Lures of Life

his life which exhales from him like the fragrance from a flower or miasma from a swamp. You cannot investigate it. It is moral force. Some men possess much

as lightning, profound as eternity, beautiful as t

s a man in people's eyes, but the man himself may be small without the money inflation. Strip the rich man of his shekels, and you strip him of his significance. He counts

advantage of power is to be able to do more good than other people. All the world knows the difference, the ghastly difference, between Cardinal Wolsey in favour and Cardinal Wolsey in disgrace. Catastrophe lies between these extremes of fortune. The man remains the same in both states, but the world moves with the times, and gives no credi

uman touch, and the animal bends submissively to every movement of the reins; so some men command their fellow-creatures, and they submit their wills to the master mind that rides them, and how the spell governs they cannot say. Other men are ciphers in society.

ngs in the cradle, and perhaps before we nestle. The schoolboy unconsciously wields a mystic power in the playground, and his chums hover round him as king of the revels. Animal magnetism exudes fr

er honours as she pleases. No money can buy them. Blue-blooded pedigrees have no preferential tariff. Nature mocks our conventionality, spurns our orders of merit, and winks at our social somebodies. Often she openly prefers a costermonger to a King--stamps aristocratic

imself. Some people have "an air" about them, and the atmosphere they move in is intoxicating to those dwelling under the spell of their presence. You cannot crush people who have personality. Over and over again it turns the scales in their favour in the competitions of life. Their virtues may not be of the celestial, their talent may lack glitter, but their personality grips you with its pomp and splendo

fascinating character of Jesus Christ moves in splendour adown the ages, giving out vital energy. It draws men to-day irresistibly, as it constrained men nearly two thousand years ago to follow Him homeless and penniless through the highways and by-ways of Palestine, without worldly honour or pay to recompense them. There is a strange, silent, penetr

y in Europe the Church is the biggest business concern and the wealthiest institution, the most aristocratic society and the most retrogressive force. The national Churche

d. But I can picture Christ falling speechless when brought face to face with a Bishop geared in full canonical uniform; and if in His ignorance of ecclesiastical functionaries Jesus politely inquired, "Who is the aristocratic old gentleman wearing knee-breeches and a broad-brimmed hat, and to what institution does he belong?" on being told he was speakin

fe of mankind--St. Francis of Assisi, the humble child of God, the dear brother of men, dead these five hundred years gone by; but he is now lying warm upon the lap of Christendom, nursed for one of the nobl

rtues. The poets brand the Devil with a commanding personality. John Wilkes, the notorious demagogue in the reign of George III., was the ugliest man in England, yet he impressed himself marvellously on his generation. He was a popular hero; he possessed natural gaiety of disposition and an irrepressible fund of impudence and wit. He was the most brilliant controversialis