y provide
that counsel which is more precious than rubies. All this is in the
highest degree praiseworthy.

But the only men who give what Lincoln called at Gettysburg "the last
full measure of devotion" are the men who give themselves. These men
do not go on horseback nor in automobiles. They walk. They eat the
hardtack. They sleep on the ground. They dig the trenches and fight
in them. They march out at the word of command to be shot at. They
keep right on doing those plain things until the war is ended and
victory achieved. These are the men who awaken our warmest feeling of
admiration and gratitude. "Here am I, send me"--nothing can take the
place of that!

In that sterner war where there is no discharge, in that age-long,
world-wide fight against the evils of earth this same sound principle
holds. Money is needed; counsel is needed; organization and
administrative ability are needed. The bringing in of that kingdom
which is not meat and drink, nor shot and shell, but righteousness and
peace and joy in the divine spirit, requires all these fine forms of
effort. But nothing can ever take the place of that personal
consecration of each man's own soul to the service of the living God.

In that high hour when Isaiah saw the God of things as they are, high
and lifted up, sitting on His throne, he did not say, "Here are any
number of fine people, send them. Here is a man who could perform the
task better than I--send him." He said what every man must say who
means to stand right in the Day of Judgment, "Here am I, send me."

He was the son of good fortune, and his life was bright and rich with
many an advantage. But this did not prompt him to claim any sort of
exemption from the call for volunteers. His vision of the awful
difference between the earthly majesty of that king who sank so swiftly
into a leper's grave and the heavenly majesty which rose above it
sovereign and eternal, made him feel that nothing would suffice but the
gift of himself.

What shall it profit a man, this man, that man, any man, to gain the
largest measure of earthly success you may choose to name, if in the
process he loses himself, his real self, his best self, his enduring
self? What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, but feels
within himself a capacity for higher things unrealized? In the great
outcome nothing really matters save the devotion of the personal life
to the highest ends.

In the year 1840 n