ng war have
been changed. No soldier was braver and no patriot truer than Clara
Barton, and wherever that noble company of Protestant women known as the
Red Cross Society,--the cross, I suppose, pointing to Calvary, and the
red to the blood of the Redeemer,--wherever those consecrated workers
seek to alleviate the condition of those who suffer from plagues,
cholera, fevers, flood, famine, there this tireless angel moves on her
pathway of blessing. And of all heroes, what nobler ones than these,
whose names shine from the pages of our missionary history? I never read
of Mrs. Judson, Mrs. Snow, Miss Brittain, Miss West, without feeling that
the heroic age of our race has just begun, the age which opens to woman
the privilege of following her benevolent inspirations wheresoever she
will, without thinking that our Christianity needs no other evidence.

"Duty is the cement without which all power, goodness, intellect, truth,
happiness, and love itself can have no permanence, but all the fabric of
existence crumbles away from under us and leaves us at last sitting in
the midst of a ruin, astonished at our own desolation." A constant,
abiding sense of duty is the last reason of culture.

"I slept and dreamed that life is beauty;
I woke and found that life is duty."

We have no more right to refuse to perform a duty than to refuse to pay a
debt. Moral insolvency is certain to him who neglects and disregards his
duty to his fellow-men. Nor can we hire another to perform our duty.
The mere accident of having money does not release you from your duty to
the world. Nay, it increases it, for it enables you to do a larger and
nobler duty.

If your money is not clean, if there is a dirty dollar in your millions,
you have not succeeded. If there is the blood of the poor and
unfortunate, of orphans and widows, on your bank account, you have not
succeeded. If your wealth has made others poorer, your life is a
failure. If you have gained it in an occupation that kills, that
shortens the lives of others, that poisons their blood, or engenders
disease, if you have taken a day from a human life, if you have gained
your money by that which has debauched other lives, you have failed.

Remember that a question will be asked you some time which you cannot
evade, the right answer to which will fix your destiny forever: "How did
you get that fortune?" Are other men's lives in it; are others' hope and
happiness buried in it; a