alize in daily life their luminous hours, and transmute their
ideals into conduct and character. These are the soul-architects who
build their thoughts and deeds into a plan; who travel forward, not
aimlessly, but toward a destination; who sail, not anywhither, but
toward a port; who steer, not by the clouds, but by the fixed stars.
High in the scale of manhood these who ceaselessly aspire toward
life's great Exemplar.

Consider the use of the soul's aspirations. Ideals redeem life from
drudgery. Four-fifths of the human race are so overbodied and
under-brained that the mind is exhausted in securing provision for
hunger and raiment. No to-morrow but may bring men to sore want.
Poverty narrows life into a treadmill existence. Multitudes of
necessity toil in the stithy and deep mine. Multitudes must accustom
themselves to odors offensive to the nostril. Men toil from morning
till night midst the din of machinery from which the ear revolts.
Myriads dig and delve, and scorn their toil. He who spends all his
years sliding pins into a paper, finds his growth in manhood
threatened. Others are stranded midway in life. Recently the test
exhibition of a machine was successful, and those present gave the
inventor heartiest congratulations. But one man was present whose face
was drawn with pain, and whose eyes were wet with tears. Explaining
his emotion to a questioner he said: "One hour ago I entered this room
a skilled workman; this machine sends me out that door a common
laborer. For years I have been earning five dollars a day as an expert
machinist. By economy I hoped to educate my children into a higher
sphere, but now my every hope is ruined." Life is crowded with these
disappointments. A journey among men is like a journey through a
harvest field after a hailstorm has flailed off all the buds and
leaves, and pounded the young corn into the ground. Fulfilling such a
life, men need to be saved by hopes and aspirations. Then God sends
visions in to give men wing-room, and lift them into the realm of
restfulness. Some hope rises to break the thrall of life. The soul
rises like a songbird in the sky.

Disappointed men find that food itself is not so sweet as dreams. The
seamstress toiling in the attic stitches hope in with each thread, and
dreams of some knight coming to lift her out of poverty, and her
reverie mocks and consumes her woe. The laborer digging in his ditch
sweetens his toil and rests his weariness by the dream o