mental giants whose fame has so long outlived their clay, I fail to find one whose renown is built upon an ability to attain great riches. Quite recently a prominent gentleman gave the names of twenty men who, in his opinion, had most benefited the human race. This list has been revised and rewritten many times, and among all the names in all the lists not one appears of a "rich man," as we understand that term to-day.

There are living to-day in America but two men whose fame for all time seems secure, and those two men are Edison and Burbank. There is living to-day no editor who will jostle Greeley and Dana from the place of honor in journalistic history. There is living to-day no American statesman with the mental reach of Franklin, Jefferson, Hamilton, Clay, Webster or Lincoln. Gone is Beecher, and we look in vain for a preacher who really has something to say. Not a single politician can be named whose honesty and sincerity are unquestioned, and whose purposes are generally credited as unselfish. Our writers no longer write what they think, but rather what will sell. Our actors play in plays that pay, and not in plays that elevate. All have lost their personality, and "Take the cash and let the credit go."

Possibly this indictment is too broad, but the fact remains that personality and genius have little to urge them on in this generation. I have never been able to see any great good come from doing a thing a certain way simply because somebody else did it that way. The world's prizes are bestowed

upon those who break away from the fixed customs, and beat a new path where others have not dared to go. Do not be too anxious about annexing mòre money than you need, but annex all the joy you can as you go through life by feeling and knowing that you are free that you are liberating your forces in a labor that is done as you wish to do it. God has ordained but one way for you to be somebody, and that way is to Be Yourself—and use com

mon sense.

The Masterpiece of God

Elbert Hubbard

In preparation for speaking this selection, study a reproduction of the "Mona Lisa." The declamation itself will bear intensive study. A slow rate, permitting ample time for the imagination to work and for the emotional coloring of the words, is required for effective delivery.

THE human face is the masterpiece of God. A woman's smile may have in it more sublimity than a sunset; more pathos than a battle-scarred landscape; more warmth than the sun's bright rays; more love than words can say. The human face is the masterpiece of God.

On the walls of the Louvre, in Paris, hangs the "Mona Liza" of Leonardo da Vinci. This picture. has been four hundred years an exasperation and an inspiration to every portrait-painter who has put brush to palette. Well does Walter Pater call it "The Despair of Painters." The artist was over fifty years of age when he began the work, and he was four years in completing the task.

There is in the face all you can read into it and nothing else. It is as silent as the lips of Memnon, as voiceless as the Sphinx. It suggests to you every joy that you have ever felt, every sorrow you have ever known, every triumph you have ever experienced.

This woman is beautiful, just as all life is beautiful when we are in health. She has no quarrel with the world-she loves and she is loved again. No vain longing fills her heart, no feverish unrest disturbs her dreams, for her no crouching fears haunt the passing hours-that ineffable smile which plays round her mouth says plainly that life is good.

Back of her stretches her life, a mysterious purple shadow. Do you not see the palaces turned to dust, the broken columns, the sunken treasures, the creeping mosses, and the rank ooze of fretted waters that have undermined cities and turned kingdoms into desert seas? The galleys of pagan Greece have swung wide for her on the unforgetting tide, for her soul dwelt in the body of Helen of Troy, and Pallas Athena has followed her ways and whispered to her even the secrets of the gods. Aye! not only was she Helen, but she was Leda, the mother of Helen. Then she was St. Anne, mother of Mary; and next she was Mary, visited by an angel in a dream, and followed by the wise men who had seen the Star in the East. And so this Lady of the Beautiful Hands stood to Leonardo as the embodiment of a perpetual life; moving in a constantly ascending scale, gathering wisdom, graciousness, love, even as he himself in this life

met every experience half-way and counted it joy, knowing that experience is the germ of power.

Life writes its history upon the face, so that all those who have had a like experience read and understand. The human face is the masterpiece of God.

A Young Man's Religion and His Father's Faith N. McGee Waters

This selection is taken from a volume of sermons with the above title. The pulpit eloquence of our day is seen at its best in these sermons. Note that the first paragraph is simply introductory and should be so indicated by the delivery. The second paragraph begins the discussion proper.

ALL the wisdom of any age is sorely needed to understand a young man's religion and determine its relation to his father's faith. Both the man and the boy should pray for guidance. Often they fail to understand one another. I heard an old man say, "The world isn't like it was in the olden days. People do not go to church like they used to. People do not read their Bible like they used to. The church does not have revivals like it used to. People do not get converted like they used to. Joining the church does not mean what it used to. Young people to-day are taught all sorts of strange notions and they do not believe things we used to. It is an age of worldliness and free-thinking. Religion is at ebb tide. The church is going to decay. Our young people have lost their faith." And the old man was sincere and he was sad.

Now both the old man and the young one are right, and both are wrong. The old man is right

when he thinks the young man lacking in respect. Irreverence is the besetting sin of youth. The old man is right when he says that the times have changed, and the customs have changed, and the creeds have changed, only we have changed more than he dreams. We live in a world of change. Every generation deinands a new and larger expression. We do live in a different world from that in which our fathers lived.

We live in the days since Martin Luther. For one thousand years the priests had kept the conscience of every man. For a thousand For a thousand years darkness had rested upon the earth. Then a German priest, heavy hearted with the ignorance of the people, and aflame with wrath because of the corruption in the church and the oppression of the priests, put a trumpet to his lips and blew on it such a blast that the slumbering masses of Europe were awakened as from a dream. That day the world learned that religion was larger than men. had dreamed. We live in the days since Copernicus and Galileo. One of them discovered a truth and was afraid to publish it to the world; the other one published that truth and went to the prison and the rack for his deed. That day we found out that the universe was a thousand times larger than our fathers had dreamed.

Other scholars came. One, a little while ago, was a student of books, and lands, and seas. He read God's handwriting upon the rocks and stars. Gathering up bits of wisdom from field and mountain, mica-flake and ocean ooze, he pieced together the