ample redemption, any glorious assertion of the mind, in these sad,
gloomy, hopeless facts? And yet He said, "I, if I be lifted up, shall
draw all men unto Me." How did He dare make such a prophecy as that?
How did He dare arrogate to himself such a dominion as that? Why,
simply because, living in the altitudes, he had vision of things that
must be. He knew that He had righteousness in His heart, and that
righteousness must at last be established. He knew that His spirit was
a spirit of peace and good will towards men, and that peace and good
will towards men must ultimately prevail. He lived on the heights, and
He saw those things that were to be. And now, what is true of these
great men may be true of every one of us, according to the loftiness of
our living. Every one of us may command the future--may, in a measure,
prophesy and weigh the consequences, and calculate the issues of our
own life; and every one of us can live a far larger, fuller and richer
life, in the years that are to be than we can live in the past or in
the time that is now.

And first, let me say to you that the man that lives upon the altitudes
of his spirit beholds with sure vision the issuance of his life in
triumph. We speak of life habitually as being a complicated and
intricate thing, and no doubt it is, upon its lower ranges. A man is
prosperous today, sweeping, with sails full set, before the breeze, his
bark leaping gladly, mounting buoyantly upon the waves; but no man can
tell what the morrow will bring forth to him. Prosperity is not a
matter of certitude, security or permanency. An ill wind comes, and
the vessel is swept to disaster; on the shoals or rocks, rushing to
destruction against some Scylla or swallowed up by some Charybdis. And
what is true of prosperity is true of power. Today a man is the idol
of the people, flattered, honored, extolled and crowned by them. They
gather round him and intoxicate him with their plaudits. He is the man
of the people, the great man of his day, but who can tell how long this
will rule enthroned? An unfortunate speech, an error of conduct, a
moment of indecision, a failure to appeal to the demagogic instincts of
the race, and he is ruthlessly bereaved of his honor and his glory
gone. The idols of yesterday are the broken statues of today; the
heroes of yesterday are the "have-beens" of today. So capricious, so
ephemeral, so mutable, so mercurial, so impermanent are the whims of