PURPOSE

It is not eminent talent that is required to insure success in any pursuit, so much as purpose. There is nothing like a fixed, steady aim, with an honorable purpose. It dignifies your nature, and insures your success. The young man without a mark is like a ship at sea without a compass or other means of knowing his destination and speed. A man who has a fixed purpose to which lie devotes his powers, is invulnerable. Like the rock in the sea, it splits the troubles of life, and they eddy round him in idle foam. Some people are busy, and yet do nothing; they fatigue and wear themselves out, and yet arrive at no point, nor propose any general end of action or design.

Always have an object in view; and let your aim in life be elevated. This is the safeguard of character, and the mainspring of excellence. Aim at virtue and moral excellence. This is the first. the indispensable qualification of a good citizen. It imparts life and strength and beauty, not only to individual character, but to all the institutions and interests of society.

When a child is learning to walk, if you can induce the little creature to keep its eyes fixed on any point in advance, it will generally “navigate” to that point without capsizing; but distract its attention by word or act from the object before it, and down goes the baby. The rule applies to children of a larger growth. The man who starts in life with a determination to reach a certain position, and adheres unwaveringly to his purpose, rejecting the advice of the over-cautious, and defying the auguries of the timid, rarely fails if he live long enough to reach the goal for which he set out. If circumstances oppose him, he bends them to his exigencies by the force of energetic, indomitable will. On the other hand, he who vacillates in his course, “yawning,” as the sailors say, toward all points of the compass, is pretty sure to become a helpless castaway, before his voyage of life is half completed.

There can be no question among philosophic observers of men and events, that fixedness of purpose is a grand element of human success. Weathercock men are Nature’s failures. They are good for nothing.

The men of action, whose names are written imperishably on the page of history, were men of iron. Silky fellows may do for intrigue, but the founders, and conquerors, and liberators, and saviors of empires have all been of the warrior metal. No human being who habitually halts between two opinions, who can not decide promptly, and, having decided, act as if there were no such word as fail, can ever be great. Cesar would never have crossed the Rubicon, nor Washington the Delaware, had they not fixed their stern gaze on objects far beyond the perils at their feet.

Henry Ward Beecher, in a recent sermon, remarked:

We see supreme purpose which men have formed running through their whole career in this world. A young man means to be a civil engineer. That is the thing to which his mind is made up; not his father’s mind, perhaps, but his. He feels his adaptation to that calling, and his drawing toward it. He is young, inexperienced, forgetful, accessible to youthful sympathies, and is frequently drawn aside from his life purpose. To-day he attends a picnic. Next week he devotes a day to some other excursion. Occasionally he loses a day in consequence of fatigue caused by over action. Thus there is a link knocked out of the chain of this week, and a link out of the chain of that week. And in the course of the summer he takes a whole week, or a fortnight out of that purpose.

Yet there is the thing in his mind, whether he sleeps or wakes. If you had asked him a month ago what he meant to be in life, he would have replied, “I mean to be a civil engineer.” And if you ask him to-day what has been the tendency of his life, he will say, “I have been preparing myself to be a civil engineer.” If he waits and does nothing, the reason is that he wants an opportunity to carry out his purpose. That purpose governs his course, and he will not engage in anything that would conflict with it.

These generic principles in the soul are like those great invisible laws of nature, whose effects are seen in the falling of the pebble- stone, in all the various changes which natural objects undergo. When a man has formed in his mind a great sovereign purpose, it governs his conduct, as the law of nature governs the operation of physical things.

Every man should have a mark in view, and pursue it steadily. He should not be turned from his course by other objects ever so attractive. Life is not long enough for any one man to accomplish everything. Indeed but few can at best accomplish more than one thing well. Many, alas, very many! Accomplish nothing worthy. Yet there is not a man endowed with fair or ordinary intellect or capacity but can accomplish at least one useful, important, worthy purpose.

But few men could ever succeed in more than one of the learned professions. Perhaps the man never lived who could master and be come eminent in the practice of all of them. Certainly not in them, and also in agriculture and the mechanic arts. Not because one man was never endowed with capacity for any of those pursuits or callings as he might choose. Our country, every country abounds with men possessing sufficient natural capacity for almost or quite any pursuit they might select and pursue exclusively. But the reason is simply because no one man has the time even if he have the capacity to master and pursue with eminent success, so many and such widely different avocations. Indeed, man’s days, at most, are so few, and his capacity, at the highest, so small, that never yet has he even by confining the united efforts and energies of his lifetime at the most trivial pursuit, much less in the deep and intricate learned professions, attained to perfection; and he never will. How much less then are the probabilities of him exhausting several and those perhaps the most complicated spheres of man’s activity.

Let man have one mark in view, and let him not under any consideration lose sight of that. Neither let him loiter by the way, nor wander from the direct path. What would you think of the man who should start on a journey, and, becoming weary on the way, should lie down in some tempting shade and abandon his project; or should be lured from his course by some enticing company or some idle tale; or should he turn back when nearly, or even not more than half way there, and seek another object in an opposite direction? Suppose I have several places to visit, and after having proceeded some distance on my way towards one, conclude to turn about and seek another first, and before reaching that turn for still another, and so continue to vacillate between the different points, so constantly changing my mind and accordingly my direction as to never arrive at any of the places. Would you not all set me down as crazy at once?

Do we not see men whom we have never suspected of unsoundness all around us, even in our own town, and among our own acquaintances, ever shifting their purpose, first pursuing this, then that, afterward something else, and thus, though reckoned smart, able men, yet never perfecting or succeeding in anything. On the other hand, do we not see hundreds of others, of far less natural endowments, men of small calibre, selecting, adopting, pursuing and adhering to one business, perhaps what we are pleased to denominate a small business at that, but by persistence in a straight-forward course toward his mark, he ha acquired proficiency in that business and succeeds. He is “making money ;“ he is making himself useful in the world while our friend of natural talent, too bright for any one pursuit alone, but who must try to follow half a dozen, fails in all, accomplishes nothing praiseworthy, but spends his time in telling what his uncle or grandfather has done, what he might have done, or intends to do, with a slight change by way of diversity, in fruitless because not thorough experiments in this that and the other—’twould take a phonographic reporter to make a note of them all.

Perhaps some may here interrupt me by saying that the latter is the better man of the two, that he is generous, noble-hearted, clever, a friend to everybody, and therefore everybody his friend. So it may be. I will not impeach his character, nor question his motives. They may be, nay, I trust they are, good. I hope he is in principles, in morals, in religion a good man. And if so, how much more important that he should be a practical, a systematic, a successful business man. His goodness now amounts to but little more than words, looks, wishes—if these are right, they are much, aye, very much.  A kind word, a look of love, even a benevolent wish are much to be prized. But how much more value might be attached to them, how much more serviceable could they be made, were they accompanied by the means, were the words, looks, wishes, aided by acts of charity that would relieve poverty, comfort the widow, and care for the orphan.

It is the living, acting, moving man who has it in his power to do good. It is very easy to feel sorry, but let us ask with the intelligent old Quaker, “Friend, how much does thee feel sorry? I feel sorry half a dollar; does thee feel sorry half a dollar?” And the man who not merely talks, looks and wishes, but actually lives, acts, moves, must, in order to gain the power to do good, have a mark in view, and direct all his efforts, or his principal efforts to secure that point. Whatever he reads should be in view of that object, and whatever he does should be regulated by that aim in view. He may sometimes be compelled to step aside from the straight path, he may have outside duties to perform, but let them be subservient to that fixed purpose, let his purpose still be onward, let that onward course be prosecuted as soon as circumstances will admit. If forced to make a pause, let it not be a period.