n
been thought of, too often spoken of, as if it were the last resource of
the heart, A brilliant young professor of psychology not long ago
referred to religion as something to flee to, by those who were
disappointed in love! We have spoken so much of "giving up," that the
Christian life has wrongly seemed to mean the giving-up of one's
individuality, interests, powers. As well might we expert the deep sea
to give up its rolling tides, or the air to give up its four winds, as
to expect the heart of man to part with its human hopes!

This is not a right interpretation of life. When Nature plants an oak in
the forest, she does not say, Be a lichen, an _Eozooen canadense_, a
small ground-creeping thing! She says, Grow! Become a tall, strong,
mountain tree! When we hold our baby in our arms, we do not say, My
child, be good for nothing! Neither does God say, Be nothing, do
nothing! Just exist as humbly and meekly as you can! He says, "Quit you
like men!"

Each of us is born for a sceptre and a crown. It gives a strange new
thrill to life, to realize that we may be just as ambitious as we
please, that we may long earnestly for high things, and work for them,
if our inmost desire is not for self but for God. This new idea of
ambition should be at the root of education and of religious teaching.
Piety is not a namby-pamby sentiment; it is a great intellectual force.
Desire is architectural: our dreams should be of prestige and power.
True ambition is the reaching-out of the soul toward preordained
things. What else is the meaning of our love for excellence, our
insatiable yearning for perfection? "What is excellent," says Emerson,
"is permanent." To excel in any work is to combine in that work the most
enduring qualities of human labor; to excel in any place is to shine
forth with the great qualities of the race. Hence, ambition has a
rightful place.

The power of a king is the power of control. All about us are moving the
great forces of the universe--physical, intellectual, moral, spiritual.
What we can do with them is a test of our power. Life is in many ways a
majestic trial of one's power to command.

Three men buy adjoining tracts of land. One man mines coal upon his
acres. He amasses wealth and influence because he is in control of the
Carboniferous age and the human need of light and heat. The second man
tills his ground and raises wheat and corn. He is in command of living
nature--of the rotation of seasons, of