CHAPTER I.

[Illustration]

Young Men

WM. GUEST, F. G. S.,

REV. J. D. WELLS, D. D.

American Tract Society

New York

TO

GEORGE WILLIAMS, ESQ.

TREASURER OF THE LONDON ASSOCIATION,

AND

TO THE VARIOUS MEMBERS OF THE YOUNG MEN’S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS IN THE

UNITED KINGDOM AND AMERICA:

To you I beg to offer the four following addresses—they may be helpful

in your service for young men. Thousands there are who watch your

Associations with deep and grateful interest. By some persons, it may

be, your aims are misunderstood. I have never learned that you condemned

other literary and recreative associations; but you have felt that there

was room for one distinctively Christian. You do not frown on joy and

pastime; you do not disparage literary education; but you have not been

ashamed to avow that your object is to save young men from irreligion,

and to promote among yourselves spiritual and Christian culture. To not

a few it therefore appears that not only are your associations among the

very noblest, but that they preëminently meet the demand of these times.

Reading-rooms and opportunities for social enjoyment are doubtless most

desirable, but it is true piety that is the safety and mainspring of

prosperity to a community.

To the best and most distinguished men of this era it seems that the

stability and progress of the great Christian nations depend upon the

maintenance of Christianity in its integrity, and as honestly derived

from the supernatural teaching of the New Testament Scriptures. We

have, however, come upon an age of the gravest perils. What has been

the spring-head and occasioner of these perils? This: Men have become

estranged from intercourse with God, and from the thoughts of the holy

and spiritual world. No longer living in believing relation to the Father

of their spirits, they have lost the light whereby all things become

luminous and harmonized. Three errors now lay straight in their path;

and to one or other of these, according to temperament, they have been

drawn: materialistic worldliness, that inclines man’s whole attentions

to the interests, pleasures, and gains of the world of sense; scientific

atheism, whereby a small minority, happily, of scientific expounders

attempt to bow God out of his universe, and to resolve all creation into

spontaneous life and self-development; intellectual rationalism, that

makes man his own savior, denies sin and atonement, moral weakness and

Divine grace. It would appear as if Satan’s last and deadliest assault

upon the hopes and progress of the race was to be the denial of the

self-existent God. Assuredly, let the control of this belief go, and

this vital consciousness be lost, and the wide floodgates of iniquity

and of lawlessness will be opened, and nothing can save millions from

relapsing into barbarism. Even Mr. Buckle has taught that a materialistic

philosophy led the way to the horrors of the French Revolution. At such

a time, then, as this, Christian associations, with objects so clearly

defined, and where arrangements are primary to secure intercourse with

Christ and with a spiritual world, meet the deepest want of the age.

Moreover, who so well as young men can work among the young? You know

the snare that is spread for their feet; “the cup that is poisoned

and reached out for their hand; the eye that glares death which is

fixed upon them in secret.” Every good man must, therefore, wish you

encouragement in your labor to save and ennoble your companions. You

are blessing your country and your times. Your work will be fruitful

and abide. Thousands who now do not understand you will afterwards

pour benedictions over your memories. You, in an age of speculative

and moral dangers, will be held to have been benefactors. The days are

surely coming when above all other days men will be needed who, by their

Christian enlightenment and sanctity, can impart steadiness and elevation

to their times. Then the men to whom the age will turn will be men with

hearts and understandings which have been animated by Christian faith. To

secure such a generation is your high aim. May God prosper your purpose

and your devotion.

To you, then, I dedicate my little book, which attempts to portray some

of the aspects of modern life, and some of the alarming and imperilling

temptations with which modern habits and modes of opinion are surrounding

young men.

The first lecture was printed in a separate form; but as the whole

edition has been disposed of, it has been thought better to let it now

appear with the others.

W. G.

LONDON: CANONBURY PARK.

LIFE: HOW WILL YOU USE IT?

The following words are addressed to young men by one who, not very long

ago, was one of them. If they are serious and earnest, they are non the

less sympathetic and brotherly.

