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Excerpt from A Good Name: A Discourse Delivered in the First Baptist Church, Charleston, Before the Graduating Class of the Medical College of South-Carolina, February 23d, 1851 "A good name is better than precious ointment." - Ecclesiastes, vii: 1. The true end of life is preparation for a future and eternal life. This is the paramount and steady aim, by which human conduct should be regulated and human character moulded. A proper subordinate aim of life, is success in this world, including all those possessions and enjoyments which men pronounce desirable and God pronounces innocent. It is, no doubt true, to a far greater extent than is generally acknowledged, that these two ends are coincident, so that they who act with constant and anxious reference to the higher, are most sure to compass the lower. It cannot be too strenuously insisted upon, that whatever is really worthy to be denominated success in the world, is much more likely to be attained by practically recognizing our relations to God and eternity, than by fixing our gaze on earth, and limiting our aspirations and exertions by the narrow horizon which bounds our mortal vision. In point of fact, however, it is too palpable that in the greater number of minds these two ends are constantly dissociated, if not held to be irreconcileably hostile to each other. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historica