Many centuries of experience and experiment have produced no labor-saving machinery for reaching the harbor of success. If one would make successful voyage, he must be willing to grasp the oars with his own hands, bend his back to heavy strain, employing all his mental, physical, and spiritual power to the task of making good. It is not a joy ride or a pleasure trip. There is a joy unspeakable in the task, but it comes not from without but from the consciousness within that one is winning in a moral strife. This consciousness will be found to be the chiefest of life’s joys. None shall excel it this side the welcome we shall receive when safely anchored in the presence of our God, and even then this consciousness will be the inspiration of the heavenly song. Life must be considered not so much a pleasure as a struggle, but a worthy struggle, that sends the blood tingling through the veins, and builds the tissues of a noble character. After the training in life’s fundamentals the choosing of the oars is the most important thing. The craft in which one sails is character, built to weather any storm on any wind-swept sea. The haven is God’s homeland of the soul. The oars are varied, and the success or failure of the voyage, the safety or shipwreck of character, a victorious landing or sinking beneath the waves of obscurity, depend entirely upon the choosing of these oars by means of which his life energies are to be directed. To this end all the educational influences of home and school and college must be directed. Youth must be taught the value of an intelligent choice of the instruments through which his powers shall flow. He must not be led by fancy or prejudice or by the words of dishonest men who have oars to sell. He must not choose by the color of the paint or beauty of their decorations. He must not listen to the honeyed words of an evil one whose sole purpose is his destruction. Leaving the sands of childhood and starting voyage upon the unoared sea of life is a moment in which all earth and heaven are concerned, and therefore the choice of oar must not be left to chance or fortune. He must know that all the proffered oars are not alike, and that false teachers profit from the wreckage of the boats they set adrift. He must know that a broken oar means a drifting boat, and that no drifting boat can ride a storm-tossed sea. All the difference between heaven and hell is in that moment of decision when he picks up his chosen oars and begins to use them as his own.