On the mind of some thoughtful men there is the fear that England has

seen her best days, that her sun is going down, and that a decline like

that of other great nations has begun. This is probably the language

of mere pessimists. Albeit, even hopeful men have reason enough to be

anxious. There is a frost of skepticism touching the young mind of

England. There is a dread of enthusiasm which bodes ill. Young men stand

in our great cities amid juggling expedients, glittering pretences,

specious deceits, unscrupulous graspings after wealth or position the

tides of temptation flow fast around them; a high civilization has made

wickedness very facile and seductive; veteran experts in vice are found

everywhere, and the very streets are allowed to be fevered walks of

lustful solicitations.

If England is to be saved and is to have a great future, it will be

through her young men. They are the hope of society. A man, therefore,

who is indifferent to their moral dangers and welfare is no friend to his

country. I will make, then, no apology while I speak to them earnestly of

their life, and what it may be and can be. No doubt there are scores of

empty and frivolous young men who can never be won to thoughtfulness. May

God help them; for the look-out that is before them is awful. But there

are many of a different stamp, and may their Father and mine help me to

articulate his yearning thoughts about them.

My brother, I am not about to speak to you of what belongs to others, nor

mainly of the duties you owe to others; but of what you imperatively owe

to yourself, and what emphatically belongs to you. You have an existence

in which the grandest and the most terrific possibilities are wrapped up.

Life has been given to you. What significance is in the word! Life, with

its unknown treasures and vast capabilities; life, with all its resources

and opportunities; life, with all its rich enjoyments and pleasurable

unfoldings; life, endowed with consciousness and divine faculties; life,

which beginning with the sweetness of infancy, and passing through the

open-heartedness of school days, can ripen into a beauty and strength

and force of goodness which, through the long ages of immortality, will

find accessions of ever-augmenting felicity, power, and blissfulness.

My brother, when I discourse to you of the value of this transcendent

gift of life, exaggeration is hardly possible. No language of men or

angels can worthily set forth the full meaning of this gift. You, among

creatures, are obviously destined to rank with the noblest on the basest

of beings; the elevation with which you come into the universe is the

measure of the grandeur to which you may rise, or the degradation to

which you may fall.

The question therefore comes, What do you intend to do with this your

life? You have come to an age when this question confronts you. You

ignore your rationality by evading it. The two paths of honor and

dishonor are now before you: which do you intend to take? I put the

inquiry in this form—What will you do with your life?—because millions

of men have been ruined, not so much through wrong intention as through

want of thought. They have drifted into an evil course through a passive

unthinkingness. It is not that they have resolved to do bad things,

but they have not resolved to do good ones. Instead of being masters

of themselves, sad to say, they have not even belonged to themselves.

On their forehead might have been once written, “We are open to become

the possession of whatsoever shall make capture of us.” Instead of

controlling, they have been borne along by outward things, like a little

boat in a dangerous stream, not carefully rowed and guided, but empty,

and inviting any unskilled or wicked hand to become its master.

There are young men possessing all the capacities for a dignified and

manly conduct theirs, through the hard industry of others, are all the

qualifications of education and competence. They are surrounded with

circles offering every facility to happiness and pure enjoyment. And what

do these young men do with all this wealth of possession? I will sketch a

few of the courses into which they permit themselves to be seduced. One,

just out of his teens, affects a manly superiority; calls “the governor”

slow; orders his tailor to make garments in a “fast” fashion; cultivates

an elegant beard; secures a massive chain, and if possible, a splendid

ring. His boots are a very important item to his manliness; and then what

deliberation upon the color of his gloves, and the flexibility of his

cane! As he steps from the door of his plodding father, he puts a finish

to his appearance by lighting a cigar, and with a hat à la mode, walks

out, a ready prey for the painted woman, and an advertisement for men on

the look-out for unsophisticated manhood. I do not say that a young man

may not have a gold chain, and trousers made in the height of fashion,

if he likes—there is no religion in not having these things; but for the

sake of all that is manly, do not let a young man think that this is

to make a worthy use of life—to be a show thing to be looked at in the

streets.

But a young man may have higher aims; he may be somewhat literary in his

tastes; may have studied rules of etiquette, and may select associations

that are irreproachable. He permits his vanity, however, to grow into

a chronic craving for admiration. He affects insensibility to attract

attention; falls into the modern fashion of a supercilious apathy;

looks unimpassioned under the most eventful circumstances, and twirls

the points of his moustache with elegant _nonchalance_. Repudiating all

domestic and common interests, he becomes valueless to humanity. The most

beautiful emotions of man’s nature become frigid. His self-absorption

grows into a conceit which relieves others from the duty of considering

him. He never blesses, is never blessed. Ineffective in youth, unloved in

manhood, he becomes testy and splenetic in old age, and dies at length

unmissed and unmourned. And this is all he has made of a life that once

bore so much of promise.

