If you are fitted to be a mechanic, be a mechanic, and such a mechanic that those about you will find your services indispensable. If you are fitted to make shoes, make shoes, and such shoes as all the world will wish to walk in. If you are fitted to be a farmer, be a farmer, and with such assiduity and skill that the earth will give to you as to a master the meed of her most abundant harvests. Be artisan, be engineer, be merchant, be lawyer, be physician, be teacher, be artist, be poet, be a worker, a producer of values, a true servant of your fellow-men, and, whatever you do, do that with all your energy; only thus can you hope to attain any temporal success worth having.

But, remember, the main business of life is not to do, but to become; and action itself has its finest and most enduring fruit in character.

All these ends in the sphere of utility are relative; they are not ultimate. No man has a right to be a mere tool, a mere wheel or spindle in the great manufactory of the world; and no man can rest with lasting satisfaction in the achievement of any material end. He whose entire mind is concentrated on some temporal object, who seeks only success in business, or eminence at the bar, or fame in literature, will

find at last that there are capabilities in his nature for which he has not provided. He may reach what he aimed at, wealth, power, pleasure, fame, and be, after all, essentially a poor creature. No earthly and selfish pursuit can absorb the whole of a man's thought and desire without doing him irreparable harm. What is more pitiable than a rich man with a little soul, or a learned man with a starved and shrivelled heart? Manhood is of more worth than money; character is more precious than craft or skill. Fulness of being is superior to encyclopædic learning; the graces of gentleness and pity and love are more beautiful than all the accomplishments of art. Integrity and wisdom and chivalrous temper are better than power and fame. To be a capable artisan, a successful salesman, a great financier, an eloquent orator, a brilliant writer, or an accomplished teacher is of much less importance than to be a true, whole man, a true, whole woman. Completeness in life is attained only in the line of some aim which, including any or every temporary end, and giving it worth, reaches beyond earth and time to find its full scope in the eternal life of the soul.

3. Our discussion has prepared us now for the third proposition: The one aim which fulfils

all the conditions of a perfect aim is that indicated in the familiar words, "Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man." Let us interpret largely, for in religion and morals the large interpretation is always the most likely to be right. "Fear God," - that is, believe in God with the reverence that is the soul of true worship, and the love that is the spring of true obedience. "Fear God and keep His commandments" is the comprehensive formula of practical righteousness, "for," as the wise man pithily adds, "this is the whole duty of man." Here are presented both object and purpose great enough to comprehend the entire range of human aspiration and endeavor. You may think long and carefully and you will not be able to conceive and formulate an aim higher and broader than this.

(1.) It is the highest conceivable, for God is the ultimate Excellence; He is the source and sovereign and goal of life. He is supremely holy; to serve Him perfectly is to become like Him, therefore to attain the highest excellence. He is supremely good, therefore to love Him perfectly is to attain the greatest blessedness. He is supremely wise, therefore to obey Him perfectly is to be in absolute security, and at the same time to be in the realm of absolute

liberty. It is the nature of man to grow like

him whom he devotedly serves. absolute ideal of moral beings.

God is the The goal of

the finite spirit is likeness to the Infinite Spirit and participation in the infinitude of His beauty and power and joy; to aim at less than this is to sink below the noblest and divinest possibility of our nature, which derives its being from Deity.

(2.) This aim is the broadest conceivable, for it includes all that is good. It is consonant with our whole nature; it brings under one perfect law body, mind, and spirit, and thus co-ordinates all our capacities and powers. For God calls a man to be upright and pure and generous, but He also calls him to be intelligent and skilful and strong and brave. You can have no excellence of mind or heart, or of body even, which has not place in the true ideal of godliness. You can have no grace of person, or power of hand and brain, that has not place and use in God's scheme of human life. There is thus the widest scope for a true ambition. There is nothing that it is right to do, and that is worth doing well, but will be done better when the motive does not exhaust itself in the specific achievement, but goes on to God, thus making the achievement a tribute to him. Adam Bede

rightly thought that, “Good carpentry is God's will," and that "scamped work of any sort is a moral abomination; " and he was wiser than he knew when he said: "I know a man must have the love o' God in his soul, and the Bible's God's word. But what does the Bible say? Why, it says as God put His sperrit into the workman as built the tabernacle, to make him do all the carved work and things as wanted a nice hand. And this is my way o' looking at it: there's the sperrit o' God in all things and all timesweek-day as well as Sunday- and i' the great works and inventions, and i' the figuring and the mechanics. And God helps us with our head-pieces and our hands as well as with our souls; and if a man does bits o' jobs out o' working hours, - builds a oven for 's wife to save her from going to the bakehouse, or scrats at his bit o' garden and makes two potatoes grow instead of one, -he 's doing more good, and he's just as near to God as if he was running after some preacher and a-praying and a-groaning." There is the best sort of practical theology in these homely phrases. The service of God is not something apart from the daily life; it is the daily life motived with true piety. Do you covet excellence in any work? Do that work for God, and your motive, purified and spirit