CHAPTER II._Life and Conduct

SUCCESS IN LIFE.

We often hear the word success used. The great wish that most have in

beginning life is that they may be successful. One man constantly asks

another the question regarding a third, How has he succeeded?

What is success in life? It may perhaps be defined in this way: It is

to obtain the greatest amount of happiness possible to us in this world.

There are two things to be borne in mind in estimating what success is:

I. Lives which according to some are successful must in the highest

sense be pronounced failures.--The idea of many is that success

consists in the gaining of a livelihood, or competency, or wealth; but

a man may gain these things who yet cannot be said to have succeeded.

If he gets wealth at the expense of health, or if he gets it by means

of trickery and dishonest practices, he can hardly be said to have

succeeded. He does not get real happiness with it. If a man gains the

whole world and loses his own soul, he cannot be said to have

succeeded. True success in life is when a fair share of the world's

good does not cost either physical or intellectual or moral well-being.

II. Lives which according to some are failures must in the highest

sense be pronounced successful.--The life of our blessed Lord, from one

point of view, was a failure. It was passed in poverty, it closed in

darkness. We see Him crowned with thorns, buffeted, spit upon; yet

never was Christ so successful as when He hung upon the cross. He had

finished the work given Him to do. He "saw of the travail of His soul

and was satisfied."

Milton completed his _Paradise Lost_ and a bookseller only gave him

fifteen pounds for it, yet he cannot be said to have failed.

Speak, History, who are life's victors? unroll thy long

annals and say,

Are they those whom the world calls victors, who won

the success of the day,

The martyrs or Nero? The Spartans who fell at

Thermopylae's tryst

Or the Persians or Xerxes? His judges or Socrates?

Pilate or Christ?

What may seem defeat to some may be in the truest sense success.

_There are certain things which directly tend to success in life:_

The first is Industry.--There can be no success without working hard

for it. There is no getting on without labor. We live in times of

great competition, and if a man does not work, and work hard, he is

soon jostled aside and falls into the rear. It is true now as in the

days of Solomon that "the hand of the diligent maketh rich."

(_a_) There are some who think they can dispense with hard work because

they possess great natural talents and ability--that cleverness or

genius can be a substitute for diligence. Here the old fable of the

hare and the tortoise applies. They both started to run a race. The

hare, trusting to her natural gift of fleetness, turned aside and took

a sleep; the tortoise plodded on and won the prize. Constant and

well-sustained labor carries one through, where cleverness apart from

this fails. History tells us that the greatest genius is most diligent

in the cultivation of its powers. The cleverest men have been of great

industry and unflinching perseverance. No truly eminent man was ever

other than an industrious man.

(_b_) There are some who think that success is in the main a matter of

what they call "luck," the product of circumstances over which they

have little or no control. If circumstances are favorable they need

not work; if they are unfavorable they need not work. So far from man

being the creature of circumstances he should rather be termed the

architect of circumstances. From the same materials one man builds

palaces and another hovels. Bricks and mortar are mortar and bricks

till the architect makes something out of them. In the same way, out

of the same circumstances one man rears a stately edifice, while

another, idle and incompetent, lives for ever amid ruins.

Circumstances rarely conquer a strong man; he conquers them. He

Breaks his birth's invidious bar

And grasps the skirts of happy chance,

And breasts the blows of circumstance,

And grapples with his evil star.--TENNYSON.

Against all sorts of opposing obstacles the great workers of the world

fought their way to triumph. Milton wrote _Paradise Lost_ in blindness

and poverty. Luther, before he could establish the Reformation, had to

encounter the prestige of a thousand years, the united power of an

imperious hierarchy and the ban of the German Empire. Linnaeus,

studying botany, was so poor as to be obliged to mend his shoes with

folded paper and often to beg his meals of his friends. Columbus, the

discoverer of America, had to besiege and importune in turn the states

of Genoa, Portugal, Venice, France, England, and Spain, before he could

get the control of three small vessels and 120 men. Hugh Miller, who

became one of the first geological writers of his time, was apprenticed

to a stonemason, and while working in the quarry, had already begun to

study the stratum of red sandstone lying below one of red clay. George

Stephenson, the inventor of the locomotive engine, was a common collier

working in the mines. James Watt, the inventor of the steam-engine,

was a poor sickly child not strong enough to go to school. John

Calvin, who gave a theology to the seventeenth and eighteenth

centuries, which has not yet been outgrown, was tortured with disease

all his days. When were circumstances favorable to any great or good

attempt, except as they were compelled by determination and industry to

become favorable?

(_c_) Even if circumstances seem in every way favorable, industry is

necessary to success. Though we be born, as the saying is, "with a

silver spoon in our mouth," we cannot afford to dispense with work.

Unless we are hard-working, life will become a weariness to us. Work

keeps life full and happy; it drives all diseased fancies out of the

mind; it gives balance and regularity to all movements of the soul.

If then we expect to succeed in life we must make up our mind to work

hard. We must not let it be our notion of a fine lady or gentleman to

do nothing. The idle life is a miserable life; it is bound to be so.

God has promised many a blessing to industry; He has promised none to

indolence. God himself works, and He wants His children to work.

_The second thing that tends directly to success in life is a distinct

Aim_.--A man may run very hard in a race, the perspiration may stream

from his brow and every muscle be strained, but if he is not running in

a right direction, if he is running away from the goal, all his

activity will not help him. So, industrious habits are not sufficient,

unless we have a distinct idea of what we are aiming at. The world is

full of purposeless people, and such people come to nothing. Those who

have succeeded best have chosen their line and stuck to it.