There is another, over whom my heart’s affections linger with a longing

solicitude: I mean the clever and facetious young man. He has quick

parts, can sing well, or give recitations; ever on the look-out for fun,

he heaps up accumulating stores of witticisms and repartee; and can

repeat in character, Mrs. Caudle, Mrs. Brown, or the newest offering of

this literary school. No circle of his friends is complete without him;

the evening party must be delayed if he is engaged; every body likes

him—young men and ladies alike call him “such a good fellow.” And there

is much that is good in him—his readiness and ability to make hours of

recreation brighter are not to be despised; but his kind-heartedness and

endowments fit him for something grander than to be a man who merely

amuses society. He himself suffers loss; neglect of solid reading and of

elevated thoughts lowers his own tone; the moral which he tacks on to the

end of his recitation fails to clear the balance-sheet of his conscience

in better hours; the very friends that he has charmed will seek another

than him in the important moments of their life. He will find himself set

aside ere long; his influence will die with the vivacity of youth; he has

no acquirements that are cared for to carry into riper manhood; and then

nothing is more revolting than the merely farcical and comic old man.

This is all _he_ has made of life; he has been the butterfly for sunny

hours, and has gone out when sterner days came.

Would that my descriptions might cease here; but the tale of failure has

not run out. There are young men with the pathway of honor open before

them, but who turn from it, and in pompous dash care for none of the

things that would make for their peace. Like dogs kept hungry, that their

scent after the game may be keener and more impelling, they slip the

leash of what they term their “mother’s apron-string,” and burst upon

life with a dare-devil spirit that defies control. The shades of evening

find them prowling under the mask of darkness after every pernicious

gratification. Their imaginations have been polluted with the vile

literature secretly circulated. From the dice or billiard-table they go

to the lighted hall, where prostitutes decked in fine apparel mingle in

the waltz and ply their miserable arts, and thence to the house where I

will not follow, and of which the Scriptures say, that “is the way to

hell, going down to the chambers of death.”

A young man in a London warehouse was solicited to spend such a night as

I have glanced at. He refused. “What a fool you are to be so dull,” said

the tempter. “We’ll wait a while and see who is the fool,” said the young

man. In ten years’ time the tempter was in a dishonored grave, and the

other was rising to affluence.

You young men who sneer at religion as weakness and call godliness

hypocrisy, it is you who are the hypocrites. You have risen many a

morning after a night of sin, and have felt how satiety and loathing were

making deep footprints in your nature. You have seen the shamelessness

and hollowness of wickedness, and have been too cowardly to say that you

saw it. You have laughed at virtue while you were bearing agonies in your

flesh which were horrible and indescribable. In ten years the tempter I

have spoken of was in his grave; and if the brief life and dreadful end

of thousands of young men in England could be portrayed, it would be the

most awful tragedy ever told. Men would be horrified as they read it, and

the ghastly memory would haunt them for years. Ah, men do not know it.

These young men go from the great cities to die in country homes, or they

lie solitary in the upper chambers of lodging-houses in back streets.

Angel sisters are kept from sights which they could not comprehend.

Nurses shrink from the foul and loathsome atmosphere. And this is what

they have made of life—a murdered manhood; not living out half their

days: a past all loss, a future all blackness. Oh, where are our tears

if they do not fall over numbers who are dying every day in such chambers

and with such demons of remembrance?

I have read somewhere of an eagle in the Far West. Soaring with steady

wing, he saw far below him the grand scenes of American nature, clothed

in the first snows of early winter. As he rose higher towards the blue

heaven, his keen eye saw floating on the distant river, whose margin

was already frost-bound, the carcass of a huge buffalo. He paused in

his upward flight; descended to settle and revel on this feast of

corruption. He was borne calmly down the stream towards the fall and the

rapids which lay below. Gorged with his foul meal, with drooping wing

and dormant energies, he slept on the fœtid mass, and amid the oozing

putrefaction. The blood, stiffened by the frost, bound his feet to the

remains of the carcass; and onwards was he borne until the roar of the

cataract thundered on his ear. He struggled for liberty; his powers had

been enfeebled with satiety; his drooping wings were bound to the frozen

blood; his wild cries awoke the echoes; he made frantic efforts to throw

off his horrid companion; looked up to the blue heaven he had abandoned.

