88 THE UNIVERSE 



rulers reveled in luxury and swayed despotic power. 

 Up to the recent centuries the chief vocations of 

 men were the soldier and the priest the one for 

 slaughter and the other to appease the gods. 



But the evolving ages have changed the ideals of 

 the world, and liberty and justice are no longer a 

 dream; but " Peace hath her victories no less re- 

 nowned than war." The time is near at hand when 

 the ideals of men will be so exalted and their con- 

 sciences so alive to the demands of love and jus- 

 tice that no man of wealth can sleep in his lux- 

 urious home or feast on choice viands and know 

 of any human creature or dumb animal suffering 

 from cold and want without first ministering to 

 their needs. This is the law of love written in every 

 enlightened heart, as it is written in the books of 

 the New Testament. 



Men are beginning to learn that the greatest 

 thing in this world is not wealth, with its pomp 

 and pride, though it may bring a thousand com- 

 forts. It is not religion, with its glorious dreams 

 crowned with the promised beatitudes of heaven, 

 though martyred saints and prophets have given 

 their lives to confirm its faith and hopes. It is 

 not literature, with its gems of thought and flowers 

 of divine fancy, which have charmed and inspired 

 mankind from the days of Homer to those of 

 Shakespeare and Tennyson. It is not science, with 

 "learning's ample page," though she has trans- 

 formed the earth, and produced a Gallileo and a 

 Newton. It is not the wonders of mechanical gen- 

 ius, though we stand in awe before their marvels of 

 grandeur and utility. It is not the beauty of in- 

 spiring art that lifts us to the altitudes of aes- 



