spring, to the uplifted hammer of the pile-driver; these bodies by virtue of their position are in possession of potential energy, of energy which may or may not be used to accomplish wise ends. Learning is at best but potential energy. If wisely used, if intelligently directed to right ends, learning may become "kinetic energy," power actually put forth in useful work.

Learning alone will not make your life productive of good. There must be right feeling and strong willing before results follow. Knowledge ought to lead to right feeling. But knowledge does not always result in clear vision, right feeling, and right action. When it does we call it wisdom.

Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much;
Wisdom is humble that he knows no more."

Perhaps there is less of the conceit of learning among American scholars than in Europe. But we sometimes see traces of that conceit, which is always the mark of the petty soul. There is the conceited pedant. There is the dilettante in learning, finical in his moods and his intellectual habits, -a "man who thinks himself supreme or precious, and spends his life in turning pretty phrases, when not engaged in admiration of his own exclusive intellectual possessions."

The wise man, with his learning, has the intelligence that teaches him how to use his knowledge. He has true views of life; right ends, and the skill to attain them. He is unselfish in his aims.

"Here the heart

May give a useful lesson to the head,

And learning wiser grow without his books."

No man can be called truly cultured, truly wise, until his relations to his fellow men and his power to serve them fill a larger place in his thought and effort than does his wish to advance his own interests, to press for his own selfish advantage.

To be wise, then, you must have a right aim in view, the true end of life clearly before you. It is no accident that in the Bible wisdom always includes morality and the willing service of God. All the world's great poets, too, speak to us always of

morality, and the unselfish service of our fellow men, as characteristic of the highest wisdom. There can be no true view of life where the highest ends of life are ignored. Always, however much of learning he may have acquired, the man who "says in his heart, there is no God," shows himself destitute of true wisdom,-"the fool" of Proverbs, and, in the light of philosophy and poetry, always "the fool."

If you are wise, you will ask yourself seriously, "For what, for whom, do I intend to live?" Two answers are possible: "I mean to live for myself"; "I mean to live for God, and so for my fellow men." Every man's life, whether he is conscious of it or not, vibrates full and strong to the keynote of one or the other of these two answers.

He who lives for God will find himself irresistibly impelled to the best and widest service of his fellow men. He who lives for self, however he may strive to strengthen his position by maxims of worldly prudence, fails of all the highest ends of living.

Reckon from self as a center, and your fellow men are your hated rivals in the struggle for existence and advancement. Ambition's law of life becomes the blood-stained "survival of the fittest"; and the highest glories life can yield you, in their hollow and transitory splendor will be yours but for a tremulous moment, until the younger, the more vigorous, the more fortunate competitor shall thrust you aside, and for his brief moment wear the bauble for which you strove until your selfish life went out in nothingness.

Reckon from God as the center, and your fellow men become your brothers, infinitely worthy of your loving interest, since one Father has made all our spirits after his own image, and one Saviour has died to redeem from sin and restore to God-likeness all who will turn to him, even the most debased. Thus reckoning from God as the center, the law of self-abnegation, of loving service, becomes the law of your life.

"But I have a duty to myself; I am under obligation to make the most of my own life," you say. Unquestionably! And you will do the best for yourself, intellectually and morally,

when you subjugate yourself to the service of God in the service of your fellow men. Thus living, the feverish strain will be taken out of life; its hot, panting rivalries you need not longer know. The success of all good and true men will be your success. The spirit of Him who came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, will possess your soul; and failure for you will be impossible.

The very effort for others' welfare, and for the maintenance of righteousness, which may exhaust your vital powers, will still assure your deathless victory-your true success!

Herein is wisdom, that you learn much, and put your learning and your life to the highest uses.

The Power and Possibilities of Young Men.

JOSEPH COOK, LL.D., Boston.

LL thoughtful young men have many day dreams of the important and noble things they will do, and the men of power they will become in after years. These imagin

ings are more or less colored, as all our dreams are, by their local associations and surroundings. Those of us who have come to maturer years, on looking back over the track of experience, see that many of these fond fancies of youth might have had fulfillment, if the dreamers had but had proper instruction as to the use of the powers given them by nature. You mean to make a success of life — what is needful to attain it? May one who has had much observation of his fellowmen be permitted to outline the things that in his judgment go to make up a successful life, and to indicate briefly how they may be secured? Five things, at least, are necessarily included in all true success.

(1) Self-support; to obtain which a good degree of health of mind, certainly, and also more or less of bodily vigor and industry are required.

(2) A good education, i. e., a wise training of head, hand, and heart; all of them, and not, as is so often attempted, the culture of but one or two. All are necessary to make the perfect man, and all should be educated aright.

(3) A good occupation, whether mechanical, agricultural, or professional, and one in which you should be proficient to a degree that removes from it all of irksomeness. So far as possible the occupation should be one suited to your individual endowments, and to your home and school training. It should be one in which you can do good and get good.

(4) A home in which to anchor the heart and garner the fruits of toil. It may include simply a wise, cheerful, single life, or the wife and children given you by Heaven.

(5) And chief, a saved soul and a pure body. This means certainly as much as a deliverance from the love of sin, the guilt of sin, and the filth of sin. Having these things, life may be said to be successful. Lacking any of them, it is to a greater or less degree a failure.

These United States are pre-eminently the land of young men, and for young men. They conduct the business, and control the affairs of this country, as do the young men of no other nation on the globe. Our institutions develop the youth of our land very quickly, and bring them to the front early, and your opportunities must soon be met. The hour to secure the very best success of which you are capable will shortly arrive. Shall your powers be developed to meet it? Will you make the best possible use of them? This is for you to determine. Shall yours be among the noblest and best of lives? You can make it so. Do you inquire how? By developing aright the mind as well as the body.

There is a best way to live, and it is certainly wise to live that best way. How can it be done? In order to live the bodily life well, one must have needful food, and use it properly. One may starve his body in the midst of plenty if he does not take and eat of Heaven's bounty. The mind, the heart, or affectional nature can no more grow without appropriate food than the body can. One of the chief uses of food for the body is to promote the growth of bone, nerve, and muscle for work; food is not to be taken solely for the amusement of the appetite. Food when not followed by work, i. e., exercise, will in time impair the body it was meant to nourish and develop.

Bodily athletes are made by food and work. The mind needs mental food; but it must be digested and assimilated by work, and, when so used, what prodigies men may become! Look out over the ages and see the long line of heroes, grown, all of them, from small beginnings. Are your powers feeble? So were theirs,