Welcome to the Inspirational Living podcast.

Today's podcast was edited and adapted from On the Threshold by Theodore Thornton Munger, published in 1908.

My talk today is not borne out of a critical mood, so much as from a desire to bring you face to face with the inspiring

influences which, in a peculiar degree, surround you.

Despite the way it may feel and look at times, our country has never been so prosperous, the future never so full of happy assurances as it is today.

To point out the way of reaping the double harvest of this prosperity, along with a noble character,

is the motive that underlies my talk.

I begin with the subject of purpose, because it naturally underlies all the themes of a

worthwhile, successful life, and also because it is a matter of special importance. I say special because I think that just now,

many people are entering life without any very definite purpose. As someone has put it,

the world is full of purposeless people. Young people do not so much choose to go to college as suffer themselves

to be sent. They do not push their way into callings, but allow themselves to be led into them.

Indeed, this sacred word calling seems to have lost its meaning, for they hear no voice

summoning them to an appointed field, but drift into this or that as it happens.

They appear to be waiting, to be floating with the current, instead of rowing up the stream toward the hills where the

treasures of life lie.

My objective is to interrupt this tendency to drift, to induce you to aim at a far end rather

than a near one, to live under a purpose, rather than under an impulse,

to set aside the thought of enjoyment and get to thinking of attainment, to conceive of life

as a race instead of a drifting. Individuals may be divided in many ways, but there is no clear-cut

division than between those who have a purpose and those who are without one. It is

the character of the purpose that at last determines the character of the person. For a purpose may be good or bad,

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