Life and Conduct | Page 4

he received a new inward life; a transfiguring change passed over the entire character; the life he lived in the flesh became a life of faith in the Son of God; and his experience has been the experience of many. The source of the highest and noblest character is Christ. (2) Christ is also the standard of a noble character; the true ideal of manhood is found in Him: "the stature of the fulness of Christ." Take the following illustration: "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 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