Biography is generally admitted to be the most profitable department of literature. The lives of the world's great ones are an inspiration, because, unlike the heroes and heroines of fiction, they are demonstrations of what has actually been accomplished, and we naturally reason that "what man has done, man can do." But to the Christian, the lives of fellow-disciples are especially helpful, inasmuch as the spiritual plane of experience transcends in dignity and importance the physical, intellectual, or merely moral. The Bible is so supremely uplifting, because it is, in the main, a wonderful collection of spiritual biographies. The history of the Christian centuries is resplendent with the records of magnificent characters, forming a glorious supplement to the Biblical catalogue, and displaying the helpfulness of Christ in the midst of varied conditions and circumstances.

      In estimating the place and power of any, given character, allowance must be made for the [1] influence of environment. Some men are made by their circumstances, others, in spite of them. The length of life, too, should be taken into consideration. Some do great things because they have great opportunities and live long enough to bring their schemes to fruition. Others move through life with a millstone round their necks, and die almost before they have had time to lay the foundation of the mighty edifice of their dreams. As Browning says,

      Among the Churches of Christ throughout Australasia, for a quarter of a century, the name of A. B. Maston was a household word, while for the last fifteen years of his life, he was the most striking, picturesque personality among the twenty thousand Disciples of Australia and New Zealand. His name had also spread to America, Africa, and Great Britain. There were, certainly, more eloquent preachers, keener intellects, and more polished writers among the Churches, but in all that goes to make up that which we call a striking personality, he was easily foremost. Given health, and strength, and a few more years of vigorous life, he would have achieved far greater things than the circumstances of his life actually permitted.

      There are few things, however, which appeal to the heart so strongly as the heroic endurance [2] of uncommon sufferings. Here was one who was not only a sufferer almost all his life, and who, for twenty years, endured paroxysms of anguish with a brave and smiling face, but one who, in spite of extraordinary and prolonged disability, stepped always forward, planning, working, achieving, and impressing himself ineffaceably upon the history of his day. When a brave soldier is mortally wounded, and lies writhing in agony on the battlefield, we pity him from the bottom of our hearts, but when the stricken warrior rises with death and anguish in his face, and strides among the enemy dealing mighty blows and doing dreadful execution until he drops dead in the thick of the combat, then men say,--A hero!

      Here was a great sufferer, who

And surely as we think of him in the brightness of the painless future, we may

[LABM 1-3]