It was too late: hurried over the rapid, he was sucked into the boiling

cataract, and dashed to destruction on the rocks beneath. How does such

an illustration find its analogy in human life! “His own iniquity,”

saith the Scripture, “shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be

holden with the cords of his sins.” There is a deep and awful mystery

in the downward progress of souls, when he who once was the master of

sin becomes the “slave of sin.” Alas, there are scores of men in every

neighborhood who would give all they have to begin life again. There was

a time when they never intended to be vicious; but step by step they

lowered themselves. Shame, truth, self-respect died. The lower elements

of their nature first were freely indulged, then became importunate, then

exacting, then domineering, then uncontrollable.

Dear young man, the pride of a mother, the hope of a father, with an

intensity of yearning love I conjure you to pause ere you go into the

way of sinners. If your feet have turned aside, retrace, I beseech you,

your steps. Your strong “I will” now, may, through God’s mercy, turn you

from the pit of infamy. But soon weaker will be your will, dimmer your

sense of moral beauty, more desperate your passions, till at length you

will feel bound, and then find yourself borne over the rapids a lost and

helpless wreck.

But our view of life demands other considerations than those that relate

to time and personal dishonor. It is a grand thing to live. A thousand

times have I blessed God for this great gift of life. But it is serious

also. Life has its _responsibilities_. Influence, like all things else,

is imperishable. Nothing perishes. The leaves of autumn do not perish;

they enrich the earth. The fuel of our fires sends curling upwards its

light smoke, which bears its properties for other uses. The broken

fragments of the mountains, through torrent and tempest, nourish plants

and renovate the earth. Not an act you perform, not a word you speak,

can wholly perish. It was probably this that Jesus Christ meant when he

spoke of the idle words for which we shall give account at the day of

judgment; that is, our words which go from us as light as air may be

making others better or worse, and carrying forward their consequences to

the judgment. Sin is imperishable. Sin, like the soul, has immortality

stamped on it: when once done, _it cannot be undone_. Even a saved man’s

sins are imperishable in the consequences. David, the king of Israel,

sinned; alas, how pitilessly! He repented, and poured out a psalm of

contrition that has ever since been the liturgy of humbled souls, and

every verse of which seems vocal with a groan; but he could not undo

the sin. In his own days the enemies of truth blasphemed through him,

and since that time, in every generation, wicked men have encouraged

themselves in wickedness because of that great crime, and the atheist has

barbed his arrow in the blood of that murder. Voltaire, when he came to

die, longed that his blasphemies against Christ should be expunged from

his writings. Ah, he wished what was impossible. His errors led to all

the horrors of the French Revolution, and have shattered the peace of

thousands since. A drunkard may obtain forgiveness; but his example may

have taught his own son to brutalize himself. A young man may turn away

from the evil courses he followed; but he may leave the silly youth whom

he first tempted to go floating down to the bottomless pit.

There is a thought that often appals me. It is nothing, as it seems,

for the seducer to play upon innocence, to instil poison into her sweet

affections and her maidenly instincts. He has done, as he thinks, a manly

thing when he has crumpled up the beautiful flower of her chastity, and

left it to be fouled in the mire. Ah, hard is the father’s shame and the

brother’s scorn she bears. Cold are the streets that she treads at night,

and lonely is the garret where she soon lies down to die. What cares he?

Perhaps in a beautiful home he has forgotten her and her child. His turn

comes at length to die. If conscience puts in a reminder, he calls the

deed an “indiscretion” of his youth, which signifies little. O man, it

_shall_ signify; as sure as there is a God in heaven, thou shalt meet

again that lost one to whom thou didst open the door of shame, of infamy,

and of ruin. Her own lips shall tell thee how thou didst help to put out

in her all that is pure, and to send her into the streets an outcast. It

_shall_ signify; that child of neglect shall claim thee as its father—an

unerring finger shall point it to thee. Before God and holy angels it

shall tell thee of its bare infant feet on snowy street-flags, of night

watchings at omnibus steps, and of the ignorance, and wretchedness, and

foul examples, through which its struggling life was passed, and which

left it no chance of virtue. From thee it shall demand account of those

paternal duties which thou didst incur and didst never discharge. Yes, it

shall signify. Oh, there is a solemn irony of Scripture when it saith,

“Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the

days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thy heart, and in the sight

of thine eyes; _but know thou, that for all these things God will bring

thee into judgment. Therefore remove the cause of sorrow from thy heart,

and put away evil from thy flesh_.”[1]

