d's will builds up enduring character in us. Every
obedience adds a new touch of beauty to the soul. Every true thing we
do in Christ's name, though it leave no mark anywhere else in God's
universe, leaves an imperishable mark on our own life. Every deed of
unselfish kindness that we perform with love for Christ in our heart,
though it bless no other soul in all the world, leaves its sure
benediction on ourselves.

Thousands of years since a leaf fell on the soft clay and seemed to be
lost. But last summer a geologist in his ramblings broke off a piece
of rock with his hammer, and there lay the image of the leaf, with
every line, and every vein, and all the delicate tracery, preserved in
the stone through these centuries. So the words we speak, and the
things we do for Christ to-day, may seem to be lost, but in the great
final revealing the smallest of them will appear, to the glory of
Christ and the reward of the doer.

CHAPTER XV.

HELPING AND OVER-HELPING.

"As we meet and touch each day
The many travellers on our way,
Let every such brief contact be
A glorious, helpful ministry;
The contact of the soil and seed,
Each giving to the other's need,
Each helping on the other's best,
And blessing each as well as blest."

Even kindness may be overdone. One may be too gentle. Love may hold
others back from duty, and thus may wreck destinies. We need to guard
against meddling with God's discipline, softening the experience that
he means to be hard, sheltering our friend from the wind that he
intends to blow chillingly. All summer does not make a good zone to
live in; we need autumn and winter to temper the heat, and keep
vegetation from luxuriant overgrowth. The best thing we can do for
others is not always to take their load or do their duty for them.

Of course we are to be helpful to others. No aim should be put higher
in our life-plans than that of personal helpfulness. The motto of the
true Christian cannot be other than that of the Master: "Not to be
ministered unto, but to minister." Even in the ambition to gather and
retain wealth, the spirit of the desire must be, if we are Christians
at all, that thereby we may become more helpful to others; that
through, or by means of, our wealth, we may be enabled to do larger and
greater good. Whatever gift, power, or possession we have that we do
not seek to use in this way is not yet truly devoted to God. Fruit is
the test o