be false, if it be
inadequate, if one is looking in the wrong direction for the success
that he desires, or if he expects to achieve the great end and object
of living by means which are not real, which do not match the actual
facts of the world and of human life, then of course his effort is so
far thrown away. He wastes energies, power, time, enthusiasm on wrong
ends which might be used to the attainment of things which are real and
fine and high.

Is it not then of the utmost importance that our conception of life,
what it is for, what we ought to attempt to reach, and how we should
make this attempt, should be an accurate one? Any young man starting
out in life, if he sets up for himself a goal which is unworthy, which
does not match his faculties and powers, and if he proposes to reach it
by means which are not adequate to the attainment of his desires, do
you not see how he wrecks and wastes his life? His opportunity is gone;
and by and by he wakes up to find that the years have been dissipated,
and he has not attained any worthy or noble end.

If this be true of a young man as he looks forward to a scheme or plan
of life here during these few short years, how much more is a similar
thing true, when we are contemplating not merely the question of a
business, or professional or social failure and success, but are
looking at the grander and more inclusive theme of the beginning and
aim and outcome of life itself We have inherited from the past the idea
that this life here, under the blue sky for a few years, as we live it,
is a probation, that we are put here on trial, and that death ends it,
and that, when we have passed that line, gone over from that which is
visible here into the invisible, we are either "lost" or "saved," and
things are definitely fixed forever.

I am perfectly well aware that the most of us who are here have given
up this idea, though there may remain fragments and suggestions of it
in our minds still haunting the chambers of the brain, not yet
outgrown, not yet cleared away. But with most people in the modern
world, if they are sincere, if they are consistent, the one great
question with them is whether they are to be saved or lost in another
life. And, if this be the true theory of things, then not only ought
men to bend all their thought, their energies, devote their
enthusiasms, consecrate their time and money to it as much as they do,
but a thousand times more.

We look, perhaps, with