rkers. "Tickle the earth with a hoe, and it will laugh at you with a
harvest." But it closes its fists against those who extend to it an
idle hand. Many people contend that the world owes them a living, and
grumble that it does not pay the debt. What have they done for the
world to bring it into their debt? The world owes every man a living
when he earns it by honest toil, and not before. Those who sow with a
stingy hand may expect to reap a scanty harvest. You should, therefore,
in whatever vocation you may elect, strive to succeed on this
principle; otherwise you will not deserve success.

You should not be discouraged because surroundings are not favorable,
and hope seems long deferred. Be not impatient of results. Do your
whole duty, and leave the consequences with the Lord. Never strive to
be great. Few men become great this way, and they never deserve it.
True greatness comes as a result of devotion to principle and duty. The
highest and noblest success comes through a spirit of
self-forgetfulness.

Learn to be indifferent to surroundings. You need not catch the "spirit
of the age" unless the "spirit of the age" is worth catching. When you
contemplate Marquis de Condorcet, in the dark days of the French
Revolution, hiding in a lonely room in the city of Paris, while its
streets ran red with noble and innocent blood, quietly writing a book
whose subject was, "_Man's Certain Progress to Liberty, Virtue, and
Happiness_," you will understand what I mean.

You must learn to _think_; to think regardless of surroundings; to
think only of the thing of which you wish to think; and on this to
concentrate the whole power of your mind. This requires careful
training; but this only is _education_. With this you have full command
of all your resources; without this they avail but little. The great
motive power of the world is thought. Information without thought is
simply a peddler burdened with stale wares on a dead market. It is not
what one knows, but what he can produce, that makes the world feel his
power. Hence one must be a producer as well as a receiver. The world's
thought must be regenerated in his own mind. He should turn the world's
dead facts into living thoughts--"Thoughts that breathe, and words that
burn."

Avoid fickleness of purpose. Decide to do something in harmony with
your endowments and the will of God, _and do it_. Many people of fine
attainments and intellectual powers are spending their lives tryin