his place as manager of the business, with a fine prospect before him.

Young man, there is abundant room for you in the higher and more responsible positions of life. You are needed. Will you rise to the emergencies and make yourself worthy of confidence and become qualified for responsibility? If so, be willing to do anything and everything that will advance the interest of your employer, and you will soon become too valuable to remain in the lower positions and will be asked to step up higher.

Make yourself worthy and the honor will come.

Personal Independence.

M

REV. JAMES W. COLE, B.D.

EN are not, as a rule, self-reliant and independent. They need props and aids both to stand and move. What are

called the great men and women of any age or nation are the prize beings of the human kind, showing not the average of the race, but rather what can be done under certain conditions. The conditions, as well as the product, may be very exceptional, and so furnish no present wise criterion by which to judge. And he who under ordinary circumstances should attempt to imitate them would inevitably meet with disappointment, and perhaps loss. The times develop great men, and great men modify the times. his appointed place and part in the economy of nature, and however insignificant we may be, or however low the place assigned to us, we may be assured that we are not made in vain.

Each of us has

Nature is not constructed or run at haphazard. The wisest of us do not yet know the plan on which nature is built; and the men of any generation can see but a very small part of the design unfolded in their day; so that it is useless for anyone to object to its wisdom, or to find fault with his particular place or time, or the kind of work in this world assigned to him. It is yet far too soon to find fault with anything of nature's handiwork or belongings. The all important question is, What ought I to do in life, and what is the best way to do it? Each of us must fill his own place and do his own work. If we refuse, or do the work illy, nature casts us aside as rubbish, as the "thorns" and "chaff" whose end is to be burned. Harsh,

perhaps, but who can say it is not just? Now all thorns are perverted growths in nature, abnormal products of the natural world, and as culture increases they are eliminated, sloughed off, from the stock. They may have served a purpose as thorns in the then condition of things. But with the development of the plan of nature, they are then found to be no longer needful, and who can dispute the wisdom that discards them?

It is conceded that humanity is slowly progressing upward, but, however many ages there have already been, they are as nothing to those that await the race. We are as yet in the "first of the things" the Bible says, and nature confirms it, so that it is altogether too early to pronounce concerning "what we shall be" or what anything shall be in the ages ahead of us. But we may rest assured of one thing, that nature's highest and best product is not thorns; that, while the average of the race of men may yet be very low, the exceptionally great and good of the ages show the possibilities of the race even under present conditions. If the conditions improve, what may not the race become, more especially if the best predominates at last? There is infinite variety in nature. All lives do not run in the same channel. Even in the same family what diversity of forms, of features, of mental and moral characteristics are to be found.

Now nature is intensely individualized, and the momentous question before us is this: Is my type of individual to continue or to be sloughed off in the upward reach of the race? History shows that some types have already disappeared from this little planet, and others are now vanishing. Nature, with the advancing culture of the race, throws them aside as unworthy of perpetuation; or, having served their inferior time and place, they are not found adapted to superior conditions, and so disappear. In every age of the world there are seen to appear a few great men; men who tower above their fellows; men who are leaders; men who set the pace for a generation. Now, great men are either great blessings or great curses to their fellow mortals. Of whatever their greatness may consist,

whether they are great in intellect, or great in riches, or great in position, or great in power, none others have such opportunities for good or ill; none others are so sovereign in blessing or in cursing to the world as they. Greatness of any kind is always a gigantic public trust, and woe unto him who defaults or misuses it. When nature endows a man with exceptional gifts of intellect, his fellows instinctively recognize it as their right, and his duty, that he use these gifts to uplift and advance them in goodness and truth. So doing, they perpetuate his name and fame as a benefactor. If he leads them astray or subverts their best interests, he is ultimately cast out, as a noisome thing, to rot.

Equally so when men with exceptional gifts to amass riches acquire them, it is no less their duty to use them to ennoble. and bless their fellow men. Great wealth is also a great public trust to be used for the public good, and not merely for the owner's profit or pleasure. Men instinctively recognize this when a rich man dies clinging to the last to his pile of gold, or when he dispenses it for purely selfish or private ends. If our many millionaires of the present time fail to recognize their stewardship towards their fellows less fortunately endowed, history will ere long inevitably record another lesson which ought to have been taught the world thoroughly enough by the French Revolution. For the ability to get riches is as truly an endowment as is the ability to gain knowledge. The scholar is a debtor to his fellow men, and no less so is the man of wealth. The scholar and the man of wealth each may claim his knowledge or riches solely as of his own personal right or belongings. Nevertheless, all men recognize the fact that their duty is higher than their personal rights. The path of duty, and not alone the path of enjoyment, is the path of safety, and the true road to nobility. Property has duties to be performed, as well as rights to be protected, both in the sight of men and of God. Now the men who reach positions of eminence of any kind among their fellows must needs be self-guiding and directors. of others, and cannot be of those who are nursed, sustained,

and led by their fellow men. Their resources must be in themselves alone.

He who goes in advance, and thus leads, must assume and bear great responsibilities. He who leads must of necessity depend on himself; he must needs go alone, not with the crowd, but in advance of it. He must guide himself and others. And in order to do so he must be personally independent. By this is not meant oddity or impudence, or disregard of the opinion or wishes of others, but the just and wise use of his own faculties; the reliance on his own resources; the will and ability to stand alone, if need be; the purpose to win one's way, however long it may be, or whatever may be the obstacles in one's path. No one ever gets above the average of any community in which he lives, or above the average success of any particular business pursuit in which he may engage, who is not thus self-reliant. "I lead, let others follow," must be their motto, and by this nature specializes such, individualizes them for their leadership.

When that "man of destiny," Napoleon Bonaparte, had had himself proclaimed as Emperor of France, and the English government, ignoring the fact, continued to address him simply as general, he remarked to a friend, "They may call me what they please, they cannot prevent me from being myself." The being himself was what puzzled the men of his time. They could understand ordinary men, but this extraordinary individual, who would copy nobody, who would not follow custom or precedent, who would be himself alone, and who for fifteen years kept all Europe in an uproar and frenzy of fear, was a riddle that is not yet wholly solved. Whether his wild, inordinate ambition and wonderful personality combined to make of him a great military hero, or simply and only a monster of rapine and slaughter, will be permanently known when righteousness becomes the standard of judgment for the great men of the earth as well as for the small. In that day, I opine, the lowliest peasant who does "justly, loves mercy, and walks humbly with his God" will have greater reverence among men