g to
decide for what purpose the Lord made them. Before they determine what
they are good for, the world is certain to decide that they are good
for nothing. Life is too precious to be spent in hesitation. He who
vacillates will do nothing. Concentration is power. The rays of the sun
that would hardly warm an infant's hand will, when concentrated by a
lens, blister the palms of the hardiest sons of toil.

If we would make life a success, we must live for a purpose. He who
lives simply for the sake of living, has no just conception of life.
Those who live for the gratification of the flesh should remember that
the goat lives for the same purpose. How humiliating the thought, that
so many of the cultured, as well as the ignorant; the rich as well as
the poor; the "cream of society" as well as its dregs, are thus living
on the low plane of animal life! The grand distinction between man and
the brute creation is in his _spirit_ nature. Without spiritual
culture, every thought, every aspiration, every gratification, is of
the earth earthy. How sad, then, to see the gaudy "butterflies of
society" spending their lives without a thought above that which alone
can lift them forever above the plane of animal life! It is sad thus to
think, but sadder still 'tis true. The enjoyment of "society,"
therefore, must not be your _ne plus ultra_, else life will be a
failure.

In order to the highest success, you should live fast, but not in the
world's bad sense of that word. I simply mean that your life should be
intense. Mere existence is not life. Life is action. Life is not
measured by time, but by experience. It is our duty, therefore, to live
all we can in the time allotted us. The patriarchs lived longer than
we, but we may live more than they. This is a grand age in which we
live. We may now live more in fifty years than Methuselah did before
the flood. The time is short. Hence if we would live much we must live
fast.

But here I anticipate an objection. You say, "We shall shorten our days
by fast living." Not by _this kind_ of fast living. The world will
never be troubled for burying ground for those who kill themselves
simply by hard work. It is not work, but worry, that wears men out. We
have too much friction in our lives. This must be stopped. An hour's
passion will tell more on the constitution than a week's work. The
largest amount of action, with the smallest amount of friction, is the
problem before you; and he is the