We may not all agree upon a definition of success, but we shall all agree that whatever it is, we want it; that, indeed, we want it more than anything else in the world. How to secure it is what all the colleges and schools are trying to teach and what all the ministers in all the churches are preaching. If you knew you would sometime have to look back, realizing that you had made a failure of life, you would hardly care to go on living. Many do have this experience. Such a person seems like a disabled vessel being towed into port with broken mast and damaged rigging. Yet that person was once young and hopeful, with life all before him, and he looked forward to something so different! Sometimes we fail to realize that the very purpose of our school days is to get us ready for the voyage; that we are day by day being taught the use of chart and compass; that we are being shown where the danger lies and where the safe paths are to be found.

If you want to know how you can secure for your own life and character those qualities which you most covet, study the lives of those who have these qualities and try to compel them to yield you their secret. As I think, one after another, of the most successful lives of which I have read in history, I find that there are certain characteristics that all seem to have possessed in common. Take a dozen or a score of really successful lives chosen at random and make them a subject of earnest study and comparison. In outward circumstances and conditions of life you will find these lives widely at variance. One person has been a child of fortune and another has had the severest struggle with poverty. One bears an honored name with generations of culture, character, and achievement behind it; another is of obscure origin, with little help from family or early environment. The ends accomplished in life have been as different as the means of accomplishing them; yet in all worthy lives there are certain clearly defined and common characteristics.

In the first place, I think that all the successful people whom I have known or known of have had a definite purpose in life. I see them keeping right on, striving for a certain goal, regardless of enticements by the way. The able mariner knows to what port he is bound. He does not keep changing his course, he does not become disheartened and drift with every chance wind. Unswervingly he steers toward the goal he has in view. Many of the failures in life are caused by purposelessness.

None of these persons whom I have classed among the successful seem to have been seeking pleasure. They have been possessed by great ideas, they have been occupied with large thoughts, they have been devoted to the good of others, to the advancement of mankind. Can you imagine a Lincoln or a Phillips Brooks wrapped up in his own petty concerns, even for a day? The self-centered life is a failure. “He that is greatest among you, let him be the servant of all.” All really successful lives have been moulded on that principle. Such men and women have not cared especially about being great or famous, but how they have longed to serve! There are thousands of unhappy persons who might find happiness and the beginning of success if they would only stop asking whether they are happy and would go and do something for somebody.

All really successful people have faith. They have faith in themselves, faith in their fellow men, and faith in God. It is difficult to see how any life can be strong without such faith.

We must have faith in ourselves because we are likely never to accomplish more than we believe we can accomplish. It is not always modesty on our part to shrink from an undertaking because of our unworthiness; sometimes it is weakness. “Self-trust is the essence of heroism,” said Carlyle. This does not mean that there is no such thing as over-confidence in self. We have all known people who over-estimated their own powers. The conceited person is rightly considered a nuisance and a subject of ridicule. The person who is always attempting some great project which ends in a fiasco is deserving of the condemnation which he receives. Yet most failures are caused by too little confidence in self rather than too much. Our consciousness of weakness ought to be accompanied by a belief in our power to overcome that weakness. The self-distrust which hinders growth becomes a moral wrong. Those who accomplish large things usually have a splendid self-confidence which is as far removed as possible from self-conceit. It is said of Mary Lyon, by one of her biographers, that she had “the rare power of distinguishing between the impossible and the merely difficult.” That is a power we should all cultivate.

One thing that should be impressed upon young people, who have not yet had sufficient experience to make the discovery for themselves, is that we have a right to judge ourselves by the best of which we are capable, not by the worst. There is an ebb and flow of the tides of the spirit. We have our moods of depression and of exaltation. One of sensitive conscience is quite likely to believe that his worst self is his real self. That is not true. This conflict among the many selves that each of us feels crowding for utterance within him is well expressed by one of our minor poets:—

In seeking to determine which of this motley crowd is really you, one thing should be clear, your real self is what you are in your highest moments. Do not accept as yourself the one who cares for fame and pelf, but the one who loves his neighbor as himself; not the unrepentant one, but the one who is broken-hearted for his sins. Life really is what it looks to us to be when we are on the heights, not when we are in the valley. When belief in our own possibilities is greatest, that is the time when our vision is truest; for the first step in realizing those possibilities is to believe in them. The vision of our best selves, of our highest possibilities, which we had on the heights, must be carried down into the valleys, there to furnish us inspiration and impetus.

