best in a new form—a new form that was demanded by the needs of a new day. Elijah had laid blows of condemnation on the nation: Elisha was to apply the balm of healing where those blows had fallen. Elijah was an agitator: Elisha was a teacher. Elijah was denunciatory: Elisha was tolerant. Each in his place held the best views held by any man of his time, but each in his place was called upon to hold those views according to his own temperament and express them according to the need immediately at hand.

No parent, teacher, or friend can possibly reproduce himself in another. It is God's law that, however alike plants may seem in reproduction, no child shall see life exactly as his parents, nor shall a pupil see it exactly as a teacher. This law is most wise. The same work is never given to any two people to do. It may be work of the same general nature, but never work the same in all particulars. Different types of men, actuated by the same motives, are required for different types of work. Any man who endeavors to be a pure copyist of another gone before him, always fails of individual development and fails of usefulness. Elijah could not foresee the changed circumstances in which Elisha would live, when many of the vexatious questions of Elijah's day would be settled and new questions of morality and public welfare would arise. All that he could do, all that any man can do, is to give the best he has to another, and send him forth to use that best as well as the other can in the new place. The beauty of human history is that the work the best man of one age could not accomplish, another coming after him does accomplish, and he accomplishes it, not because he is any better than his predecessor, but because he is the man for this hour as his predecessor was for the hour before this. There is always work to be done. There are always tasks left over from a previous generation. There are always ideas hitherto unemphasized that to-day must be emphasized, else society will not know its duty. For this work and task and emphasis new men are needed, men who do not see exactly as their fathers saw, nor pronounce nor act exactly as their fathers did. To provide such men, to inspire them with a great sense of duty, and send them out into life with open minds toward God and open hearts toward their fellows, and then withdraw our hand and let them do their own work, in their own way, this is our blessed privilege.