There are two things to be borne in mind in estimating what success is:
I. Lives which according to some are successful must in the highest sense be pronounced failures.—The idea of many is that success consists in the gaining of a livelihood, or competency, or wealth; but a man may gain these things who yet cannot be said to have succeeded. If he gets wealth at the expense of health, or if he gets it by means of trickery and dishonest practices, he can hardly be said to have succeeded. He does not get real happiness with it. If a man gains the whole world and loses his own soul, he cannot be said to have succeeded. True success in life is when a fair share of the world's good does not cost either physical or intellectual or moral well-being.
II. Lives which according to some are failures must in the highest sense be pronounced successful.—The life of our blessed Lord, from one point of view, was a failure. It was passed in poverty, it closed in darkness. We see Him crowned with thorns, buffeted, spit upon; yet never was Christ so successful as when He hung upon the cross. He had finished the work given Him to do. He "saw of the travail of His soul and was satisfied."
Milton completed his Paradise Lost and a bookseller only gave him fifteen pounds for it, yet he cannot be said to have failed.
Speak, History, who are life's victors? unroll thy long
annals and say,
Are they those whom the world calls victors, who won
the success of the day,
The martyrs or Nero? The Spartans who fell at
Thermopylae's tryst
Or the Persians or Xerxes? His judges or Socrates?
Pilate or Christ?
What may seem defeat to some may be in the truest sense success.
There are certain things which directly tend to success in life:
The first is Industry.—There can be no success without working hard for it. There is no getting on without labor. We live in times of great competition, and if a man does not work, and work hard, he is soon jostled aside and falls into the rear. It is true now as in the days of Solomon that "the hand of the diligent maketh rich."
(a) There are some who think they can dispense with hard work because they possess great natural talents and ability—that cleverness or genius can be a substitute for diligence. Here the old fable of the hare and the tortoise applies. They both started to run a race. The hare, trusting to her natural gift of fleetness, turned aside and took a sleep; the tortoise plodded on and won the prize. Constant and well-sustained labor carries one through, where cleverness apart from this fails. History tells us that the greatest genius is most diligent in the cultivation of its powers. The cleverest men have been of great industry and unflinching perseverance. No truly eminent man was ever other than an industrious man.
(b) There are some who think that success is in the main a matter of what they call "luck," the product of circumstances over which they have little or no control. If circumstances are favorable they need not work; if they are unfavorable they need not work. So far from man being the creature of circumstances he should rather be termed the architect of circumstances. From the same materials one man builds palaces and another hovels. Bricks and mortar are mortar and bricks till the architect makes something out of them. In the same way, out of the same circumstances one man rears a stately edifice, while another, idle and incompetent, lives for ever amid ruins. Circumstances rarely conquer a strong man; he conquers them. He