come, not as the result of the principle of heredity, which simply repeats the past, but of that principle which is called scientifically the tendency to vary. This new upstart, this pretender, comes, and proves that he is right, proves that here is a new manifestation of beauty, a higher form; and so it comes to be accepted. It is because of the assertion of individuality on the part of these new pretenders that all the growth of the world has come to pass.

It is the duty, then, of a free man or a free woman to study, to think, to feel, and to speak and act for himself and herself. Truth is infinite. It never yet was all reflected in any one system or in any one brain. We need as many reflections as we can possibly get; and every new idea and every new suggestion is only so much added to the richness of modern thought.

Take the growth of a language. Any one who invents. a new and serviceable word has conferred a public benefit. So in regard to theories of the world's advances. Consider our industrial condition. If the present condition is right and permanent, if the relations of employers and employed, of capital and labor, are ideal as they exist to-day, if any change could only be in the direction of something poorer, if the present arrangements work so that every honest man has all that he needs for food and clothing and shelter and for the cultivation of his brain and mind, his heart, his spiritual life, if this be the real condition of things, then this industrial order ought to be rigidly maintained. But does any one suppose that ours is the ideal condition of things? I do not mean that every man who brings a new theory concerning the organization of society ought to be permitted to try it off-hand, because the chances are that most of the men to-day who are telling us how the industry of the world ought to be reorganized are wrong. But it is only out of the study, only out of the suggestion, only out of the freedom of discussion, only out of gradual and tentative trials here and there, that an improvement in our social condition is to come. It ought to come. I received a letter this last week

from a man living on the Pacific coast. He has been an honest man all his life long. He has been an industrious man all his life long. He has no bad habits, and has never had any. I do not believe he has ever been in possession of a dishonestly gotten dollar. But that man within the last week or two has been obliged to leave a place where he could get nothing to do for which he could receive a dollar, and, on the chance of bettering himself, go to another place; and he and his family are sleeping on a blanket on the floor, because they are not able to get money to bring their household goods from the place of his last home, though he and his boys are ready to do any honest thing they can have an opportunity to do. And they have only a few potatoes in the house, and not a pound of flour. We are not in a perfect condition industrially when things like this can exist. It is time that some one resisted, that some one asserted himself, that some one thought, that some one showed us the way into a better method of living; for it is absurd to suppose that these things need to exist. The earth is capable of producing enough for all. There is enough wealth in the world, or may be; but something is wrong in our industrial condition.

So take it politically. politically. We have reached a point in America where we say we are politically free. Are we? I believe that the grandest duty that comes to any thoughtful man to day is to be himself politically. We have reached a point where we say we can think as we please and speak as we please and vote as we please. We have two great parties in this country. How free is any one to differ from his own party? He must pay for it if he chooses to do it. He must be sneered at if he is not regarded as a traitor and a crank. And yet the one thing most needed in every city in this nation is enough men who are willing to be themselves politically, to grasp in their hands and hold permanently the balance of power, so that they can say to the leaders of either party, Dare to put up a bad man with a bad record and bad principles, and you are sure of defeat. That is the

one thing that is needed politically more than anything else whatsoever.

And, religiously, are we free? We are free from chains and from the faggot, we are not in any danger of the kind of persecution that used to follow men in the Middle Ages; but how much must a man pay still for his freedom? I have in mind a personal friend who is a year-long illustration. His mother, still holding to the old theological ideas, because she cannot see that her boy has a right to think for himself, is leading a life, and will lead it so long as life lasts, of sorrow and grief that is a bitterness and burden to the boy, because he has dared to be himself religiously and to follow his own conscience. He is surrounded on every hand by friends who think he is trampling on things sacred and holy because he dares to be himself religiously. You still have to pay this high price for religious freedom. And yet who is there that supposes that the world has attained its final and absolutely perfect condition religiously? And, if it has not, then somebody, as the result of free thought and free study and earnest application to the problems involved, must point out the way to take a new step toward something larger, something finer and better.

So in every direction, if the world is to advance, if it is to grow, if it is to become anything finer and higher, it must be because men and women here and there dare to be themselves.

There is one other phase of this that I must touch on for a moment. Is this being one's self religiously, this assertion, egotism? It has been a prevailing teaching throughout the history of Christianity that the finest thing a man can do is to efface himself, to be humble, to be meek, not to be self-assertive, not to have his own ideas, but to obey his superiors, his masters, his bishop, his church; to bow his head in reverence in the presence of the ecclesiastical creed of his own order, to become as nothing in the dust before God, to extinguish self. This has been taught as the ideal of saintliness. I believe that another ideal is to replace this.

There is no virtue in self-effacement. If I am to give myself, let me first be something, so that the gift has value. Let me make myself physically all I may, let me make myself mentally all I may, let me be cultured and balanced all that I can, so that my opinions may be of worth. Let me cultivate the artistic side of my nature until I am in love with beauty, and can distinguish beauty from the commonplace and from ugliness. Let me develop my affectional nature until I instinctively turn to all that is lovely and of good report. Let me cultivate myself spiritually, and grow into the stature of a man so far as my soul life is concerned: then, when I am something, when I know something, when I possess power, when I can stand as a unit, when I count one, then I can serve. I can be of no benefit if I have no power. I cannot teach if I am ignorant. I cannot lift another if there is no power of inspiration in me. Let me become, then, all I may. Let me be myself to the fullest, and then let me give myself to humanity; and out of this voluntary association of developed, cultivated, rounded individualities we shall at last have a perfect society.

Father, we thank Thee for this power to say " I," to think of ourselves as separate from Thee, as distinct from our fellows. Let us, then, try to become rich in this personality of ours, and then bring all the wealth of health and sanity and education and inspiration and enthusiasm, and lay them at Thy feet for the service of our fellows. Amen.