past and are being lived to-day gives us our starting-point. Time and
again I have examined such lives in a most careful endeavor to find what
has made them so, and have found that in _each and every_ individual
case this that we have now come to has been the great central principle
upon which they have been built. I have also found that in numbers of
lives where it has not been, but where almost every effort apart from it
has been made to make them great, true, and happy, they have not been
so; and also that no life built upon it in sufficient degree, other
things being equal, has failed in being thus.

Let us then to the answer, examine it closely, see if it will stand
every test, if it is the true one, and if so, rejoice that we have found
it, lay hold of it, build upon it, tell others of it. The last four
words have already entered us at the open door. The idea has prevailed
in the past, and this idea has dominated the world, that _self_ is the
great concern,--that if one would find success, greatness, happiness, he
must give all attention to self, and to self alone. This has been the
great mistake, this the fatal error, this the _direct_ opposite of the
right, the true as set forth in the great immutable law that--_we find
our own lives in losing them in the service of others_, in longer
form--the more of our lives we give to others, the fuller and the
richer, the greater and the grander, the more beautiful and the more
happy our own lives become. It is as that great and sweet soul who when
with us lived at Concord said,--that generous giving or losing of your
life which saves it.

This is an expression of one of the greatest truths, of one of the
greatest principles of practical ethics the world has thus far seen. In
a single word, it is _service_,--not self but the other self. We shall
soon see, however, that our love, our service, our helpfulness to