Biographies of great, but especially of good men, are nevertheless
most instructive and useful, as helps, guides, and incentives to
others. Some of the best are almost equivalent to gospels--
teaching high living, high thinking, and energetic action for their
own and the world's good. The valuable examples which they furnish
of the power of self-help, of patient purpose, resolute working,
and steadfast integrity, issuing in the formation of truly noble
and manly character, exhibit in language not to be misunderstood,
what it is in the power of each to accomplish for himself; and
eloquently illustrate the efficacy of self-respect and self-
reliance in enabling men of even the humblest rank to work out for
themselves an honourable competency and a solid reputation.
Great men of science, literature, and art--apostles of great
thoughts and lords of the great heart--have belonged to no
exclusive class nor rank in life. They have come alike from
colleges, workshops, and farmhouses,--from the huts of poor men and
the mansions of the rich. Some of God's greatest apostles have
come from "the ranks." The poorest have sometimes taken the
highest places; nor have difficulties apparently the most
insuperable proved obstacles in their way. Those very
difficulties, in many instances, would ever seem to have been their
best helpers, by evoking their powers of labour and endurance, and
stimulating into life faculties which might otherwise have lain
dormant.
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