B---- went to a large city and got a trial job as reporter on a big
daily. He had a mind for writing--a good vocabulary, and a flow of
language which gave promise of carrying him to the goal of his
ambition. He wrote verses in good style, and had had a number of poems
in his college magazine. B----'s program, you remember, put special
emphasis upon "having the good things of this life while you may."
Putting the emphasis there is likely to warp one's judgment as to what
are really "the good things," and so it proved in B----'s case, for he
spent his salary on luxuries, and for the temporary gratification of
his appetite and his ideas of "a good time."

He had to call on his father periodically for money to pay for dire
necessities. It was not surprising that B----'s jobs changed
frequently and he went from city to city--the general direction of his
fortunes, habits, and health being downward. Just now he has a job on
a little weekly paper in a village. His bare pittance in these parlous
days of H.C.L. hardly sustains his solitary bachelor existence. He is
a broken-hearted and discouraged man--not old in years, but with the
snap and vigour of young manhood gone. He is in debt, and there is
small chance of his getting out. He is practically a cipher in his
community. Life is one daily reminder of failure, and the relentless
bearing down of bitter disappointment.

But look at A----. He is the happy and enthusiastic pastor of a large
and growing congregation, which congregation is simply "daffy" about
him. They pay him a good salary, even as salaries go in these advanced
times, and he is absolutely free from financial care. He has a
commodious and comfortable home, presided over by his wife and blessed
with little children. His congregation recently made him an
anniversary present of a three thousand dollar car, replacing one they