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all the light you can on it, then I would, with all the earnestness of
which I am capable, urge you to begin on this sure foundation by asking
God to guide you and open up your way. "Ask, and ye shall receive;
seek, and ye shall find." "Commit thy way unto the Lord, and He will
bring it to pass." Without this beginning there is, there can be, no
possibility of real success, no hope of reaching the best. With it
there may still be partial mistake--owing to sin and liability to err--
but there can be no such thing as absolute failure. Man's first prayer
in all his plans of life should be--"Lord, what wilt Thou have me to
do?"

Many people think that they have put up that petition and got no answer,
when the answer is obviously before their eyes. It seems to me that
God's answers are always indicative, and not very difficult to
understand.

An anxious father says--if he does not also pray--"What shall I train my
boy to be?" God, through the medium of common sense, replies, Watch
your son, observe his tastes, and especially his powers, and train him
accordingly. His capacities, whatever they are, were given to him by
his Maker for the express purpose of being developed. If you don't
develop them, you neglect a clear indication, unless, indeed, it be held
that men were made in some haphazard way for no definite purpose at all;
but this would be equivalent to making out the Creator to be less
reasonable than most of His own creatures!

If a lad has a strong liking for some particular sort of work or
pursuit, and displays great aptitude for it, there is no need of an
audible voice to tell what should be his path in life. Contrariwise,
strong dislike, coupled with incapacity, indicates the path to be
avoided with equal precision.

Of course, liking and disliking are not a sufficient indication, for
both may be based upon partial ignorance. The sea, as a profession, is
a case in point. How many thousands of lads have an intense liking for
the idea of a sailor's life! But the liking is not for the sea; it is
for some romantic notion of the sea; and the romancer's aptitude for a
sea life must at first be taken for granted while his experience is
_nil_. He dreams, probably, of majestic storms, or heavenly calms, of
coral islands, and palm groves, and foreign lands and peoples. If very
imaginative, he will indulge in Malay pirates and wrecks, and lifeboats,
and desert islands, on which he will always land safel