wer will come. Are you an
orator? The power and effectiveness of your words in influencing and
moving masses of men depends entirely upon the altitude from which they
are spoken. Would you have them more effective, each one filled with a
living power? Then elevate the life, the power will come. Are you in the
walks of private life? Then, wherever you move, there goes from you,
even if there be no word spoken, a silent but effective influence of an
elevating or a degrading nature. Is the life high, beautiful? Then the
influences are inspiring, life-giving. Is it low, devoid of beauty? The
influences then, are disease laden, death-dealing. The tones of your
voice, the attitude of your body, the character of your face, all are
determined by the life you live, all in turn influence for better or for
worse all who come within your radius. And if, as one of earth's great
souls has said, the only way truly to help a man is to make him better,
then the tremendous power of merely the life itself.

Why, I know personally a young man of splendid qualities and gifts, who
was rapidly on the way of ruin, as the term goes, gradually losing
control of himself day after day, self-respect almost gone,--already the
thought of taking his own life had entered his mind,--who was so
inspired with the mere presence and bearing of a royal-hearted young
man, one who had complete mastery of himself, and therefore a young man
of power, that the very sight of him as he went to and fro in his daily
work was a power that called his better self to the front again,
awakened the God nature within him, so that he again set his face in the
direction of the right, the true, the manly; and to-day there is no
grander, stronger, more beautiful soul in all the wide country than he.
Yes, there is a powerful influence that resolves itself into a service
for all in each individual strong, pure, and noble life.

And have the wonderful possibilities of what may be termed an inner or
soul development ever come strongly to your notice? Perhaps not, for as
yet only a few have begun to recognize under this name a certain great
power that has always existed,--a power that has never as yet been fully
understood, and so has been called by this term and by that. It is
possible so to develop this soul power that, as we stand merely and talk
with a person, there goes out from us a silent influence that the person
cannot see or hear, but that he feels, and the influences of w