Strive at Possibilities.

V

REV. JAMES W. COLE, B.D.

ERY much of time, effort, and culture is needed to perfect

the choicest things of nature. Many unpromising seeds and stocks have, by culture, been developed into the most beautiful of flowers, and the most delicious of fruits and foods. Culture brought out their latent, unsuspected powers and virtues and established their value. Many things now called mere useless weeds would, if cultivated, prove most valuable flowers or foods. The generally used and very valuable potato of commerce bears but a slight resemblance to the insignificant tuber, the product of which Sir Walter Raleigh had such difficulty in getting his countrymen to try three hundred years ago. In Cato's time oats were considered only a weed, and rye was not grown, and corn and rice were unknown to the civilized world, and silk was thought to be a thing scraped from the mulberry tree.

It has taken centuries to bring the world up to its present state. We are the fruitage of many generations, and yet the perfect man has not come. But in due time he will appear. You and I may hasten his coming by making the most of ourselves. Richter said, "I have made as much out of myself as could be made of the stuff, and no man could require more." Yet the masses of men and women seem content with mediocrity. But few realize their capabilities, and fewer yet seem to care.

The schoolmaster was wont to say of one of England's noted statesmen in the lad's boyhood, "he is a dunce," and, years after, when the boy grown to manhood, attempted to speak in

Parliament and made a most ridiculous failure of it, the sneers, laughter, and taunts of his fellow members seemed to confirm the teacher's estimate of him. But though humiliated and shamed beyond endurance, he exclaimed as he sat down discomfited, "It is in me, and it shall come out!" And it did. For Richard Brinsley Sheridan became the most brilliant, eloquent, and amazing statesman of his day. Yet if his first efforts had been but moderately successful, he might have been content with mere mediocrity. It was his defeats that nerved him to strive for eminence and win it. But it took hard, persistent work in his case to secure it, just as it did in that of so many others.

Said James Parton, "Men destined to a great career, I have observed, generally serve a long and vigorous apprenticeship to it of some kind. They try their forming powers in little things before grappling with the great. I cannot call to mind a single instance of a man who achieved success of the first magnitude, who did not at first toil long in obscurity." This witness is true; the world's great names were not made in a day. It took John Milton forty years of toil to produce "Paradise Lost," and William Cullen Bryant rewrote his "Thanatopsis" more than a hundred times, and then he was not satisfied with it, feeling that he could yet do better. David Hume labored thirteen hours a day for many years before his great "History" was prepared, while Noah Webster toiled for thirty consecutive years to produce his dictionary. Bishop Butler rewrote his immortal "Analogy" twenty times, and Gibbon his "Memoirs" nine times, while Burke rewrote parts of his great speech against Hastings thirteen times.

True, these men were men of great abilities. But the beginnings of talent or of genius are, like the other things of nature, very small, and, if uncultivated, they remain dwarfed or disappear; and if the world's great men had not so persistently worked, they would never have been heard of. President Wayland, of Brown University, was accustomed to say to his students, Young gentlemen, remember that nothing can withstand

day's works." And Daniel Webster declared that it was this, not genius, that gave him his fame, when he said, "I know of no superior quality that I possess unless it be the power of application. To work, and not to genius, I owe my success." Charles Dickens is called a man of genius, yet this is his testimony concerning himself: "I have tried with all my heart to do, well; and whatever I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself to completely. In great aims and in small I have always been thoroughly in earnest. I have never believed it possible that any natural or improved ability can claim immunity from the companionship of the steady, hard-working qualities, and hope to gain its end."

Another of the world's great men, Sir Walter Scott, who was also a tireless worker, in a letter to his son, admonishes him on this fashion: "I cannot too much impress on your mind that labor is the condition which God has imposed on us, in every station of life. There is nothing worth having that can be had without it. . . As for knowledge, it can no more be planted in the human mind without labor, than a field of wheat can be produced without the previous use of the plow." Believe me, the poorest, most insignificant boy or girl never dreams of the great reserve of power, the immense capabilities of the human spirit. If they would but seek to develop it within themselves, what deeds of high renown they might accomplish.

Said the eminent Dr. John Kitto: "I think that all the fine stories about natural ability, etc., etc., are mere rigmarole, and that every man may, according to his opportunities and industry, render himself almost anything he wishes to become." His witness is entitled to great weight for he had a cruel, drunken father, who reduced his family to great suffering and beggary, and John, losing his hearing by an accident, was sent to the poorhouse to be taken care of. But the sorrowful lad thirsted for knowledge, and his progress in his boyish studies astonished the authorities. At length a benevolent man took him from the poorhouse and sent him to school. Though deaf for life, such was his untiring industry that he became one of the most

renowned Biblical scholars and writers of his age, and his works are read to-day with great profit and delight in Christian homes throughout the whole world.

The average man or woman content with commonplace attainments sometimes wonders at the progress of men like these, but this progress serves only to give us an inkling of the yet undeveloped and unknown powers of men. These did not reach the highest point of expansion. They had latent capabilities undreamed of. The Scriptures declare, "It doth not yet appear what we shall be." Very many buddings of our nature do not even appear in this "the first of the things" for mankind. There yet awaits transformation "from glory unto glory" in the on-coming ages.

Two young students of Williams College sat by a hayrick discussing their future, when one said to his companion, "You and I are little men, but before we die our influence must be felt on the other side of the globe." And it was, for then and there was born the great American Foreign Missionary Association's work for the salvation of the heathen world. Those students were poor and humble young men, but the fire of divine love for the perishing moved them to action and they did what they could.

You may be very little, but you can make your influence felt not only in this little world, but also in other grander and nobler worlds in the "ages yet to come," by making the very best and most of yourself in this life. This is God's design for us. Listen to his word, "To the intent (Gr. "for this express purpose") that now unto the principalities and the powers in the heavenly places, might be made known through the church the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord," "that in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus." You may have been born and are now living under what you consider great disadvantages of poverty or of inherited weaknesses. But these should be goads to spur to new diligence rather than excuses for idleness.

"To start in life with comparatively small means seems so necessary as a stimulus to work," said Samuel Smiles, "that it may almost be set down as the secret of success."

Look around you on the world's most successful men and see if it is not true, and then strive at the great possibilities before you "It is not that which is done for a young man that is most valuable to him and others, but that which he is led to do for himself." Aim at the eternities to come and develop the very best of yourself for the nobler work and being that there await us.