you must know the changing needs of humanity if
you would succeed in life? Apply yourselves, all you Christian people,
as manufacturers or merchants or workmen to supply that human need. It
is a great principle as broad as humanity and as deep as the Scripture
itself.

The best illustration I ever heard was of John Jacob Astor. You know
that he made the money of the Astor family when he lived in New York. He
came across the sea in debt for his fare. But that poor boy with nothing
in his pocket made the fortune of the Astor family on one principle.
Some young man here to-night will say, "Well they could make those
fortunes over in New York but they could not do it in Philadelphia!" My
friends, did you ever read that wonderful book of Riis (his memory
is sweet to us because of his recent death), wherein is given his
statistical account of the records taken in 1889 of 107 millionaires
of New York. If you read the account you will see that out of the 107
millionaires only seven made their money in New York. Out of the 107
millionaires worth ten million dollars in real estate then, 67 of them
made their money in towns of less than 3,500 inhabitants. The richest
man in this country to-day, if you read the real-estate values, has
never moved away from a town of 3,500 inhabitants. It makes not so much
difference where you are as who you are. But if you cannot get rich in
Philadelphia you certainly cannot do it in New York.

Now John Jacob Astor illustrated what can be done anywhere. He had a
mortgage once on a millinery-store, and they could not sell bonnets
enough to pay the interest on his money. So he foreclosed that mortgage,
took possession of the store, and went into partnership with the very
same people, in the same store, with the same capital. He did not give
them a dollar of capital. They had to sell goods to get any money. Then
he left them alone in the store just as they had been before, and he
went out and sat down on a bench in the park in the shade. What was
John Jacob Astor doing out there, and in partnership with people who had
failed on his own hands? He had the most important and, to my mind, the
most pleasant part of that partnership on his hands. For as John Jacob
Astor sat on that bench he was watching the ladies as they went by; and
where is the man who would not get rich at that business? As he sat on
the bench if a lady passed him with her shoulders back and head up, and
looked straight to the front, a