"They Plied Their Oars With Vigor"


"Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might."

"Count that day lost whose low descending sun
Views from thy hand no worthy action done."



The Individual Problem


With steady, even, and vigorous stroke the young heroes from Hellas ply
their oars, and the blue waters of the Euxine are flecked with foam. Here
is an ideal picture. A band of enterprising young men, alert, active,
ambitions--a scene typical of the highest conception of life. It has ever
been scenes like this that have challenged the admiration of the world.
And the plaudits of men and of angels attend the young man today who has a
worthy object in view, who believes in himself, and bends to the oars with
might and main.

An "active hand" symbolizes usefulness and thrift. Has it ever occurred
to you what a wonderful piece of mechanism is that hand with which Nature
has equipped you for seizing the oars of life's activities? Galen, the
famous anatomist, after a prolonged study of the human hand, conceiving
it to be the proximate instrument of the soul, was forced to renounce
atheism, to acknowledge the existence of a Supreme Being. Scientists
regard the human hand as being the most remarkable organ, not vital, in