Youth is the time to make this prayer for true wisdom--when life's decisions are first opening before us. Youth is the time when God can best answer and when God cares most to answer prayer for the discerning mind. We need to start upon our careers with hearts exceedingly sensitive to the least variation from right. As the gunner cultivates his aim and notes his least deviation from the true line to the target, so should we cultivate clearness of moral perception. We need the "practiced" eye and the "practiced" heart, for safe judgment. "The grand endowment of Washington," wrote Frederic Harrison, "was character, not imagination, not subtlety, not brilliancy, but wisdom. The wisdom of Washington was the genius of common sense, glorified into _unerring truth of view_." Almost the same tribute can be paid to Victoria. When, six months after her accession, Victoria drove to the House of Parliament, there was not a hat raised nor a voice heard. But when sixty years later her jubilee was held, such pæans of admiration and love swelled in London's streets as never before had greeted any sovereign's ears--and all because the people saluted in Victoria's person the _discrimination_ that had shunned vice, corrected abuses, exalted integrity, and glorified religion. What every one needs, Washington, Victoria, and all--and what every one should crave--is such wisdom, as all through life shall keep him from confusing moral principles and shall make him see, choose, love, and follow the best. THE BEST POSSESSION. CHAPTER VII. THE BEST POSSESSION. What is the best possession a human life can have? Judging from the efforts made to secure wealth, fame, and power, the answer would seem to be that they--wealth, fame, and power--are the best possessions any one can have. Observant and thoughtful people know, however, that such possessions do not necessarily nor ordinarily make their owners happy. They therefore argue that there must be better possessions than these. So they say, eloquence is perhaps the best possession, or knowledge is, or ability to do great deeds or express great thoughts is. But the wisest book that has ever been written says that something not yet mentioned is the best possession, and says that that something makes life the happiest, and even makes it the holiest. That something, in the language of the Bible, is _love_. The man that in his heart has love, true, pure, lasting love, has the best possession that can be secured.