kept time to the music of their songs of victory. Their courageous and progressive spirit, tamed and refined, reappeared in the religious convictions of the Puritans, in the settlement of America, in the westward march of civilization in our own country, in the confidence of the pioneers that early crossed the plains and pitched their tents by these mighty mountains, in the energy that has made all that the world holds as greatest and best in material civilization, invention, government, science, literature, and moral and religious principle. The young man who has in his veins the blood of this people, and inherits the blessings that his race has wrought out, is a recreant to his trust if he does not stand courageously for all that is best in his own development, and all that is best in the progress of his age. Thor, the Norse god, possessed a belt of strength by which his might was doubled, and a precious hammer which when thrown returned to the hand of its own accord. When he wielded the hammer, as the Northern legends relate, he grasped it until the knuckles grew white. This hammer is an heirloom of the Northern races, handed down from the Halls of Walhalla. And herein lies the secret of success: grasp the hammer until the knuckles grow white.
Plato held Wisdom to be the supreme means by which to attain the great purpose of human existence. The Cardinal Virtue of Christian Wisdom is to gain knowledge of God. Plato conceived growth in wisdom to be a gradual realization, in the consciousness of man, of the eternal ideas. Man came from heaven and in his progress in knowledge he was but climbing the upward path to regain his lost estate.
