journeying toward the new and beautiful city of the
Ideal. Aspiration, not contentment, is the law of his life. To-day's
triumph dictates new struggles to-morrow. The youth flushed with
success may couch down in the tent of satisfaction for one night only;
when the morning comes he must fold his tent and push on toward some
new achievement. That man is ready for his burial robes who lets his
present laurels satisfy him. God has crowded the world with antidotes
to contentment and with stimulants to progress. The world is not built
for sluggards. The earth is like a road, a poor place for sleeping in,
a good thing to travel over. The world is like a forge, unfit for
residence, but good for putting temper in a warrior's sword. Life is
built for waking up dull men, making lazy men unhappy, and the
low-flying miserable. When other incitements fail, fear and remorse
following behind scourge men forward; but ideals in front are the
chief stimulants to growth. Each morning, waking, the soul sees the
ideal man one ought to be rising in splendor to shame the man one is.
Columbus was tempted forward by the floating branches, the drifting
weeds, the strange birds, unto the new world rich in tropic-treasure.
So by aspirations and ideals God lures men forward unto the soul's
undiscovered country. In the long ago the star moving on before guided
the wise men of the East to the manger where the young child lay; and
still in man's night God hangs aspirations--stars for guiding men away
from the slough of content to the hills of paradise. The soul hungers
for something vast, and ideals lure to the long voyage, the distant
harbor, and are the stars by which the pilgrim shapes his course.

Life's great teachers are friendship, occupation, travel, books,
marriage, and chiefly heart-hungers. These yearnings within are the
springs of all man's progress without. Sometimes philosophers say that
the history of civilization is the history of great men. Confessing
this, let us go on and note that the history of all great men is the
history of their ideal hours, realized in conduct and character.
Waking at midnight in his bleak garret, the vision splendid rose
before John Milton. The boy of twelve would fain write a poem that
the world would not willingly let die. He knew that whoever would
write a heroic poem must first live a heroic life. From that hour the
youth followed the ideal that led him on, pursuing knowledge
unceasingly for seven years,