has surrounded you with a wealth of privileges and an infinitude of priceless blessings. You inherit all the wisdom and genius and benevolence of the ages-riches that are vast, golden, immortal. You are placed within reach of the noblest possibilities; you have all the help and advantage which come of dwelling in a Christian and civilized land; you live in an age when the zeal and ardor and strength of young men are greatly in demand, and when the opportunities for usefulness are singularly favorable; and yet in the meanest, laziest, most spiritless fashion you ask to be "nothing, nothing.” Give up, once for all, this cowardly and characterless whimpering. Be something. Be a man! Shake off your dull sloth and rise to a nobler life. Do you murmur about the fierce and relentless competition? There is no competition at the top. The crowd is at the bottom; but look ahead, battle forward, fight your way against every difficulty, valiantly overcome every obstacle, and by the time you have climbed halfway to success you will find that the throng which once pressed around you begins to thin and disappear. And when by skill and industry, faith and fortitude, pluck and perseverance, you have attained the height you set your young heart on reaching, you will discover that there is no competition there -you will then be able to dictate your own terms, and claim the adequate reward of honest, skillful, earnest work. Yet another most fruitful cause of insignificance is what I should call "time-frittering." Some months ago several of the most prominent ministers in New York were persuaded to give their views on "The Best Use of Leisure" for the guidance of young men. I am not sure that there is any topic of much greater importance than this, for you can generally tell the character of a man with almost infallible accuracy, by the way in which he uses his leisure hours. Time-frittering is undoubtedly the besetting sin of the young men to-day. Thousands of fellows turn with horror from actual dissipation. But their virtue is of a negative and therefore of a very worthless kind. They abstain from evil, but they never do any good. The worst and most costly extravagance of which you can be guilty is to throw away your evenings. They are golden opportunities for which you are responsible, and of which you should make the best and highest use. One of the most popular of our writers and ora tors was once asked how he managed to get through such a prodigious amount of work. "Simply by organizing my time," he replied. It is by this invaluable habit of organizing your leisure hours that you will be able to "wrest from life its uses and gather from life its beauty." It is wonderful what may be accomplished by devoting the evenings to some useful study or helpful recreation. Earnest and persistent students have learned several languages in the odd hours of a busy career. Never be afraid of giving up one or two nights a week to your books. "Knowledge is power" all the world over, and what you learn will be sure to come in useful one day. It is an old saying, but I may repeat it with advantage, that "Time-wasting in youth is one of the mistakes which are beyond correction." One more path to insignificance must be mentioned - the loss of a good name. A blasted reputation will carry you into nothingness at express speed. Lose your character, and men will drop you with stinging promptitude, and you will sink into the lowest depths of insignificance. Scarcely anybody will want to know you- nobody will employ you, and only a few Christlike souls will be ready to lend you a helping hand. We are too apt to read the Bible nowadays as if it were an oldworld story, which has no bearing on the practical matters of everyday business. But has it never struck you that "a good name is rather to be chosen than great riches," even as a worldly investment? Punctuality, concentration of effort, ceaseless energy, and many other qualifications, will help a man forward; but, possessing all these, he may yet be a miserable failure if he has not a good name. Character stands for a good deal, even in these days of fraud and deceit. A band of thieves will want an honest treasurer, and men who are themselves full of trickery will appreciate a sturdy, honest character in others. The young man whose word cannot be relied upon, whose honesty is not beyond suspicion, and whose personal life is not clean, will search in vain for a position in the business world to-day. Be careful that you never lose your good name. It may take you ten or twenty years to gain a high and spotless reputation, but you can easily destroy it in ten minutes; and a man who has once proved himself unworthy to be trusted will find it an almost hopeless task to win back confidence and regard. He may even possess influence, and family position, and hosts of friends; but the way upward will be hard and thorny, because he once surrendered his reputation. Be on your guard, be watchful and vigilant; "let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall." Count your good name as a possession above price, and, by the strong help of your Father God, never permit it to be soiled or sullied. Honesty is better than brilliancy; purity and uprightness are greater than dash and cleverness. ON SUCCESS CHAPTER XXI. JOHN HEYL VINCENT. WHAT HE REPRESENTS BIRTH AND EARLY ENVIRON- SECRETARY OF SCHOOL AS A TEACHER — SELF-EDUCATION. During my early ministerial life I conceived a plan, reaching through the years, by which, in connection with professional duties, I might turn my whole life into a college course, and by force of personal resolve secure many benefits of college education. I remembered that the college aims to promote, through force of personal resolve, the systematic training of all the mental faculties to the habit of concentrated and continuous attention, that the mind, with its varied energies, may be trained, and thus prepared to do its best work, subject to the direction of the will; that it cultivates the powers of oral and written expression; that it encourages fellowships and competitions among students seeking the same end; that it secures the influence of professional specialists great teachers who know how to inspire and to quicken other minds; and that it gives to a man broad surveys of the fields of learning, discovering relations, indicating the lines of special research for those whose peculiar aptitudes are developed by college discipline, thus giving one a sense of his own littleness in the presence of the vast realm of truth exposed to view, so that he may find out with La Place that "what we know here is very little; what we are ignorant of is immense." The task before me was to secure these results to as large a degree as possible: mental discipline, in order to assure intellectual achievement, practice in expression, contact with living students and living teachers, and the broad outlook which the college curriculum guarantees. This aim, therefore, for years controlled my professional and non-professional studies. It was constantly present in sermonizing, in teaching, in general reading, in pastoral visitation, in contact deliberately sought with the ablest men and women-specialists, scientists, littérateurs, whom I could find, especially those who had gone through college or who had taught in college. I secured, from time to time, special. teachers in Greek, in Hebrew, in French, in physical science, giving what time I could to preparation and recitation. I read with care translations of Homer and Virgil, outlines of the leading Greek and Latin classics, and, in connection with an exceedingly busy professional life, devoted much time to popular readings in science and English literature. When thirty years old I went abroad, and spent a year, chiefly for the sake of coming into personal contact with the Old World of history and literature, and found double pleasure in the pilgrimage because I made it a part of my college training. In Egypt and Palestine, in Greece and Italy, I felt the spell of the old sages, writers, artists, and was glad to find that the readings. of my youth and of my later manhood greatly helped me to appreciate the regions I visited, and the remains in art and architecture which I was permitted to study. Johust Brucent. In HE only real and lasting addition a man makes to the world's stock of truth is empirical-that which he finds out in the course of his practical living. Selftruths, self-discoveries, are the only vital ones. substance they may be what other men have found and told told better, perhaps, than another can ever expect to do it; but in their power to inspire and move, they are unique. They have an originality, a genuineness, a force of reproduction, which lies only in things born of individual experience and pain and effort. There are few men whose public work illustrates this |