Year: 1870




The starting point for my remarks this even


ing is not so much the text of fscripture, affixed
k1 demand of custom as an adver
I tisement in'a' 'heSs AHar, see great dea


in the want of every day e which a text o
scripture neither covers mo- saggests, and I
| preacher to the day has need E3Ngood deal o
artful dodging, as he oftentimes speAds grea


deal of valuable time in hunting up his text
that largely coming in as accessory after tn,
| fact which many people still look upon a.
cause and sanction. In our modern method o.
| preaching, texts oftentimes embarrassas1 s1ls1e}
as they help. The text that get in al
| window,a newspaper column, a half-heard SEN


tence, is the real pivot of my Sunday discourse


the text hunt for in the Bible, the make BE-


heUe one. 1 satisfy myself with the one, custom
with the other. believe in preaching from
life to life, from my life to other peoples lives
and in making over the practical hints OF the
market-place into spiritual hints for the life o.


the soul. Preaching, to become power, needs
to be the outcome of knowledge of the arens
OF life, to divorce itself from books and ally it.
self to experience, to take man up at the point
of the actual, not the ideal, to show him what
he is and assure him what he may be. MOI
merely the Bible is to be preached from, not
only is the old record of fact and word to furnish
argument, material, illustration, but from every
resource of nature and science, art and dis
covery, virtue and vice, honor and shame, from
the whole vast treasure-house of human ex-
perience are lessons to be drawn and truths to
be sanctioned and applied. The verbal text
oftentimes may come from the Bible, but the
real one is picked up out of the garbage of life
the apparent inspiration may be from the old
word of revelation, but the real inspiration is
in the want, the struggle, the yearnlng oi
actual life. l believe in bringing in every
conceivable thing to the service ofthe Temple,
in consecrating every conceivable fragment OF
thought or life at the altar, that so they all be-
come sacred, even as in the olden time OF
Temple service the blood, and bone, and oftal
of the thing sacrificed became holy unto the
Lord.


Ny text then, to night, is from the newspa-
pers and it is in the very seductive words many
Young men have read and fingered over, In
which they have hoped to find the long sought
for door which for them, was to open upon lie
-''a fine opening for young man." Our world
is full of people who make their own living by
DESTROYING the chances of life in other people,
people who angle for men with deceitful bait,
as bows angle for gudgeons, the gudgeon human,
being quite as gullable as his finny relative
full of people whose ingenuity is in spreading
lines for others rather than in honest applica-
ton to duty themselves. OF this class none are
more mischievous than those whose taking ad-
vertisements arrest the uneasy as the unem-
ployed, by promises as false and as iatal as
they are positive and seducing. | do not read,
in these, strong, grand words addressed to the
best side of the young man, telling him that If
he will take honesty, intelligence, patience ana
industry with him the advertiser knows where
these can be set at work. and shall find ready
and sure return. As l study these l see no
good promised or to come to the young man ac-
cepting They call upon neither his principle
nor his manhood, neither call out nor stimulate
III l. T1axvo m n a
to the weakness that is in us all rather than
stirring calls to the power. don't believe a
young man rises from perusing, or goes in
search of the thing promised with one added
vibration to his pulse, with one quickened
emotion, as l do believe he is less a man for
accepting what he finds offered. A noble man
hood, young life looking toward grand ends,
would at once spurn all such. The baubles
offered would be no prize. In themselves they
would be suspicion. To noble ambition they
would be no tempting fortune sure, Is or
20 per cent return; light, genteel, easy employ
ment"-these are not the things to take that
stuff men are made of. Fools may crowd about
and accept the offer, to be in the end the more
befooled wise men spurn il, and ask for that
which shall give other reward, to be attained
by other means; for work, opportunity which
shall indeed be an opening into life.


The fact is there is but one fine opening to



portunity, privilege of God equally before
every man. 1t is enough to have life, and the
capacities attaching to life, and the implements
zyifiiI = Il or to life nax want
more but that is all a man really needs, and
the history of life in all ages shows that justice
and only that is the suficiency for the noblest
careers.


Advantageous circumstances come in well
enough, and have their influence, but life grows
grandly and eliminates without them. The
greatest earthly successes of all kinds have
been achieved not only without but against
them. Alone they do nothing for man, against
them he can do everything for himself. The
one single thing a man needs Is lie, the op-
portunity to do, the means God lodges IN every
human breast with which to do. The rest is IN his
own hands. 1t is the best opening he can ask
for-the only one he need crave. The true
man asks none other. Given, life, to make 1t
into the best thing possible-that best thing,
not what any body else N ay plan, or what any
body else may attain, but just what the quail
t les he may have, occasions he may meet de-
elop him into. "Every man must be true to
his own nature and his own genius however
poor that nature and however creeping that
genius may be-" Men make the mistake OF
looking at other men and feeling thirs to be the
stature into which they are to grow. We ought
rather to look at ourselves, and see what the
demand life makes upon the material we hrd
to be in ourselves, and set instantly and
reverentlv at that without demur. "Thou
shalt not covet anything that is thy neighbors"
is the command, and it rebukes that hall
apologetic spirit with which we try to cover our
own delinquencies, making our excuse out OF
another's superior opportunity or endowment
With other people we have nothing to do. Their
ability or responsibility. The opening before
them does not concern us. 1t is not matter
for us to waste a moment upon. We are so
eaten with the vanity Of initiating others that
we forget to respect our own abilities. IL is as
if our own dresses were left hanging in our
wardrobes, and we went half-clad in the off,
east clothing of other people. With us the
question should be simply, squarely and sternly
this What is my place in life, what have
to do, and how shall bring about the result /!
a question before which no true, brave spirit
will falter, no matter what trial and difficulty
the answer shall introduce him to. When
Pistol asks Falstaff for penny and is refused,
His reply is,


"Why, then the worlds mine oyster,


Which l. with sword, will open,"


a braver speech than the man who made it, and
in it the very essence of what every man needs
who comes to the work of life. Providence,
like Falstaff, refuses the boon. The oyster is
shut. What we want we shall not have. Shall
we sit down and moan and wait, refuse what
lies before because we lack what we desire,
because no broad door swings on easy hinge
opening, as in fairy tales, on all desirable
things Will we consent only to go where we
are carried, to climb only where we are boosted,
to work only where the work is all done for us,
to suck only tn oyster somebody else opens ?
1t is not so the men greatin history and great
in life have done. The great attainments of
men, the great achievements of men have been
not only won through sturdy struggle, but
wrung of what man calls an adverse fate. Lives
have opened, into broadest success not only
where no opening was, but every hostile array
beside. An adverse fate is the best educator a
man can have-not pleasant, not desirable, but
as we can all remember thatsom of the best
instruction in our lives came from the most
grabbed persons, was made more impressive
by that very erabbedness, so the adverse things
Of life work in us and for us as nothing else
The mighty men of every age have had nc
other. Take any science, any art, any inven'
tion. I don't know one of them that was q
revelation, an inspiration, that flashed itseli
into existence, and / do know that all have
come through narrow tortuous, bye ways o.
difficulty, costing life itself sometimes. And
believe that always the best success, as the
truest man, will be where the only opening is
the fact and gift of life.


The Young man is not to think anything
about an opening. He is not to seek place
made. but to make place. If you will go with
me. inst out side the city, l will show you where
there is to be a tunnel, to carry the traffic O.
States under your streets and homes. You VIII
see nothing, the earth close packed and lnhos-
pitable, no way open. Nature has done moth
inc to forward the enterprise, sets herself rug
oedIv against it, has hermetically sealed her
Self The opening is not there, it has got to be
made the very first step has to be taken. The