One great aim, like a guiding-star above,

Which tasked strength, wisdom, stateliness, to lift

Their manhood to the height that takes the prize.

BROWNING.

(_a_) The choice of a trade or profession is of enormous importance in

settling our aim in life. Men often fail from having adopted a calling

for which they are entirely unfitted. The round man in the square hole

is a pitiful spectacle. It is difficult to lay down any special rule

in regard to the choice of a profession or business. Some are obliged

to take whatever opportunity offers, and others have to begin work at

too early an age to permit them to form a true idea of what they are

best fitted for, and are obliged to follow the wishes of others rather

than their own. This only we can say, that so far as we have a choice

we should adopt the calling that is most congenial to us and suits our

inclinations. "Grasp the handle of your being" was the direction given

by a wise counsellor to one who sought advice as to what calling he

should follow. Everyone has certain aptitudes, and as far as he is

able should keep them in view. There is often a distinct indication at

a very early period of life for what we are best fitted. "The tastes

of the boy foreshadow the occupations of the man. Ferguson's clock

carved out of wood and supplied with rudest mechanism; Faraday's tiny

electric machine made from a common bottle; Claude Lorraine's pictures

in flour and charcoal on the walls of the bakers' shops; Canova's

modelling of small images in clay; Chantrey's carving of his

school-master's head in a bit of pine wood,--were all indications clear

and strong of the future man."

(_b_) Whatever you resolve upon, keep to it. "One thing I do," is a

great rule to follow. It is much better to do one thing well than many

things indifferently. It may be well to have "many strings to our

bow," but it is better to have a bow and string that will every time

send the arrow to the target. A rolling stone gathers no moss. He

that is everything by turns and nothing long comes to nothing in the

end.

If thou canst plan a noble deed

And never flag till it succeed,

Though in the strife thy heart should bleed,

Whatever obstacles contend,

Thine hour will come, go on, thou soul!

Thou'lt win the prize, thou'lt reach the goal.

CHAS. MACKAY.

(_c_) The higher our purpose is, the greater our attainment is likely

to be. The nobler our ideal, the nobler our success. It seems

paradoxical to say it, but it is true, that no one ever reached a goal

without starting from it; no one ever won a victory without beginning

the battle with it; no one ever succeeded in any work without first

finishing it in his own mind.

Pitch thy behavior low, thy projects high,

So shalt thou humble and magnanimous be.

Sink not in spirit; who aimeth at the sky

Shoots higher much than he who means a tree.

G. HERBERT.

When we go forward to life we should make up our mind what we intend to

make of life. Make up your mind after prayer to God, and work for that.

_The third essential to success in life is Moral Character_, in its

various elements of honesty, truthfulness, steadiness, temperance.

"Honesty is the best policy" is one of those worldly maxims that

express the experience of mankind. A small leak will sink a great

ship. One bad string in a harp will turn its music into discord. Any

flaw in moral character will sooner or later bring disaster. The most

hopeless wrecks that toss on the broken waters of society are men who

have failed from want of moral character. There are thousands of such

from whom much was expected but from whom nothing came. It is told of

a distinguished professor at Cambridge that he kept photographs of his

students. He divided them into two lots. One he called his basket of

adled eggs: they were the portraits of men who had failed, who had come

to nothing though they promised much. What brought most of them to

grief was want of character, of moral backbone. Some of them--a good

many of them--went to drink, others to love of pleasure, others to the

bad in other ways. Good principle counts for more than can be

expressed; it is essential. Many things may hinder a man from getting

on--slowness, idleness, want of ability, trifling, want of interest in

his vocation. Many of these faults may be borne with long by others,

and may be battled with earnestly by ourselves; but a flaw in character

is deadly. To be unsteady, dishonest, or untruthful is fatal. Before

God and man an unfaithful servant is worthless. We may have other

qualifications that go to command success, such as those we have

noticed,--industry and a distinct aim,--but want of principle will

render them useless. Slow and sure often go together. The slow train

is often the safest to travel by, but woe be to it and to us if we do

not keep upon the rails.

_The last essential to success in life is Religious

Hopefulness_.--(_a_) Our industry, our purpose, our principles may be

all they ought to be, yet the "race is not always to the swift nor the

battle to the strong." But when we find the race going from us and the

battle going against us, if we have trust in God and the hopefulness

that comes from religion, we will find heart to try again: we will not

be utterly cast down. Christian faith keeps men in good heart amid

many discouragements. (_b_) Even if a man or woman become rich or

clever and have life pleasant around them, they cannot feel at the

close of life that they have succeeded if the future is dark before

them. When Cardinal Wolsey, who had been the favorite of the king and

had long held the government of England in his hand, fell from power,

he said, "If I had served my God as truly as I served my king He would

not have forsaken me in my gray hairs." The world is a poor comforter

at the last. No man or woman has become successful until their

essential happiness is placed beyond the reach of all outward

fluctuation and change. Faith in Christ, the faith that penetrates the

future and brings down from heaven a bright and blessed hopefulness,

which casts its illumination over the present scene and reveals the

grand object of existence, is essential to true success.

We cannot sum up the teachings of this chapter better than in the words

of a poem of which we should try to catch the spirit: they express the

very philosophy of success in life:

Courage, brother! do not stumble,

Though thy path be dark as night;

There's a star to guide the humble;--