Commercial Courage.

REV. JAMES W. COLE, B.D.

TT is a misfortune to a man to have the path to success made smooth and easy to him; for in such case he fails to develop the sturdy virtues and personal resources that are alone the product of hard toil, economy, and thrift, and upon the development of these qualities depends the value of his manhood. True, the qualities may exist in him, but in such case they remain in embryo. The value of muscle depends not on its flabbiness, which is the result of want of exercise, but upon its strength and endurance, which alone come by use. Brains are valuable, not for their bulk, but for fineness, also due to use. And one's virtues or one's resources become valuable in proportion to their development. Use develops skill, aptness, strength.

The value of all victories depends not altogether upon the getting them, but upon how you get them. Sometimes a victory costs too much, and great wealth is often not worth the getting. If to gain victory you must part with honor, truth, manhood, then defeat is far preferable; for in such case the defeat becomes the victory when viewed from life's last hours. Honor and manhood outrank all wealth or position at that point, and beyond it. Many young men are apt to lose heart if their first plans and efforts for success miscarry; as though perfection were due to a first trial, or fruits were to be plucked before the seeds were grown. When a young man fails in business, he and the world too often think he is ruined; as though the first skirmish made or unmade the warrior; as though one chance for success were all that Providence gives

us! Young man, ten thousand chances are before you. With the proper use of your present opportunities, new ones will appear. The due employment of your resources to-day will bring you new power to-morrow. Life is a constant unfolding of new opportunities, new resources, new powers. How much we have to-day that our fathers never dreamed of! And there will be more to-morrow. Neither nature nor human nature is exhausted.

A stout heart, a dauntless will, and a pure spirit are invincible everywhere. Nature yields her hidden treasures to him who dares seek them. Of her comes wealth; of her comes success, but not to the faint-hearted. Fear keeps many a man poor, and often causes business men to fail. General Sherman tells us that he was offered corner lots in San Francisco in 1848 for $16 each, and could have bought gold mines for a few score dollars apiece, but was afraid to invest. In a few years thereafter they were worth millions. A man of very great wealth declares that he never made any money only at times called panics, when every one seemed possessed by fear. Then he bought, and when men recovered from their fear he was rich. Nearly every panic of these modern times is gotten up by men of daring to enrich a few individuals, and the moral is a very plain one-don't get frightened. You may lose money; but what matters it if you do not lose honor or health? All the capital of the world is simply the overplus of toil; that is, what is left after supplying the daily wants of mankind. If yours has departed, you can easily get more by toil, industry, economy, perseverance.

Never despair. Life is not solely for getting a living; it is for developing the perfect man, body, mind, and soul. And that is often better obtained through what men call failures and defeats, than by victories. Be brave. Cowardice is born of fear, and fear is weakness. Noble manhood and noble womanhood grow from resolute, determined spirits that take this life's vicissitudes to be, what indeed they are, the needful preparation for far more responsible and ennobling duties and

employments in the life beyond. In this world's business affairs the man who refuses to consider himself defeated sooner or later wins success. He may not win the first battle, nor the second, nor the third, but, like Bruce of Scotland, he will fire his spirit in the hours of dejection that come to us all, with the perseverance even of the humble spider, and like him cry, "I, too, will yet conquer.”

Sometimes a young man fresh from college, and full of its lore, gets discouraged if his brilliant talents do not at once put him in the highest positions; forgetting that skill is as needful to success as is knowledge of principles; and skill is born of toil. If you are but of good courage, you will find your place made for you, or make one for yourself. The world's great enterprises were not projected nor carried out by cowards. If De Lesseps had heeded the "It can't be done," of the world's faint-hearted croakers, there would now be no Suez canal. If Jay Cooke or Oakes Ames had taken counsel of the multitudinous prophets of fear, we should not now have our Pacific railroads. In all just, honest, honorable enterprises "I have" waits on "I dare."

The Man of Push.

REV. GEORGE R. HEWITT, B.D.

USH, what is it? Our latest and largest dictionary* defines it as "persevering energy"; "enterprise." Definition, however, is hardly necessary. We Americans know

full well the meaning of the term. We are the most pushing people on the face of the earth. As a nation we have more energy, enterprise, and go-ahead than any nation the world has hitherto produced. Says Emerson, "Import into any stationary district, as into an old Dutch population in New York or Pennsylvania, or among the planters of Virginia, a colony of hardy Yankees, with seething brains, heads full of steam-hammer, pulley, crank, and toothed wheel, and everything begins to shine with value."

There has lately come into colloquial use in our country a rather inelegant but forceful word which expresses exactly what we mean by a man of push. It is the word "hustler." To hustle is to push or make your way with difficulty through a crowd. To-day the thoroughfares of life are crowded; if a man would win a place in the ranks of professional or mercantile life, he must push for it. Push brings men of mediocrity to the front, and enables them to stay there. In these days of keen competition, a man without push is soon jostled aside and falls into the rear. Push is the passport to success. Push paves the way from poverty to wealth.

In no profession or pursuit is eminence achieved apart from push,-apart from hard, persistent work. "I find," said Livingstone, the great missionary explorer, "that all eminent men

The Century.

work hard." We may be sure there has always been hard, earnest, persistent work somewhere before eminence has been gained.

"The heights by great men reached and kept

Were not attained by sudden flight,

But they, while their companions slept,

Were toiling upward in the night."

There is absolutely no substitute for that persevering energy which we call push. Scientists tell us that the various forms of energy manifest in the physical universe-light, heat, gravitation, magnetism, electricity-are all convertible into one another. But if a man has not mental energy, push, no other qualification he may have is convertible into it or can be a substitute for it. Nothing can take its place. Learning cannot. Talent cannot. Genius cannot. Genius is a dazzling thing, but it is not exempt from the law of labor. It must plod if it would win the prize. Genius is not a something that can dispense with toil, but rather a something that inspires the soul to persevere in needed toil. The world's greatest men have ever been its most energetic workers.

Genius, unless it have inherited wealth, must push and plod or it will die in the poorhouse.

History is full of splendid examples of what may be accomplished by energy and indefatigable push. Push led Columbus out from his Spanish hills across the western waves. In his journal, day after day he wrote these simple but sublime words, "That day we sailed Westward, which was our course." Hope might rise and fall, terror and dismay seize upon the crew at the mysterious variations of the compass, but Columbus, unappalled, pushed on due west, and nightly wrote in his journal the above words. A sublime example of push! It was push on the part of Knox that led to the reformation in Scotland; push on the part of the Wesleys that regenerated religious life in England. It was push on the part of men like Garibaldi, Cavour, and Mazzini that in our day has unified Italy. Push is the word that explains the marvelous career of Napolean.