There can be no objection to the idea, since it gives expression to proper religious feeling. But should it fail of execution, that would be quite as well. ——
For one Man only in all the history of the world no statue is needed. To the glory of one Man we can add nothing save through obedience to the laws which He brought on earth. ——
Where a weak woman is kindly treated, where children are received with tenderness, where the hungry are fed and the old cared for, there is a monument to Christ—such a monument as He would ask to have built.
The wisdom of Confucius, the self-abnegation of Gautama, the lofty idealism of Zoroaster, may be fitly commemorated and perhaps magnified by human monuments or human praise.
But men can build nothing that shall add to the glory of that life which is the basis of good among all men.
THE VAST IMPORTANCE OF SLEEP
MIschievous stories are told about the ability of great men to do without sleep.
The foolish young man reads that Napoleon slept only three or four hours at night—and he cuts down his hours of sleep. He might better open a vein and lose a pint of blood than lose the sleep, which is life itself.
Most of the stories told about great men doing without sleep are mere lies. Some of them are true. For instance, it is undoubtedly true that Napoleon—an inconceivably foolish, reckless man in matters affecting his physical welfare—did deprive himself of sleep in his early years. But he paid for it dearly. In his last battles his power of resistance was so slight that he actually went to sleep during the fighting. Chronic drowsiness weakened his brain, weakened his force of character. The foundation of his final ruin was laid in Russia, when lack of sleep, and unwise living generally, had taken away his mental elasticity and deprived him of the power to form and carry out resolutions. ——
It is mainly the young man who needs the lecture on sleep, for the experience of years soon proves to every human being the folly of cheating nature by adding a few hours of drowsy consciousness to the day.