Would that my address to young men could be in a happier and more joyous

tone. But life has such a tragic side to multitudes in our epoch, that

I am compelled to deal with the causes of this failure and misery. It is

imperative that the ground be cleared of the hinderances before I can

offer, in subsequent lectures, the stimulus and encouragement. One other

reflection, therefore, on account of its infinite import, I am bound

to present. This brief existence of yours, my brother, is giving the

coloring to immortality. The endless life beyond the grave will take its

character from what you are now. You are the child of eternity; you have

now your time of probation; you have your one earthly life to live, and

upon what you make it will depend all that will follow through the ages

of immortality. Every sinful habit you form here may cling like a leprosy

to the soul there; every depraved passion you nourish here may perpetuate

its black defilement there. “The child is father to the man,” saith the

proverb. A young man of sense knows that he will be as a master what he

made himself as an apprentice; and as a man, what he made himself as a

youth. He knows, too, that character is not built up by one or two, but

by the constant series of actions. So the daily thoughts and acts of your

earthly life are forming your character for the vast existence of which

you are an heir, and which lies beyond the grave.

The late Archbishop Whately, in some annotations on Lord Bacon’s second

essay, has mentioned a very remarkable phenomenon connected with

insect-life, and has recorded that it often occurred to him as a very

impressive analogy of a future state. You know that every butterfly—the

Greek name for which, it is remarkable, is the same that signifies also

the soul, Psyche—comes from a caterpillar—in the language of naturalists,

called a larva, which signifies, literally, a mask. Now there is a tribe

of insects called ichneumon-flies, which inhabit and feed on these larvæ.

The parasitical flies have a long, sharp sting, which pierces the body of

the caterpillar, and whereby they deposit their eggs on the inward parts

of their victim. But, strange to say, the caterpillar thus attacked goes

on feeding, and apparently thriving quite as well as those that have

escaped. But when the period arrives for the close of the larva-life,

then the evil is made manifest. Caterpillars assume the pupa-state from

which they emerge butterflies; and it is then that the difference appears

between those that have escaped the parasites and those that were the

victims of them. Beautiful and awful analogy! There are many who, as to

the outside, look like other men. They dress well, look well. The sin is

preying only on their immortal part; and when they have laid aside that

which merely belonged to their physical life, then the soul shall stand,

with all its poverty and scars and shrivelled places, naked and open.

“The kingdom of heaven is within you,” said Christ to his followers; and

so are the elements of hell in other men.

Prodigious is the inconsistency of some modern reasoners. They believe in

the immortality of the soul. They see that the man is the development of

the boy, and that the acts of the youth leave their impress on the whole

after-life. They say law is inflexible, and that miracles therefore

are impossible. They affirm that justice is so exact that its penalty

must fall on its proper victim, and that therefore Christ’s death is not

vicarious. But somehow at this point all their reasoning falls to pieces.

According to them, man in the future life is not to be dealt with after

this inflexibility of law and this exactness of justice. According to

them, up to the moment of death law goes in a straight, unbending line;

why then, in the name of all pretence of reason, does it fail at that

point, so that wickedness, which has met with its exact punishment in

this world, fails to meet with it in that coming one? Dear young man,

fearlessness as to what that future may be is stark madness. It is folly

for which there is no name, for a man all through his earthly life to

bear the traces of the indolence and self-willedness of his youth. But

oh, what must it be for all the future and eternal life to bear the

traces of the wrongs that have been done to the soul in this? What must

it be for all the possible features with which the soul entered on this

life—truth, purity, love, faith—not only to have lain undeveloped, but

to have been quenched? Let me conjure and entreat you to look at this

subject. Do not, for the sake of all that is dear to you, close your eyes

to it. Let the great future take its right place as you are starting in

life. Be assured that the language of Scripture concerning those that

have perished is prompted by God’s yearning for your immortal well-being,

while it accords with all the analogies of creation: “For that they hated

knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the Lord, _therefore shall they

eat the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices_.”

