push you on—­if you think that because of these things you can dispense with the fear of God, and the daily obligations of duty, and make pleasure and self-indulgence your main ends, and do without honest, persevering, self-denying toil, you will be miserably disappointed.  God has some hard things to say to you before you get far on in years.  It does not matter how promising one’s beginnings, if there is no steady, conscientious brave self-discipline, and endeavour.

Life is always a failure and a disgraceful thing with a downward course, if there is no serious purpose in it and no great thoughts.  And if you are ever tempted to say, as many do, that there is no hope for a life which commences heavily weighted; that all the chances go to those who are clever, and richly endowed; that if a youth begins with no money to back him and no friends to push him into promotion, he must remain chained down to that low condition to the end—­then I point you to this little bit of biography.  I could take you round a certain town and point you to a hundred men who have repeated that bit of biography in their own lives, and I tell you that even now the chances are plentiful:  waiting at the feet of those who tread life’s way, a brave heart within and God overhead, and that no one need despair, however unpromising his start, who makes God his guide, and prayer his inspiration, and duty his chosen companion, and shuns evil, and pursues that which is good.  Faith and loyalty to conscience and a courageous temper are still the weapons which conquer in the fight.  Jabez, the child of sorrow and misfortune, became more honourable than all his brethren.

III.

And now I commend this prayer to all of you—­the prayer which this youth offered when he went out carrying his unhonoured name and empty hand into the rough places of the world.  It is a beautiful prayer.  It is on the whole a wise prayer.  There are better and more Christian prayers in the gospels and epistles; but in the Old Testament there are few prayers more worthy of imitation than this.

He asked that “God might bless him indeed,” that is, above every human blessing and favour, that he might, by his life and conduct, deserve it He asked what we may all safely and humbly ask of God, provided that we give a large and not a low meaning.  He asked that “God would enlarge his coast.”  If that meant broad estates, you had better drop it out of your prayer.  But if it means to have your life enlarged, your sympathies and interests widened out, your influence and your power of service increased, it is such a prayer as Christ might have taught you.  Never forget to offer it.  He asked that “the hand of God might be with him”; that every day he might feel the leadings and take no step which was not a step approved by God.  And he asked that the watchful and restraining power of the Almighty would “keep him from evil.”