What is

genuinely noble deeds of the heroic cast. meant by the statement that heroic action must have a noble object is that it must be a disinterested, self-forgetful, self-denying action; not a deed, however bravely facing danger, undertaken. for mere personal pleasure or selfish profit or for any selfish satisfaction whatever: it cannot be a deed of mere passion, or of cruelty, or of brute force, or of intellectual cunning, however high daring may be displayed in accomplishing the end. Heroism, wherever shown, commands admiration, it excites our moral homage; and, in order to do that, it must have a moral quality, it must be an action impelled by an unselfish sympathy or benevolence, or one that the doer believes to be commanded by his convictions of truth and right. In a word, it must be action for a noble, and not an ignoble, object.

Our definition of heroism, then, I believe, is justified in its three particulars: it is valorous action, against great odds, for a noble object.

Now, is there no opportunity for this kind of action in the common walks of life? Is it only the soldier, the explorer, the public philanthropist, the people who live on the frontiers of civilization and in places conspicuously exposed to sudden emergencies of action, is it only classes of persons such as these that have any occasion to act valorously against great odds for a noble end? Indeed, thus to put the question is almost to answer it. When we say "hero," the imagination conjures up

some distant, dazzling personage, of whom we have read in some history or fiction, the actor in a tale that is seldom repeated, the rare beings who in ancient days were even declared after death to be demigods and gods for their great deeds. But, when we examine the attributes of these beings, and say that the hero is one who acts valorously against great odds, for a noble object, we have brought the quality of heroism home to our own doors. If this be heroism, who of us is not called to act the part? To whom of us does not come the opportunity to act it? and the opportunity, not at rare intervals, once or thrice in a life-time, but constantly in our daily effort practically to solve the problem of life?

There is no one of us, surely, who does not have, or may not have, a noble object for which to live. The object may, in fact, be far above our achievements. We may be daily denying it in practice. We may seldom strive for it as we might. And yet we are conscious of a law which imposes upon us an obligation to live for noble purposes and pursuits. To every man and woman is given the task to form a character, according to the demands of truth and rectitude, for the expression of divine righteousness in the human world. To do the utmost possible toward this end out of the materials given is the duty. The materials may not always be of the best. Sometimes they may be amended, and then that is the first duty. But, when they cannot be, when our lot and circumstances and rela

tions in life are fixed for us, then the duty, keeping ever the rules of rectitude and truth as guides, is to mould character to the highest form possible from the given conditions. This law never relaxes the tension of its obligation upon us for a single moment. We are bound to live for the right and the true. Intuition, experience, the motive of highest usefulness, the desire for the greatest happiness, the instinct of moral sympathy, all enforce upon us the sanctity of this obligation. It is an obligation that we cannot violate with impunity. It is an obligation that we cannot violate and feel entirely at ease, unless we have suffered our moral perceptions to have become dulled by abuse. There is before us, therefore, the highest and noblest of all objects, the formation of true, upright, beneficent character, an object that is constant, that is not for rare days and infrequent opportunities, but for all days; and there is no act that we do that does not have some bearing upon this object either as helping or hindering its achievement. None of us, then, can say that we have no opportunity for at least this one among the essential conditions of heroism, a noble object.

But do we find it easy to keep this object steadily in view, and to keep our acts steadily bent to the task of achieving it? By no means, we answer. We imagine it might be much easier if the circumstances were different; and we sometimes picture to ourselves how much more truly we might live, how much better might be our characters and more

satisfactory our achievements, if we had only been thrown amidst other circumstances, if we could change places with some of our neighbors, if we had lived in some more favorable locality, if we had had more money, or perhaps less, or if a different kind of fortune had attended us through the years. But all these imaginings are but excuses for present delinquencies. If we could only get rid of the special difficulties of our lot, of the common-place duties that so absorb our faculties and time, of the drudgeries to which we are compelled, but which so stand in the way of our achieving those things that we most want to do, we profess to believe that we should be much better men and women, that then we should have more energy and enthusiasm and opportunity for the culture and pursuit of those higher objects which we recognize as demanding our allegiance, that then we should be able to present a higher type of character and conduct. But here, then, in these antagonistic conditions and circumstances of which we complain, are the very obstacles and hardships for calling forth that heroic quality of character which appears to us so admirable. Did our lot in life make it entirely easy to attain the lofty type of character which our consciences most approve, there would be, as we have seen, no room for heroism in the pursuit. By the resistance to be overcome is that quality measured. Heroism is gauged not by favoring circumstances, not by the wheel of fortune bringing an aspirant's wishes to the top,

but by that moral pluck and determination and will-power which push their way against unfavoring circumstances and compel success from adverse fortune itself. The success, be it remembered, of which we now speak, is the noble life, the true character, the honorable moral career. It may have or it may not have outward wealth. It may attain or it may not attain the external position and conditions that once seemed desirable. But the very

hardness of an unfavorable lot has been met by moral pluck and vigorous determination in such a way as to develop the inner fibre of a strong moral character, and this is human life's highest success. Heroism looks for no other. And here, in the conditions of the common lot, the drudging daily labors that have so little of romance, the unpalatable ever-recurring duties, the plodding necessities that appear to allow so little room for the culture that is craved, the homely struggles with common, unexciting temptations, which have no epic flow and never rise to the interest of a tragic crisis, here is a field where heroism may find ample opportunity to test its mettle. We have our moral ideals of life. They are of celestial heights of attainment. But here are the petty conditions of the day, of the hour, the selfish anxieties and passions, the home care and trial, the pressing earthy work, the distracting errands hither and thither, which drag upon our feet and threaten to prevent our ever reaching that goal of our hopes. The odds are perilously against us unless the