cording to this order of
literature, and the word is: make a million, or a hundred millions of
dollars,--honestly if you can, dishonestly if you must, but, at all
events, the point is to "arrive." Now there is both a most demoralizing
fallacy and a strong and valuable truth mixed up in these exhortations.
"Trust thyself," said Emerson; "every heart vibrates to that iron
string."

"I thank whatever gods there be
For my unconquerable soul,"

sings William Ernest Henley, and he closes with the ringing lines,--

"I am the Captain of my fate,
I am the master of my soul."

And Emerson and Henley are right--so far as they go. And the man who has
been industrious, and economical, and has accumulated a fortune, has, at
all times, some elements that are right; and rigid economy is far better
than selfish indulgence. But whether a rigid economy is always a
virtue--depends. "There is that scattereth, yet increaseth." Whether it
is nobler to increase one's bank account at the expense of all the
personal expansion of life, through study, social life, travel,--all
that makes up a choice and fine culture, and at the expense of depriving
one's self of the untold luxury of service, as needs come in view,--is
certainly an open question, and one in which there is a good deal to say
for other uses of money than that of establishing an impressive bank
account; but leaving this aspect of the problem, one returns to that
phase of it represented by self-reliance. It is a great hindrance to the
infinite development of man to conceive of courage and self-reliance as
capacities or powers of his own rather than as fed from the divine
energy. A stream might as well cut itself off from its source, and from
its tributaries, and expect to flow on, in undiminished current to the
sea, as for man to regard courage and force of will as generated in
himself. Thus he dwarfs and hinders all his spiritual powers that are
found to lay hold upon God. Thus he stifles himself, rather than open
his windows into the pure air. "All the conditions of life are raised by
the meaning Jesus has shown to be in them."

Certainly, it was not for nothing that Christ came into the conditions
of the human life. His experience on earth comprehended every privation,
every limitation, known to the physical life. Not only these,--but He
experienced every phase of sorrow, of trial, of mental pain, of
spiritual anguish. He was misunderstood, He was misrepresented, He wa