If you would be really successful you must have faith in your fellow men. No doubtful or suspicious person was ever a benefactor of his race. The person who can help you most is the one who has most faith in you. So if you would help others, you must have faith in them. The power to see the best in a person in spite of his faults is a precious power. If you have it not, cultivate it. Never look for a mean motive in another. Always recognize the germ of goodness, small though it be, and always help it to grow. Nothing inspires us like the knowledge that some one expects good things of us.

By believing in people we make them believe in themselves. There is no greater service we can render our fellow men than to increase their faith in themselves and in their own powers. To be a faith-inspirer is a privilege we should all earnestly covet. We all know people from whose presence we come away feeling that all things are possible. They encourage us, they stimulate us, they compel us to believe in ourselves. This rare and precious power belongs only to those whose lives are fed from deep spiritual sources. To be a faith-inspirer one’s own attitude toward life must be right; one must be in tune with one’s self. The very atmosphere about such a person is charged with hope and cheer. No pessimist, no cynic, no misanthrope was ever a faith-inspirer. The possession of this quality depends not upon what we do, but upon what we are.

Some people, as they grow older and meet with more or less selfishness and deceit, as we all do, grow cynical. They conclude that there is no such thing as honor or constancy or disinterested kindness. Cling with undying faith to your belief in the goodness of human nature. Has some one deceived you? In spite of that, be just as ready to trust again.

It would be difficult to find any one who has had real success in life and yet does not believe in God. How can I keep my own life serene and hopeful if I believe that the world is ruled only by blind chance, that there is no meaning or purpose in life, that wrong may eventually triumph over right? But belief in a wise and beneficent Ruler of the universe should be the greatest element of strength in my own life; it should give me assurance that the forces of the universe are in league with righteousness and that good will finally triumph over evil.

What a comfort it is to believe, when the forces of evil seem to be in the ascendant, that it is only for a moment! Perhaps you are troubled because justice does not always seem to be done in the world. You know that the wicked often prosper and the righteous suffer, and perhaps you are troubled to understand why. Doubtless this is not easy to comprehend fully, but far better than comprehension is the acceptance of it in the right spirit and as a part of the divine plan. We all need a working theory of life, a philosophy of life, if you will, or we cannot live strong lives. One who has faith in “that Power not ourselves that makes for righteousness” can be optimistic and serene, and can believe that things everywhere are gradually working themselves out for good. No matter what happens, such persons never believe that the world is going to destruction. Even the most cruel and needless war since time began cannot shake their faith that the world is gradually getting better and that it will continue to grow better. When they stand for the right, it is in the confidence that they are fighting on God’s side and that in the end He is always victorious.

I believe there is such a thing as a habit of success. Some people have the habit, and you can hardly imagine them anywhere in this world or any other where they would not be winning successes. Why? Because of two things, high purpose and an indomitable will. Given both, what can defeat us? “The day is his who works in it with serenity and great aims.”

Failure will come sometimes, to be sure, as it comes to all. But what of that? The indomitable spirit will still urge us on. Browning held that “we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better.” So holds every brave, strong soul. This is what I call the habit of success. That attitude toward life, which in a failure or a defeat finds only a lesson for the next time, is sure to win.

My definition of success, you will see, does not take large account of wealth or position or fame, or of many other things some people foolishly think spell success. One who has mastered the fine art of living has had real success, whether or not the world ever hears of him. Do not think that the success of one’s life is to be measured by the amount of pleasure in it. Some are fortunate all the days of their lives, with good health, sufficient means, and kind friends. Others have trouble after trouble heaped upon them, poverty, ill-health, and grief. We are likely, if we are not discerning, to think that one has failed of success when he has only been roughly buffeted by fate. We have to know the soul to know whether or not one has been a success. We have to know what God thinks of him.

What are the school days for unless they are to teach you values, to show you which things are of most worth? The same qualities which bring success in after life are needed in one’s preparation for life. Opportunities lie all about, unnoticed and neglected by some, by others seized and employed to their full. Side by side sit two students, one dull and listless or dissipating the energies of the mind in a thousand ways; the other earnest, alert to seize every opportunity for self-improvement. Later in life the two move on, one failing in everything he undertakes because of these same habits of indifference and indolence; the other applying his concentrated powers to the task in hand and winning victory. Success in life is not greatly a matter of opportunity, it is rather a matter of character.