Some people have a great deal of the practical, and very little of the idealistic. Again, other people are very idealistic, without having much that is practical, but between any two extremes is always found the something that will prove truly beneficial. Idealism that is not practical is of very little benefit to any one; and again, one who is not idealistic has really not yet begun to live, for if a man became so practical that he lives only to accumulate material wealth, his life is in reality wasted. We need both: we need to be like the trees that grow, sending their roots down deep into the ground, and yet sending their branches up into the heavens.

While living in this world, we should try to receive all the good that the world can possibly give. It is a mistake to believe that we should live in this world as ascetics, or that we are merely pilgrims here for a little time, and the sooner we get through with the world the better it will be. Such people will awaken some time to a knowledge of their mistake.

To pass through the world without getting the benefit that the world offers is to lose much. Sometimes it is easier to hold to one thing than it is to adjust one's life to two conditions, and yet these two conditions of life are necessary - an inner consciousness is as necessary to life as an outer consciousness, and the man or woman who neglects one or the other is going to be one-sided, lacking true adjustment.

The world more frequently recognizes the one-sidedness of the people who tend toward idealism, while oblivious of the narrowness of those who give up their time and all their thought to the accumulation of material things. People would not consider it one-sidedness in the latter case, because it is the common way of the world, and we look upon this common way as being a very essential way, a necessary way. If any one should come into our practical, our utilitarian, world to-day, and try to imitate the Master - the great Nazarene - living His life, going about from place to place, often having nowhere to lay His head, often hungry and thirsty, we would say that such a man was not practical in this age and in this generation. But let me tell you that we have forgotten all about the practical men of His generation, while this one great soul stands out unique and alone, because the life was lost in thought for others - in thinking and doing and caring for others. The practical side of life passes away; only the ideal lives on forever.

Thus we eventually come to see that ideals dominate life, and without ideals we are little better than the animals. The squirrels store up their nuts sufficient to last them through the hard, cold winter. We know so much better than the squirrels: we store up not only sufficient to last through the winter, or the rainy day, but sufficient to last one generation after another generation, and we think that in doing this we are accomplishing God's work. If we could only understand that we are here to live life - we are here to give expression to every power and to every possibility that is written into the life.

But, supposing some one undertakes to make life so easy for another to live that it prevents any real incentive on his part for giving expression to his innate powers and possibilities.

What benefit or what good can such a course accomplish? It must of necessity retard development and keep back the evolution of life; for when people give all their thought and attention to storing up this world's goods for their children, they are doing that which invariably interferes with their development. Work is a necessity to life, and if we are not working - if we are not expressing, then we are not fulfilling life. It is, therefore, quite possible to so enrich others with material wealth that instead of being a help to them, it becomes a very decided hindrance.

We need strong, true ideals in life, and then we must make the effort to express our ideals. Idealism does not mean that there is no outer world and that ideals are all, but that ideals exist first, and that sooner or later must come their expression in outer form.

Of what use is an ideal that can never find expression? Of what benefit is it to one if he build wonderful ideals with the imagination and never see those ideals take form in the world? Of what particular benefit is it to him or to any one else? No; an ideal must find expression, and when it finds expression, according to one's own way and according to his own method, then it represents something that is in his own life; but if it is an ideal borrowed from some one else, and then exprest to some degree, one does not live in it the same way as tho it were a part and parcel of himself. No one can copy after another and be successful in the highest degree. Of course, many think that there are minds so far superior to their own, that they can copy from these minds and get greater results than through living out what they could think themselves. If you take a copy of a painting, you will always find, no matter how beautiful the reproduction may be as regards color and tech-nic, there is something about it that is not alive. It is not a living picture, because the man has not put his thought, his soul into the picture; therefore he could not express his thought or soul by copying the work of a master, no matter how great the master might be.

We should then have our own ideals in life, and we should express them. The ideal in the first place may be crude, the expression still cruder, but continued effort to express not only gives a better and more perfect result, but opens the way for a larger and more beautiful ideal.

There is something that each individual can do in this world, and do it better than any other individual . . . some one particular thing. If one can find that which he can do best, and put his highest thought and feeling into it, then it really becomes a living thing - the thought becomes a thing that is exprest in the outer world. "Thoughts are things." But only when charged with vital energy do they become things; when you put your feeling into your thinking; when you have faith in the power that animates your being, when you have faith in your ideal, then the work becomes a living thing - something that in blessing your own life will as surely bless the lives of others.