Come then, young men, and let me persuade you to a worthy view of life.

God meets you as you read these words, and offers to be the guide of

your human life. The good God did not send you into his creation to

be afterwards an accursed thing in the outer darkness. This life of

yours, with its endowments and capabilities, may become a sublime and

influential life—a blessed ascendency, a tower of strength to men,

regnant in all that is majestic, angelic, and godlike. Hear how Divine

counsel speaks to you: “How long, ye simple ones, will ye love folly?

Turn you at my reproof: _behold, I will pour out my Spirit upon you; I

will make known my words unto you_.” Nor will life thus passed be too

earnest to be happy. Yours will be the happiness—not of animal enjoyments

merely, not purchased with stabbing your self-respect, not followed with

the heart-sobs of those who love you, but of one who is bringing into use

the higher and diviner faculties of your nature. Your intelligence will

be fed by knowledge, your soul will be ennobled by purity, your tastes

will be in harmony with sweet sounds and beauty, your conscience will

be kept in peace, and your heart’s emotions will have play in ways that

leave no bitterness, but ofttimes swell into rapture. Believe me, the

only thing that can give meaning and glory to your life is, to resolve

most resolutely that you will not be enslaved, will not be degraded,

will not be plunged into the mire and foulness of sin, but will live

according to a life-plan of real nobleness. Remember, no one can do this

for you. Your life is in your own hands; and God has so placed you

among creatures, that _He_ will not do you saving good _without your

consent_. You may be a poor waif on the winds of temptation, drifted to

whatever abyss of destruction they hurry you; or you may be a son of God,

victorious over sin, ranking with the earth’s great ones, and followed

with blessings. And then, and then, when the final issue comes, and you

lie down to die, instead of regrets, yours may be the solid satisfaction

that your life, from its very morning, has been consecrated to the

side of goodness; and then, instead of a place with the wicked and the

scorners, you may go into a heaven for which you are prepared, and into a

life of glorious felicity that is to come, and into which you have been

initiated down here.

Blessed be God, there is a short way to the life I recommend. There

are two steps by which you may enter it. Obtain, first, forgiveness

for the sins of the past. God offers you all the merits of Christ’s

atoning sacrifice. Through that great sacrifice he will receive you, and

_remember_ your sins no more. In the blessed book, in every variety of

form, in every glowing and rich expression, are you assured that pardon

shall be granted to a repentant soul. Young man, this is the first step.

Believe, and drop your burden of the sins of the past. Start a free man.

This is the second step: offer your life gratefully, lovingly, to the

Friend and Saviour of your soul. Ask for his Spirit to help you: his ear

will be swift to hearken. This love to him will make his yoke easy, will

make the cross light, will make life to have a magnificent meaning, will

make sorrow to wear a friendly guise, will break the force of temptation,

will make sin the hateful thing. This will cause your feet to find “peace

and pleasantness” on the path of life, till you reach the mansions where

the golden gates shall be thrown open for you, and the angels shall tell

you they have been waiting to welcome you.

Brother, will you try this life?

SKEPTICAL DOUBTS: HOW YOU MAY SOLVE THEM.

My object in this address is, to relieve the doubts on religious

subjects which meet a young man on setting out in life. Such doubts have

been very common. Nor is it to be wondered at. With some, to doubt is

constitutional. They are not able to give easy credence to any tidings.

With others, the very stupendousness of religious subjects causes the

mind to pause in doubtfulness; the revelations of Christianity are so

transcendent, that thought wavers before their very grandeur. There may

be doubt, yet again, from those appalling miseries of human life which it

is the mission of Christianity to heal; and no less from the strangely

unchristian lives of Christian men. All such doubts are to be treated

tenderly. There are thousands of such doubters among young men at this

hour; and they are not to be denounced, but helped.

