Boys, you are all old enough to know that somewhere you will live forever. The characters you form here will go with you into the world and the life to come. If they are right here, and now, they will be right forever and grow better and better. If they are wrong here, and continue so till God calls you away, early or late, they will be wrong always and wax worse and worse. Boys do not all live to become old men—or even young men. There is just one way of starting right and being in the right way until God calls you to a better world. Listen to the sweet words that you have often heard: “I love them that love me, and those that seek me early shall find me.” Determine to be boy Christians. Believe that Jesus Christ, the only Saviour, loves you. He is able and willing to save you from the sins of your youth. If you hear and obey his loving call he will guide and guard you safely until you are forever with him and like him. Believe that you need him every hour and moment. Trust him to do what he promises. Keep company with those who delight in his service. Fear God and keep his commandments. “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” Cling to your Sunday-school and church. Confess Jesus Christ before men, and he will confess you before his Father and the angels. If irreligious boys make fun of you, because they think you have given up all the pleasures of boy-life, let them know that the peace which God gives you is far better than all their forbidden pleasures, and do what you can to win them from their evil ways to a true and blessed life.
In any case, boys, be sure that the favor of God, which is life, and his lovingkindness, which is better than life, will fit you for the truest and best success in business. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will direct your steps: God will be your patron and friend.
CHAPTER IV.
YOUNG MEN AND SUCCESS.
The line between boys and young men is invisible. Those who pass it cannot tell where it lies. But the time comes when they no longer admit to themselves or others that they are boys. They bear about the pleasant consciousness that they are nearer the heart of a business life than they were a while before. They may be apprentices, collectors, entry clerks, shipping clerks, bookkeepers, salesmen behind the counter, or on the road, but they are no longer boys and they are not yet partners. A numerous class, they will become largely the business men of the next generation. Even now they represent immense personal, domestic and public interests. Who can think of them without emotion! It does not require a broad sweep of observation and recollection to bring into view from the two extremes young men who have utterly failed and others who have won honorable success; those who have sealed their own doom and dragged others down with them to an abyss of shame and misery, and those who have become princes in the earth.
It is worth asking at the outset what meaning we ought to attach to the words “success” and “failure” in business.
We do not account him successful who gains large wealth, leaving it to his family and even to public institutions of great usefulness, but who does it at the cost of personal integrity, character and reputation. We do not need examples of men who have grown rich by doubtful methods of business, by perversion of office and trust funds, and who have already sunk or are now sinking into depths of infamy and woe opened by their own hands.
Nor is he successful who gains wealth honestly, and hoards it—against all the claims of humanity and the revealed will of God—until his riches are corrupted, his gold and silver cankered, the rust of them even now, before the last day, eating his flesh as it were fire.
Men utterly fail, though possessed of millions, who make shipwreck of character in the sight of their Maker and their fellow-men.