The chapel was well filled last evening to hear the Rev. Washington Gladden, D. D. give his last Sunday sermon before returning to the west. His subject was from Luke XVII, 33, "Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it."

Looking at this text practically and logically it seems absurd, for it violates the very first principle of logic. But when we come to spiritual facts, we cannot measure them by physical laws. The law of the Conservation of Energy does not apply with regard to honor and fidelity and patriotism. Neither does anything that lives or grows obey this inflexible law. The physiologist's first principle is that the body dies in decaying partially at every instant. At every stage of its growth every organism not only is, but is passing away from what is. Moreover, nothing can exist in only itself. Its purpose is ministry, and by ministry it preserves itself. Self preservation would be self destruction. So it is with the "independent" thinker, who refuses to follow the universal theory. Mental progress means to part with our own pet whims and obey the universal theories and principles.

After all, then, the text is not a mere rhetorical paradox, though its maxim is even now regarded as a distant ideal, impracticable at present. Even in the church the largest purse secures the best pew. Not many years ago John Ruskin spoke in bitter words of England's growing indifference to the laws of Christ. Other nations, he said, had rejected a Supreme Ruler, but had done it bravely and honestly. Englishmen acknowledged the existence of a God, but it was a foolish one. The devil's laws were alone practical. The Golden Rule was an ideal impossible to reach. All that was honest was unnatural and existed only in poetry.

Fortunately however, England is beginning to awake, but can this be said of us Americans? We do not yet recognize the Golden Rule. Many a poor man would willingly work and better himself but is dragged down by social conditions that are rapidly widening the gap between the rich and the poor. Whatever the gains in wealth, hatred between employer and employee is becoming more and more marked. We want less luxury more good will. In politics, too, private interests have taken the place of patriotism. Parties are held together only by gigantic systems of bribery.

So man's law does not work, but we know that Christ's law is a success. For are not the very qualities which we honor and emulate in Phillips Brooks and Abraham Lincoln and all noble men, their forgetfulness of self? If, then, we know what the highest is, let us as educated men strive to obtain it, and give to politics and to society the healthful influence of our training and our learning. Let us devote ourselves, that we may save ourselves.