when you subjugate yourself to the service of God in the service. of your fellow men. Thus living, the feverish strain will be taken out of life; its hot, panting rivalries you need not longer know. The success of all good and true men will be your success. The spirit of Him who came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, will possess your soul; and failure for you will be impossible.

The very effort for others' welfare, and for the maintenance of righteousness, which may exhaust your vital powers, will still assure your deathless victory - your true success!

Herein is wisdom, that you learn much, and put your learning and your life to the highest uses.

The Power and Possibilities of Young Men.

JOSEPH COOK, LL.D., Boston.

LL thoughtful young men have many day dreams of the important and noble things they will do, and the men of power they will become in after years. These imagin

ings are more or less colored, as all our dreams are, by their local associations and surroundings. Those of us who have come to maturer years, on looking back over the track of experience, see that many of these fond fancies of youth might have had fulfillment, if the dreamers had but had proper instruction as to the use of the powers given them by nature. You mean to make a success of life—what is needful to attain it? May one who has had much observation of his fellowmen be permitted to outline the things that in his judgment go to make up a successful life, and to indicate briefly how they may be secured? Five things, at least, are necessarily included in all true success.

(1) Self-support; to obtain which a good degree of health of mind, certainly, and also more or less of bodily vigor and industry are required.

(2) A good education, i. e., a wise training of head, hand, and heart; all of them, and not, as is so often attempted, the culture of but one or two. All are .necessary to make the perfect man, and all should be educated aright.

(3) A good occupation, whether mechanical, agricultural, or professional, and one in which you should be proficient to a degree that removes from it all of irksomeness. So far as possible the occupation should be one suited to your individual endowments, and to your home and school training. It should be one in which you can do good and get good.

(4) A home in which to anchor the heart and garner the fruits of toil. It may include simply a wise, cheerful, single life, or the wife and children given you by Heaven.

(5) And chief, a saved soul and a pure body. This means certainly as much as a deliverance from the love of sin, the guilt of sin, and the filth of sin. Having these things, life may be said to be successful. Lacking any of them, it is to a greater or less degree a failure.

These United States are pre-eminently the land of young men, and for young men. They conduct the business, and control the affairs of this country, as do the young men of no other nation on the globe. Our institutions develop the youth of our land very quickly, and bring them to the front early, and your opportunities must soon be met. The hour to secure the very best success of which you are capable will shortly arrive. Shall your powers be developed to meet it? Will you make the best possible use of them? This is for you to determine. Shall yours be among the noblest and best of lives? You can make Do you inquire how? By developing aright the mind as well as the body.

it so.

There is a best way to live, and it is certainly wise to live that best way. How can it be done? In order to live the bodily life well, one must have needful food, and use it properly. One may starve his body in the midst of plenty if he does not take and eat of Heaven's bounty. The mind, the heart, or affectional nature can no more grow without appropriate food than the body can. One of the chief uses of food for the body is to promote the growth of bone, nerve, and muscle for work; food is not to be taken solely for the amusement of the appetite. Food when not followed by work, i. e., exercise, will in time impair the body it was meant to nourish and develop.

Bodily athletes are made by food and work. The mind needs. mental food; but it must be digested and assimilated by work, and, when so used, what prodigies men may become! Look out over the ages and see the long line of heroes, grown, all of them, from small beginnings. Are your powers feeble? So were theirs,

THE POWER AND POSSIBILITIES OF YOUNG MEN.

but they developed them. Are your possibilities unknown? So were theirs, but they grew and expanded them. And you may. As one should get the best and most nourishing food for the body,so of the mind.

Avoid cheap things. Shun slops. Poverty may compel one to live on cheap bodily food, albeit it hinders growth and impairs strength, but surely in this country, and in these days, one need not starve the mind. But get the best. Then use it, work by it, live by it. An ounce of solid truth, well used, is of more worth to you than would be a planet's weight of any knowledge which you do not put into deed, or incorporate into mental fiber.

Avoid mercilessly all second rate, or worse, matter. You will get a new body by and by, but the mind, the soul, the selfhood, lives forever. Therefore, put mainly the best and choicest into it. Do you ask which is best? The world has very many good, but there is only one best. Do you inquire which it is? Ask the Covenanters, Puritans, Pilgrims, blessed martyrs, apostles, prophets of all time, what gave them strength for such heroic deeds and hallowed deaths, and there will be but one

answer.

Do you know of a book in all the world that you shall wish to pillow your soul on when the body is dying? Very well; that is the one for you to cultivate and feed your mind on now. There is but one such, I repeat, in all the wide world. It is the book that has made, and yet makes, more noble men and women than any or all other books or things combined, the book from whence comes all other excellence. It is the book that can alone make your life and mine a complete success. That book is the Bible. While not neglecting the many other good and valuable books of the world, you should, above all others, read this. Study it. Transmute it into deed. Become obedient to its truths. Follow its directions, and you shall become at length the perfect man. It gives and develops power as no other does, and it alone prepares man for the tremendous possibilities of this life, and those of the life that is to come. As a song

of life I venture to dedicate this hymn to you young men and to entitle it

THE BATTLE CRY OF SUCCESS.

Now the Lord hath spoken to me,

May no evil day undo me;

Lies before me clear and fair,
Pathway up a mountain stair,
Sunlight in the upper air.

Many years Thy Whisper moved me,
Many years Thy Right Hand proved me;
Thou afar didst see to-day;

All the noontide hidden lay
In the morning dim and gray.

Many lands and many oceans,
Many peoples in commotions,

Thou hast shown me as a sign
That Thy Whisper is divine;
May Thy purposes be mine!

Evermore by Thee enshrouded,
In the azure sky or clouded,

Let me follow Thy behest.
Without hasting, without rest,
As a star moves toward the west.

Thou my Helmet, Falchion, Leader,
Lord and Saviour, Interceder,

Both my left hand and my right,
Fill with javelins of light
And with ten archangels' might!