But to understand business on this plane, and to conduct it in this large way, needs a fine education, an education built, first of all, on a practical basis, such as the education of our common schools.  Then should follow a course in the ideals of the race, the classic studies in language, literature, history, science, and philosophy.  Then should come a technical course, graduate or undergraduate, such as the courses offered by the Universities of Pennsylvania, Chicago, Wisconsin, which include, in general, lectures and special studies in Public Law and Politics, Business Law and Practice, Political Economy, Statistics, Banking, Finance, and Sociology.  In addition to this, there should be a thorough knowledge of the Bible and of Christian Ethics, with a deep heart-experience of religion.

Endowed with natural business talent, the young man who goes out into the world with such preparation as this knows a great deal more than just how to make money; he knows how to make it honorably and how to spend it, in his business, family, and social life, for the public good; he has in him the making of a statesman and a philanthropist, as well as a man of wealth.

Two things take one into the inner circle of the ideal-makers of the race—­imagination and sympathy.  Ideals cannot be bought with gold.  The ideal is always founded on integrity, progress, and common-sense.  It is preeminently practical, as well:  the thing that inevitably must be, now or hereafter, however men laugh it to scorn to-day.

Imagination is the faculty of perceiving the higher and final relations of life, the relation of one’s work to the progress of the world, and of one’s conduct:  to spiritual history.  What the ideal-maker tries to do is to set holy standards that shall not pass away:  to do abiding work, in thought, deed, word; work philosophically planned, and perseveringly carried out; work which he shall do regardless of the outer circumstances of his life—­poverty or wealth, of threats, misunderstanding, or hoots of scorn.  He is unmoved, both by the rage of the populace and by its most tumultuous applause.  He lives for truth, not for personal advance; for progress, not for wealth or honor.  What he lays down as a precept, that he tries to live up to, in the way that shall win the approval of the eternal years.

Sordidness in commercial life is not necessary:  greed is not foreordained.  Christianity establishes a new system of trading-philosophy, and a new basis of commercial ethics.  There is a god-like way of trade—­Christ might Himself have bought and sold—­else Christianity fails of its full mission, and there remains a class of the socially lost, of the ethically unsaved.  One reason why it is so hard to get business men into the Church, or to interest them religiously in any way, is that ministers, in general, do not understand or appreciate business men.  In one of the most stirring sermons I ever heard, occurred this unjust sentence:  “Our country has been built up by the martyr, and not by the millionaire.”  No!  Our country has been built up by both the martyr and the millionaire!