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EXPECT GREAT THINGS

"Henceforth expecting till his enemies be made the footstool of his feet."-Heb. 10: 13.

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HAT virile and frankly Christian writer,

Bruce Barton, not long ago had a most remarkable interview with the then head of the Roman Catholic Church in America, the late Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore, after he had passed his eighty-sixth milestone in the journey of life.

In beginning his conversation with Cardinal Gibbons, Mr. Barton remarked: "I notice that your secretary and your associates are all young men."

"That's part of the secret of warding off old age," the Cardinal answered, with a smile the freshness of which belied his years. "When a man begins to look back, then he is old. I never look back. Lot's wife looked back, you remember, and was destroyed. Looking back is destruction always-the beginning of the end. After a person passes middle life he ought to surround himself with those who have a long time yet to look forward." He turned so that he faced a little into the sun. "Until you are forty, seek the companionship of men who are older," he continued. "After that, keep a vital contact with those who are younger. That is a pretty good rule. Until my recent sickness I used to walk every afternoon from

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five to six, and whom did I choose for companions? Students from the Seminary. They come from every part of the United States: one day a man from Massachusetts, another day one from Oklahoma, and so on. They tell me their hopes and their ambitions and their plans.

“And do you want to know what I say to them? I say, 'Young man, expect great things! Expect great things of God; great things of your fellow men and of yourself. Expect great things of America. For great opportunities are ahead; greater than any that have come before. But only those who have the courage and the vision to expect them will profit when they come." "

And at the close of that long and extraordinarily interesting conversation he closed the interview on the same key:

"I said at the beginning, 'Young man, expect great things.' And I say it again at the end. I have lived almost three times as long as the average age of your readers. I have watched men climb up to success, hundreds of them; and of all the elements. that are important for success, the most important is Faith. Those who throw up their hands in discouragement when the first snow falls, fail to profit when the sunshine of spring returns. And no great thing comes to any man unless he has courage, even in dark days, to expect great things; to expect them of himself, of his fellow men, of America, and of God."

When I read this remarkable and exceeding profitable piece of advice from this venerable man out of his long experience, there came to me these similar

words written nearly two thousand years ago a greater than Cardinal Gibbons,-the words St. Paul, in describing the attitude of Jesus since gave himself on the cross as the infinite sacrifice the sins of the world. Paul says, writing of Jes in the tenth chapter of his Epistle to the Hebrew "But he, when he had offered one sacrifice for si forever, sat down on the right hand of God; hen forth expecting till his enemies be made the footst of his feet."

This wonderful declaration appeals to our imagin tion very strongly. It gives us the picture of Jes watching through all the ages the strife and turm and evolution of mankind, never for a moment losi the attitude of confident expectation that the love God, which had its supreme revelation in the suffe ings of the cross on Calvary, will finally come to eve lasting triumph.

Others may lose hope for humanity, but Jes never. Others may become discouraged, but Jesu is the eternal optimist. "Henceforth expecting That is the Christian attitude for us all if we are imitate our Lord himself. I wish to apply this so a to be an immediate blessing to each of us.

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Expect great things of your own physical life. speak of the physical first because it is the first essen tial and has so much to do with our success in ever other phase of our career. A man's or a woman body is as important as the nest is to the young bird "As useless as a last-year's bird's nest " has gone int

proverb, but nothing is more important to the young bird than this year's bird's nest, and your body is "this year's" life nest for you. No young man or young woman can afford to be careless or indifferent concerning the health and strength of the body. It is either one of your greatest assets or one of your heaviest liabilities. Without health and strength of body you will be increasingly handicapped and limited in your powers of achievement throughout your life. Every other gift or blessing of life will be discounted and detracted from if you surrender to go through life with a weak or sickly body. But what miracles can be wrought by improving your body and bringing it into a state of health and power if you will expect great things of it, and give yourself with earnest determination to realize your expectations.

Theodore Roosevelt, who was the beau ideal of the athletic world for so many years in America, was a very weak and sickly child. In her reminiscences of her brother, Mrs. Robinson tells how the first Theodore Roosevelt, father of the future President of the United States, turned one of the upstairs rooms in their New York City residence into a kind of outdoor gymnasium, with every imaginable swing and bar and seesaw, and when the second Theodore was eleven years old his father took him up into this gymnasium and said: "Theodore, you have the mind, but you have not the body, and without the help of the body the mind cannot go as far as it should. You must make your body. It is hard drudgery to make one's body, but I know you will do it." The little boy looked up, and threw back his head in a charac

teristic fashion. Then, with a flash of those teeth-which later in life became so well known when he was police commissioner in New York it was said that any recreant policeman would if he came suddenly face to face with a set of teeth in a shop window-he said: "I'll make body." And how splendidly he lived up to the pectations of his father, and his own, the story o romantic and useful life tells.

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We should expect much of our minds and the cess of the work to which we give our energies our share in the work of the world.

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Your success in the development of your me power will be largely dictated by your expectati According to thy faith be it unto thee," is just scientific in our every-day life as any demonstra truth of science. You will not do more than y expect. Orville Harrold, who is generally conce to be the greatest American tenor, is a splendid ill tration of the power of expecting great things in hi endeavor. He was a farm boy on a poor farm whe there was no money for education. He was twer years old before he graduated from the High Scho so hardly did he have to work his way through. B he had faith in himself and in the powers God ha given him to produce musical sounds, and struggl on. When finally, very late in life for the triumĮ of a great singer, he had brought the musical wor to his feet, when asked the secret of his success, said very simply: "I won because I thought I coul