“If I know my own heart, I ask not wealth or honor; but to do good and to communicate, (Heb. 13: 16) is the object of my life,”—a successful Christian merchant thus wrote:
“The object of your life as you explain it, is the noblest on the face of the earth; and although it will not bring you worldly wealth and ease, it is sure of much higher reward both here and hereafter. Press forward. Never lose sight of it. Be very thankful that God has thus called you to his service, and show Him your gratitude by consecrating yourself wholly to Him. I think I have lived long enough to know that your choice, or the service to which you are called, is not only the noblest, but in fact, the only service worth a man’s living for at all. How many failures do we see in the lives of the ambitious and the great, notwithstanding advantages of the highest distinction. But bankruptcy with a genuine child of God is impossible. His life cannot be a failure.
That there are and have been numberless persons, the object of whose lives was to advance Christ’s Kingdom and add to the happiness of their fellow-men, we have abundant testimony. The names of Howard, of Wilberforce, of McCheyne, of Henry Martyn, of Hedley Vicars, of Brainerd Taylor, of Harlan Page, of noble-hearted Daniel Baker, the pioneer of the cross in the wilds of Texas, of many others, of whom the world is not worthy, stand out in the boldest prominence. Yea, such men are to be seen around us every day. In the pulpit, at the bar, in the counting-room of the merchant, in the shop of the mechanic, at the bedside of the sick and dying, fearing neither the death-breathing pestilence, nor the destruction that wasteth at noonday.
Shall it not, then, be ours to follow in their footsteps? Is there any pleasure so great as the pleasure of doing good?
Who shall be the greatest? Not in worldly honors, but in the measureless wealth of disinterested kindness, and the unfading honors that cluster around the Cross of Christ.
Longfellow beautifully sketches the upward and onward career of a youth who, despite the warnings of the aged, the entreaties of the young, wound his weary way up the steep sides of one of the Alps mountains only to make his grave beneath the cold snow of the topmost peak.
The shades of night were falling fast,
As through an Alpine village passed
A youth, who bore, ’mid snow and ice,
A banner with the strange device,