the passion of life is this perfection it never will be your
possession. Dreams of ideal goodness only waste the hours in which it
might have been achieved. No man ever finds character in his sleep.
The education of the heart is a thing even more definite than the
education of the head. The school of character has an infinite variety
of courses and an unending curriculum.

Folks who are sighing for goodness usually go away sorrowful when they
learn what it costs. But life ever is putting to us just such tests as
the wise teacher put to the rich young man. You say you desire
character, the perfection of manhood or womanhood above all other
things; do you desire this enough to pay for it your ease, your coveted
fame, your cherished gold, perhaps your present good name and peace of
mind? Is the search for character a passion or only a pastime?

This does not mean that this prize of eternity falls only to those who
devote themselves wholly to self-culture, to the salvation of their own
souls. The best lives have thought little of themselves, but they have
lived for the ends of the soul, to help men to better living, to save
them from the things that blight and damn the soul. Like the Leader of
men they have found the life unending by laying down their lives,
paying the full price, selling all in order that right and truth and
honour and purity, love and kindness and justice might remain to man.

The world's wealth depends not on what we have in our hands, nor even
on what we can carry in our heads. It depends on the things that we
have and the beings we are in our hearts. Fools we are who live only
to make a living, houses, shelter, food, rags, and toys, who might live
to make a life, and to mold lives, to earn the riches and honour
enduring; who have not learned the gain of all loss that leads the