humanity, and so unstable its idolatries and adorations.

And as the mighty fall, so the obscure rises. Names that were unknown
ten years ago are blazoned almost on the skies. The insignificant come
up and take the scepter in their hand. The poor man of a little while
ago is the rich merchant or the successful lawyer of today. This is
his hour, this the moment of his power. Strange, is it not? There
seems to be no method, no system in those lower planes of life. The
rich become poor and the poor rich, the strong weak and the weak
strong; the ruler becomes the ruled and the ruled the ruler; the master
becomes the servant and the servant the master. No order, no system,
no method anywhere in mundane things, and therefore no power of vision
and vaticination.

But now in the higher things there is none of this impermanence and
instability. Everything is in order here. When man is living in the
fulness of his nature, when he is living on the heaven-kissing
pinnacles of his spirit, when his whole being is harmonious with the
great and glorious laws of God, his future is assured; it is bound to
be a great and beautiful success. No possibility of failure upon the
heights; every possibility of failure upon the level; every possibility
of disaster down there, but upon the peaks there can be no disaster, no
mistake, no accident, no dethronement; there must be inevitable and
unconditional achievement. Of course, I do not mean popular
achievement--achievement as men usually count achievement, or success
as men ordinarily rate success. So measured, every great man's life
has been a dismal failure. Paul's life was not a popular success, nor
was Isaiah's, nor was Augustine's, nor was Savanarola's, nor was
Socrates', nor was Christ's life a popular success. Measured by
terrestrial standards, measured by the low ideals of humanity, these
lives were all ignominious failures, every one of them; but measured by
the Divine standard, by the mind and will of God, they are triumphant
victories.

And now I say that every man whose point of view is high, who is
standing upon the very highest reaches of his own being, seeking
sincerely to be true to all that is heroic and great in his
heaven-endowed nature, that man is bound to be, by the decree of the
Eternal, an ultimately successful man. He is bound, just so surely as
God's sun is bound to come tomorrow, he is bound to be crowned, not
only with a celestial but with a terrestr