Golden Lives; Biographies for the Day (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: WALTER POWELL, THE MAN OF BUSINESS. TF a writer of fiction were to delineate in a novel a man who never pushed an enterprise without ' thoughts of benefiting others; who never found an opportunity where others had missed it, without bending down on his knees and begging God to direct him how best to use the results for His glory; who did not aim at enriching himself, but at being influential in noble ministries of improvement; who, while the sharpest of observers, did not lose faith in men; and who, never straying from the straitest path of rectitude though engaged in large transactions, made his home circle happy, was constant in his friendships, and was as active in matters pertaining to his church as though he had had no other interests in life;?if a novelist, we say, were to paint such a man, he would be accused of foisting upon us a purely imaginative creation. And yet here ie a book which tells, mostly by means of his own words and actions, how a man in our own day rose from a comparatively low position to wealth and to influence, and how he won the love and esteem of all who knew him sheerly by the beauty of his Christian character and the elevated consistency of his life. The life of Walter Powell is a rich gift to us in the present day. Our young men need to be brought under the savour of such a bright example. His life was not remote or distant; he was tried as they are likely to be, and yet by grace he was sustained and strengthened. His memoir gives the clearest testimony that the best man of business may also be the truest of Christians; that there is no necessary opposition, between them; that strict j ustice and high principle are the best assurances of success; and that these can only be thoroughly maintained when they spring out of a true religio...