A good beginning is half. Many people spend the latter part of their years in correcting the errors of the earlier part, and by the time they are ready to live the end has come. A good beginning at once turns all the energies into the right channels. No golden years need then be wasted in unlearning false lessons, in revising unwise or impracticable plans or in retracing one’s steps.
Many a career of brilliant possibilities is marred by a wrong beginning. There are mistakes of early life which men never get over. A bad foundation has caused the wreck of many a noble building. Inadequate preparation for a business or a calling leads, at the best, to impaired success, and most frequently results, in the end, in utter failure.
These principles apply in Christian life. It is of the utmost importance that we start well. Many Christians walk in doubt and shadow all their days, never entering into rich joy and peace, because at the beginning they failed to realize the blessedness of the privileges to which, as children of God, they are entitled. Many others never attain anything noble and beautiful in Christian life and character because at the beginning they did not wholly disentangle themselves from their old life and fully consecrate themselves to Christ.
A good beginning, therefore, involves two things – clearness and definiteness of aim, with intelligent views of the nature and meaning of the Christian life; and completeness of consecration.
Many men fail in life because they have no settled purpose, no well defined plan. They have no goal set before them which with all their energies they strive to reach. There is in their mind no clear and distinct idea toward which they struggle. They merely drift on the current, and are borne by it withersoever it flows. They are not masters in life, but poor slaves. They conquer nothing, but are the mere creatures of circumstance. Such lives, however, are unworthy of intelligent beings endowed with immortal powers, and they never reach any high degree of nobleness or success.
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