They do not stand with their hands upon the levers of the world's movements. Their brain employment is for private luxury rather than for public profit.

But, if we look along the line of the world's progress, we see that the great leaders in that progress have been men of action as well as thought, not, by any means, the men who have been most boisterous in action, not, certainly, the men and there are many such who have rushed noisily into action without the thought, not the men who have the activity and the dash and the courage, but no convictions, but the men who have both the convictions and the courage, convictions of truth worthy to be contended for, and the courage to stand up against all obstacles, to contend for them.

And these qualities are needed in about equal measure to make strong characters. If either be greatly deficient, character is necessarily weak and ineffective. If both be possessed in very large measure, supporting each other, then appear the great leaders of human progress. And, where both are possessed in exceptionally large measure with specially favorable adjustment to each other, there are found the few exceptional leaders of humanity, -the persons of such rare and conspicuous mark on the field of history that not more than a score of them can be counted in all the annals of mankind. In this small class, "at the top," where, indeed, in every classification of mankind "there is always plenty of room," are the founders of religions,

the organizers of states, the thinkers and discoverers who, by the rare profundity and courage of their mental action, have revolutionized entire systems of thought and practice among their fellow

men.

As a noted example of this class we readily recall Luther, who, though not the most eminent scholar and thinker, nor even the noblest character of the Protestant Reformation, yet became the leader of the Reformation because convictions and the courage to stand by them were welded in him to the white heat of the most vigorous action. Savonarola was a man of the same calibre, and in some respects of even finer mould, who a half-century earlier preached a dawning Protestantism in Italy, in the face of king and pope, demanding a purer faith and cleaner morals, and going finally to the stake to expiate the crime of his courage and the audacity of his faith. And in the very beginning of Christianity there was Paul, a Hebrew Luther and the real founder of ecclesiastical Christianity, he, too, was a man who had both strong convictions and a corresponding strength of courage to stand by them. The result was seen in the primitive systematizing and propagandism of Christianity. But before him, though of very different temperament, was Jesus, who unconsciously laid the basis of Christianity, but built no structure thereon. Yet he was a genuine leader in that he changed the thoughts and dispositions of the people who saw and heard him. Less theological

than either Paul or Luther, he towered above them both in catholicity of spirit and in purity of moral discernment. Savonarola, perhaps, of all the great disciples of Christ, came nearest to him in character. But Jesus, notwithstanding his catholicity of temper and gentleness of spirit, stood not a whit behind the most vigorous leaders that have ever appeared in Christendom, in respect to depth of convictions and the courage to maintain them. The heart side of his character, the tenderness he manifested toward the penitent erring, and his ever active sympathy for the poor and the distressed have sometimes blinded the eyes of his disciples to the masculine robustness of his nature. A disposition has even been manifest to soften down and explain away some of the more vigorous of his denunciations of the formal sanctity and hypocritical pretences of his time as inconsistent with the idea. of his gentleness and forbearance. But I would not take one iota from this side of the story of his life, even though the expression of it may possibly sometimes shock our ideal of a perfect Christ. Possibly our ideal of the perfect Christ lacks this very element of vigor which comes into the story of the real Jesus. Certainly, it was not merely the heart side of Jesus, gentle and sympathetic as that was, which made him the dominant character he Behind his affections and sympathies he had deep convictions and the courage to abide by them. He drew men and women to him, and helped and healed many of their troubles by his mere tender

was.

ness. But this was not the part of his nature that specially caused his career to make a new epoch in the world's history, and has drawn the admiration of after ages. His mission was to bear witness to the truth, and for this cause came he into the world. He lived in sympathetic and helpful heartrelations with the men and women right around him; but he lived, also, from and for deep convictions of mind and soul. For these he wrought and suffered and died. Persecution could not deter him from proclaiming them, danger could not daunt him. Though church and state marshalled all their powers against him, his courage did not blanch nor falter, until he sealed his testimony with his blood.

Others of the world's great teachers, in Christendom and out of Christendom, have had in preeminent degree this same trait of character. It was the courage of his convictions that gave Confucius power to remodel both the religion and the government of large portions of China. It was the courage of his convictions whereby Buddha and his followers, five hundred years before Christ, swept India with a religious reform which, in its relation. to the more ancient Brahmanism, was not unlike the Protestant Reformation in Christendom. was the courage of his convictions which made Socrates the father of a new standard of ethics as well as of a new philosophy in Greece. Though he wrote not a word, but, like Jesus, only talked, yet he so impressed his words on the minds of his dis

ciples and the people of his city that the world has never lost them, and we have probably to-day almost as true a picture of his thoughts and character as had his contemporaries in Athens. His thoughts, too, were printed on the heart of the world in his martyr blood; and that is a printer's ink that never fades.

So, too, in the world of science, of discovery and invention, of statesmanship, of social and political reform, and on the lower field of generalship, the prime leaders are always those who not only have strong convictions, but a strong power to impress them upon others and to carry them into effect. The scientific man who, like Copernicus or Darwin, should find himself in possession of discoveries that must meet with obloquy and persecution before the world will accept them, would be no true devotee of science, and could be no leader in his vocation, unless he is ready to face the fiercest opposition without quailing and still hold by his opinions. Science in its progress has always had to join swords with theology and the Church; and hence its apostles have always had need of the martyr's courage, as not infrequently they have met the martyr's fate. What a power was Garrison in the anti-slavery struggle, peace-man and nonresistant though he was, because he possessed not only those clear moral convictions that were a candle to his own conscience, but had also the nerve to hold up those convictions as a burning candle before the guilty consciences of Southern