aid hold of,
and if made the great central principle in one's life, around which all
others properly arrange and subordinate themselves, will make that life
a grand success, truly great and genuinely happy, loved and blessed by
all in just the degree in which it is laid hold upon,--a principle
which, if universally made thus, would wonderfully change this old world
in which we live,--ay, that would transform it almost in a night, and it
is for its coming that the world has long been waiting; that in place of
the gloom and despair in almost countless numbers of lives would bring
light and hope and contentment, and no longer would it be said as so
truly to-day, that "man's inhumanity to man, makes countless thousands
mourn"; that would bring to the life of the fashionable society woman,
now spending her days and her nights in seeking for nothing but her own
pleasure, such a flood of true and genuine pleasure and happiness and
satisfaction as would make the poor, weak something she calls by this
name so pale before it, that she would quickly see that she hasn't known
what true pleasure is, and that what she has been mistaking for the
real, the genuine, is but as a baser metal compared to the purest of
gold, as a bit of cut glass compared to the rarest of diamonds, and that
would make this same woman who scarcely deigns to notice the poor woman
who washes her front steps, but who, were the facts known, may be
living a much grander life, and consequently of much more value to the
world than she herself, see that this poor woman is after all her
sister, because child of the same Father; and that would make the humble
life of this same poor woman beautiful and happy and sweet in its
humility; that would give us a nation of statesmen in place of, with now
and then an exception, a nation of politicians, each one bent upon his
own personal aggrandizement at the expense of the general good; that
would go far, ay, very far toward solving our great and hard-pressing
social problems with which we are already face to face; that, in short,
would make each man a prince among men, and each woman a queen among
women.

I have seen the supreme happiness in lives where this principle has been
caught and laid hold of, some, lives that seemed not to have much in
them before, but which under its wonderful influences have been so
transformed and so beautified, that have been made so sweet and so
strong, so useful and so precious, that each day s