Part 1 (2/2)
V. The highest character a man can have is the Christian Character.--(1) Christ is the giver of a n.o.ble character. It is possible to be united to Christ as the branch is united to the tree; and when we are so, His life pa.s.ses into ours: a change in character comes to us; we are renewed in the inward man, old things pa.s.s away, and all things become new. In the life of St. Paul we have a striking instance how coming to Christ effects a change in character. He became a different man from what he was; he received a new inward life; a transfiguring change pa.s.sed over the entire character; the life he lived in the flesh became a life of faith in the Son of G.o.d; and his experience has been the experience of many. The source of the highest and n.o.blest character is Christ. (2) Christ is also the _standard_ of a n.o.ble character; the true ideal of manhood is found in Him: ”the stature of the fulness of Christ.” Take the following ill.u.s.tration: ”In Holland we travel with Dutch money, in France with French money, in Germany with German money. The standard of the coinage varies with every state we go into. In Britain there is one standard of coinage; we may get some corrupted money or some light coin, but the standard of coinage is the same. The standard for the Christian is the same throughout the years and in all places: the one perpetual standard of the life of Christ.” The best men are those who come the nearest to it. Those who come nearest to it are those who will do best in the practical conduct of life.
CHAPTER II.
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 p.r.o.nounced 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 p.r.o.nounced successful.--The life of our blessed Lord, from one point of view, was a failure. It was pa.s.sed 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 compet.i.tion, 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 subst.i.tute 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 circ.u.mstances over which they have little or no control. If circ.u.mstances are favorable they need not work; if they are unfavorable they need not work. So far from man being the creature of circ.u.mstances he should rather be termed the architect of circ.u.mstances. 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 circ.u.mstances one man rears a stately edifice, while another, idle and incompetent, lives for ever amid ruins.
Circ.u.mstances rarely conquer a strong man; he conquers them. He
Breaks his birth's invidious bar And grasps the skirts of happy chance, And b.r.e.a.s.t.s the blows of circ.u.mstance, 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 circ.u.mstances favorable to any great or good attempt, except as they were compelled by determination and industry to become favorable?
(_c_) Even if circ.u.mstances 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.
G.o.d has promised many a blessing to industry; He has promised none to indolence. G.o.d himself works, and He wants His children to work.
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