processional moves down the years! The sum of human knowledge is vast;
but how much more vast seem the achievements of each of these men, when
we realize how few his years, and how many the obstacles and impediments
of his all too short career! There is ever a pathos in the life of
the wise.

By thinking, we pass from the gossip of the neighborhood into the
conversation of the years. We do not know what Alcibiades said to his
man-servant about the care of his clothes, baths, perfumes,--nor what
his man-servant retailed to other retainers of the eccentricities and
vanities of his master. But we know what Pericles and Plato said to the
race. Here is the advantage of a thinking mind--that at any moment one
may enter into eternal subjects of thought, and have converse with those
who of all times have been the most profound.

Nothing teases the soul like the thought of the unfinished, the
imperfect, the incomplete. And yet, when we have thought and planned a
really great and abiding work, whether we ever finish it or not--for
many things in life may intervene between conception and completion--to
have thought of it is to have had in our lives a pleasure that can never
die. For one blessed hour or year we have been lifted to the thoughts of
God and have entered into the great original Design. Hence it is that
the life of the real Thinker, however broken or disturbed, is at heart a
life of serenity and joy. What matters a conflagration, a
disappointment, to him whose thoughts are set upon the race?

Thinking is a form of vital growth. We all wish for growth. Is there any
one who wishes to stay always just where he is to-day? To be always what
he is this morning? The tree grows, the flower grows, the ideals of the
race grow--shall not I?

We are born to a destiny which has no limit of grandeur save the limit
of the thought of God, The wish for growth is the wish to enter into the
spiritual ideals of the universe,--to become one with its advancement,
one with its decrees.

But do not the secular look upon growth as a sort of chase--a chase for
more learning, more money, a bigger business, a higher degree, a better
position, a brilliant marriage,--a struggle for wealth, renown, acclaim?
These things are not in themselves growth, nor its real index. Growth is
not a form of avarice. Growth is a vital state of being. Growth is the
assimilation of experience. Growth is development in the line of eternal
purpose. Growth is the c