Page:The stuff of manhood (1917).djvu/180

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honesty carried all the way through, sympathy, capacity for work, patience in holding to principle, as well as fidelity in actual duty."

Now if we were to define life better than these boys, and yet in the way they were feeling after, not in any concrete expressions, but in its central principle, we should borrow the words which Professor Drummond borrowed from Herbert Spencer. Spencer said that the perfect correspondence of any organism with its environment would be perfect life. Professor Drummond modified this by adding just one word: the perfect correspondence of any organism with a perfect environment would be perfect life. Or, to put it as it is stated in one of our best dictionaries: life is that state in any animal or plant in which its different functions are all occupied in active healthy expression. Now that is just what those boys were feeling after. Life is the free and fearless completion of ourselves. Life is our utter unfolding in the direction of that of which we are capable. Life is the pushing out of the rim of our world into the great and boundless riches of God. Life is the opening up of the gates of our prison house that we may go after Him Whose word to men was: "If ye abide in my word, then are ye truly my disciples; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." Life is what Jesus Christ came to give, for His mission was this: