growing, grandly unfolding soul can be fashioned anywhere, if only God is with him; and his faculty, it may be, will be completing itself as truly in one employment as in another. His heart will grow as big, his imagination kindle itself in fires to him of as great beauty, he will be as original, as deep, as free, and will swing his nature into as high force every way, in using a hammer as in using a pen. God nowhere allows what we so constantly assume, that souls are kept back from their completeness by their trades, and grades, and employments. He is going to complete them all, if they will suffer it, in the highest and most perfect form of being possible.

HORACE BUshnell

Do that which is assigned you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much. There is at this moment for you an utterance brave and grand as that of the colossal chisel of Phidias, or trowel of the Egyptians, or the pen of Moses, or Dante, but different from all these.

EMERSON

Week Fifth

SPLENDOR WITHIN

Prelude

WE'VE ALL OUR ANGEL SIDE

Despair not of the better part
That lies in human kind,
A gleam of light still flickereth
In e'en the darkest mind.
The savage with his club of war,
The sage so mild and good,
Are linked in firm eternal bonds
Of common brotherhood.
Despair not! Oh! despair not then,
For through this world so wide,

No nature is so demon-like,

But there's an angel side.

The huge, rough stones from out the mine,

Unsightly and unfair,

Have veins of purest metal hid

Beneath the surface there.

Few rocks so bare but to their height
Some tiny moss plant clings,
And round the peaks so desolate,
The sea bird sits and sings.
Believe me, too, that rugged souls,
Beneath their rudeness, hide
Much that is beautiful and good;
We've all our angel side.