fiery fagots like a crown of gold; of Germany’s hero, who lost his priestly rites, but gained the hearts of all mankind; of England’s hero, whose very ashes were cast by enemies upon the River Severn, as if to float his influence out o’er all the world, of India’s hero, William Carey, the English shoemaker, who founded for India an educational system now reaching millions of children and youth, who gave India literature, made five grammars and six dictionaries, and so used his commercial genius through his indigo plantation and factories that it made for him a million dollars in the interests of Christian missions?  Of this great company, what can we say save that they won renown through self-renunciation!  What they did makes weak and unworthy what we say.  Just here let us remember that the statue of Jupiter was a figure so colossal that worshipers, unable to reach the divine forehead, cast their garlands at the hero’s feet.  For this law of sacrifice is the secret of the Messiah.  Earth’s great ones were taught it by their Master.  Jesus Christ, “being rich, for our sakes became poor.”  Because the law of sacrifice is the law of the Savior, man gains life through death and renown through self-renunciation.

THE GENTLENESS OF TRUE GIANTHOOD.

“A gentleman’s first characteristic is that fineness of structure in the body which renders it capable of the most delicate sensation; and of structure in the mind which renders it capable of the most delicate sympathies—­one may say, simply ‘fineness of nature.’  This is, of course, compatible with heroic bodily strength and mental firmness, in fact, heroic strength is not conceivable without such delicacy.  Elephantine strength may drive its way through a forest and feel no touch of the boughs, but the white skin of Homer’s Atrides would have felt a bent rose leaf, yet subdue its feeling in glow of battle, and behave itself like iron.  I do not mean to call an elephant a vulgar animal, but if you think about him carefully you will find that his non-vulgarity consists in such gentleness as is possible to elephantine nature, not in his insensitive hide, nor in his clumsy foot, but in the way he will lift his foot if a child lies in his way and in his sensitive trunk, and still more sensitive mind, and capability of pique on points of honor.  Hence it will follow that one of the probable signs of high-breeding in men generally will be their kindness and mercifulness.”—­Modern Painters.

CHAPTER IX.

THE GENTLENESS OF TRUE GIANTHOOD.