together in the midst of a common wealth and a common want of humanity.

There are many stories which illustrate this, strange and pathetic. Those of us who were brought up on the Arabian Nights will remember some. I have great sympathy with the boys and girls who have not been brought up upon the Arabian Nights. You can not read it when you are old. Its charm is gone. Haroun Al Raschid, every night muffling himself in common garments and dropping the insignia of wealth and position, as Caliph, loved to go and listen among the people, hear them chatter of their common daily life, and then he sought to right the wrongs and equalize the inequalities of which he heard. It was the longing of a Caliph to be a man; the longing of the fortunate, who is removed by his good fortune from common humanity, to be a man again.

The story of the king and the beggar is another illustration of this. The beggar, in splendid health, is singing his careless song; he is heard by the king one day, and as he listens, he finds a fresh note in this song, such as he has not heard elsewhere. No hired singers can give it. He looks at the beggar as he eats his crust of bread and says, "What a magnificent appetite!" He passes him as he is asleep with his cloak over his face, the happy, untroubled, dreamless sleep of want of care. Then the king sends for him, and they talk a long while. And then in the night, slowly the palace door opens, while the guards are asleep, and two men, king and beggar, hand in hand, come out from the palace and together they set out to live the life of common men, and share the joy that belongs to us all. They were never found again. They were sought far and wide, but the king had hidden himself, and having tasted the joy of common life, he never would go back again to be a king.

This is the discontent of the fortunate. There is the possibility in the nature of every one of us of withdrawing from the common experiences, hopes, memories and traditions of life, so that we are shut up, as it were, in a palace, and yet starving to death; seated at a table that groans with food and finding nothing to eat; having drinks of every variety, but not being able to quench our thirst; plenty of friends, yet no friendship; want in the midst of plenty. This is the discontent of the fortunate.

The splendid achievements of this nineteenth century are in our minds, and need no recounting. The man of 1788 could not have dreamed, in his wildest moments, of such large powers of acquisition as we have to-day; such swiftness of motion, such celerity of thought, such comfort and convenience of life, shared even by the poor. And yet, for all that, one who listens well hears coming up all the while, "I can't get out! I can't get out!" and "What lack I yet?" You can hear this question in the conversation of those whose emotions of liberty and life and joy are almost gone. You can read it in the novels and books of Tolstoi as nowhere else. You can read it in the works of the philosophers of Germany.

And all these are but varying the cry in one way or another-the discontent of the fortunate. How strange it is to hear the fortunate ones of our century saying, "What lack I yet?" It is the cry of social discontent; it is the cry of Sterne's starling in its gilded cage, “I can't get out;" it is the cry of the young man of Idumea, "All these things I possess and these things I have done; what lack I yet?" Not happy, not happy; that is their word.

The achievements of this nineteenth century are the assertion of one side of our nature--the self side; the

side of individualism. They are the assertion of conquest and power, that which says "I," "me" and "mine;" that which has no doubt as to its ability to do; that which, in its strength of newly discovered power, uses that power to make wealth and to gain place.

The conquest of nature and the accumulation of power are characteristic of our age. It is an accumulation of things, for wealth is but things stored up; whether it be dollars, books, houses, mortgages or lands-it is simply things. And yet life can not be fed on things. You can not feed an eagle on chicken feed. You can not feed a spiritual existence on things that waste, and things that rust, and things that may be touched and handled. The spirit feeds on spiritual things. The children of God feed on divine food only, and the divine food we feed on is great ideas and truths. So there is discontent; starving to death in the midst of plenty.

Once a traveler upon a desert had lost his way, and came at last to where a bag was lying; he hastened toward it, and, opening it, said, "Only pearls, not bread!" Pearls can not feed a body. They can make it beautiful, but they can not feed it. And so in the midst of all this splendor of wealth you hear this cry of want, "I lack! I lack! I am not happy."

This lack is the craving for friendship; community of experiences; the touch of human love; the pressure of the human heart. Yes, it is a lack, for it is only one-half of life these have been living-the personal side of it. It is individual-I; but life is twofold; life is you and I; life is the personal and the social; life is power for personal uses; but life is friendship, love, pity and charity. Life is all that as well.

Christ said to the young man, If thou wouldst be perfect-rounded out, if you want youth for all your

life, then you must touch humanity again; you must mitigate suffering; share your comforts with others; you must know the common ideas and not the peculiar.

The social sentiment, then, is that which craves for food in this life, the other half of life, the wish to be in reciprocal relations with men. The bee needs the flower. All these flowers have been made beautiful by the butterfly, the moth and the bee. The bee needs the flower for the honey that is in it, and the flower needs the bee, or there were no flowers. You need me and I need you. Each needs the other. In this multiplication of wants is the variety of our civilization. We grow, not by economy, but by expenditures. He is the richest man who needs the most, and who buys most, whom most men serve. Life is not a mean, a little, thing to be nourished with few things. He is the greatest who craves most, whom most men are called to serve. This is the community of life; this is its fellowship. These are the experiences which man asks.

I can not enjoy that which I have alone. I enjoy that most which most share with me. I can not take my food if I know that some one person starves. We have the right to enjoy it only when all persons are fed. That is the other half of life. Without it we are imperfect, incomplete. We have the individual, all the power and splendor of the New World; we need the social. The personal is developed; we need now to develop the social. This is essential to us. Without it it is as if you were trying, without ears, without eyes, without tongue, or without palate to enjoy the world. You are without something that is essential to a perfect and complete life. Christianity is, then, that splendid enthusiasm which wants to share life with the most people; that pity which runs at all calls; that longing that others may share what we

enjoy. In the olden times the Crusaders who went to Palestine had this for their war cry, "God wills it!" But Christianity has a better word, and this is its motto, "God and my neighbor!" A heaven which all may enjoy; a civilization which reaches to the lowest; liberties which enfold all; that is our thought. There is the splendor of wealth, as the misery of want. Alongside and parallel with the progress is the poverty. Immersed in business and excited by triumph, forgetting those who are on this side or on that, we crush down our neighbor in our competitive struggle, and leave him behind us.

And that is the selfishness of the fortunate. Progress and poverty; and with you lies the discontent of those who are left behind; a discontent which will never be satisfied until what comes to me shall come to every one, as good a world, as good a time. This social sentiment is just as valid a factor as is the personal sentiment. You and I make a world-not you or I. This is that without which there can be no life. The boy in Florence carried in a procession, his skin gilded with refined gold until he was a wonderful thing of beauty, died because he could not exhale through the lungs of the skin; and gilded as this generation is, it will die if it can not come into active exercise of its powers. We have this assertion of the social within us. There is not one man in a thousand that can be as selfish as he thinks he wants to be. God will not let him be so selfish. You attempt to hold your breath, it exhales in spite of your efforts. The lungs will do their work. Again and again, something awakens the sense of life within one, and he must do good to somebody, though he does not know why he does it.

This discontent is a growing force. I want you to see how it is growing in the world. There is a discernment of just what is lacking more and more in you.