On the other hand, you will, I trust, agree with me, that there is

a pretence of doubting which is the simple outgrowth of flippant

indifference or conceit. We hear Tennyson quoted, that there “lives

more faith in honest doubt, than that in half the creeds.” Let me,

however, remind you, that Mr. Tennyson did not mean _resting_ in doubt;

he meant an “honest doubt,” that was bent upon inquiry, and was open to

conviction. He therefore speaks in this same passage of one:

“He fought his doubts, and gathered strength;

He would not make his judgment blind;

He faced the spectres of his mind,

And laid them: thus he came at length

“To find a stronger faith his own,

And power was with him in the night

Which makes the darkness and the light,

And dwells not in the light alone.”[2]

Observe, a great character is not built up by doubting. There is

weakness, not strength, in doubts. Nor is it necessarily a mark of

intelligence to doubt. Any scanty mind may doubt, just as a fool may hold

a penny-piece to his eye, and say he has hidden the sun. On the subject

of Christianity, there is a very common mistake which I would guard you

against. Christian faith is not a mere assent to an orthodox creed; not a

mere acceptance of a speculative system of opinion. Christian faith is a

thing of will, of ingenuousness, of candor, and of loyalty. The unbelief

that will be visited with judgment at the last day is, the wilful,

stubborn, uncandid, prevaricacious, unpersuadable unbelief. Easiness of

temper does not make a just man; no more does easiness of credence make a

believing man.

Conceiving then that you are honestly anxious to arrive at truth, I will

endeavor in this address to meet some of the difficulties which once

perplexed my own mind. _The being of God_, or the mystery attaching to

the Divine existence, not unnaturally disturbs the mind upon the very

threshold of religious inquiry. Assuredly a God eternal, all-knowing, and

everywhere present is a mystery; but to stand in the midst of a universe

with endless marks of a designing hand, and to say there is no God, would

be a greater and more appalling mystery. Lord Bacon says: “I had rather

believe all the fables of the Talmud and Koran than that this universal

frame is without a mind.” May you not exaggerate this difficulty? Have

you not the image of God in nature? Look at the light of the sun. It

sends its rays through every cottage, every stream, and over every

living thing, and yet it never contracts a stain, and takes no soil.

It awakens the germs of life in organic nature, and they emerge in an

endless variety of forms; it clothes the forests with a robe of verdure,

paints the fields with countless flowers, and calls forth the song of

thousands of birds. It unchains from their icy bands the mountain-snows,

and sends myriad rills to make music through the valleys. It makes the

gladness of childhood, and cheers the gloom of age. At the same time, it

can photograph every mental emotion and every change of moral feeling.

No subtlety can deceive it; it pierces beyond the false look; it images

the character with startling justice. It is no labor to the sun to do

this. Endow this sun with mind; conceive that its rays not only pervade

and photograph every object, but do so consciously. Have you not here an

emblem of Him who takes this image of light?

Let me, my friend, guard you against the young man who whispers in your

ear that he does not believe in God. You will mostly find one of two

things—either that the creed of the atheist has been adopted by him

without two hours’ reflection on the matter, or is an after-thought to

make him comfortable in sin. How unreasonable would a man appear to

you who should have come home from the Paris exhibition of industry,

affirming that the edifice itself, its pictures, fountains, and manifold

products were the falling together of chance, or self-developed. But he

would be wise in comparison with the man who should see the myriad proofs

of design in the atmosphere, the soils, the foliage, and his own frame,

and affirm that there was no Almighty Designer. Out of ten thousand

proofs equally remarkable, let me mention one or two. Think of the egg

of a bird, so made that wherever it is placed the chick shall float

uppermost, so as to be near the warm bosom of its mother. Think of the

adaptation of the camel to its life in the desert. Its feet, not like the

hoofs of a horse, but cushioned with elastic pads, that do not sink into

the sand, but spread over it; its stomach set round with water-sacs, from

the supplies of which it can journey for days without coming to fresh

water; its eyes overhung with eyebrows, and nostrils that can be firmly

closed, whereby it is not incommoded with either the hot sand-clouds or

the glare of the desert. Think of a gulf-stream, sixty miles broad and

three thousand feet deep, which comes from the tropics every winter,

which secures an equable temperature for the fishes, and prevents the

seas at Stockholm and Norway from becoming a block of ice. While this is

so, there is a polar current which rises in Greenland, and hastens to

cool the tropics. These are single evidences of design out of millions.

And these myriad evidences in the heavens and earth, in every bird and

insect, every flowering shrub and blade of grass justify the assertion

that a man is a “fool” who says there is no God. I indeed admit to you

that, to men oppressed with sin and darkness, it is difficult to know and

trust God as the Creator. His immeasurable vastness seems to place him

far from us; but I shall soon show to you that God is made known to his

creatures through Christ. He who has not thought it unworthy to unfold

to man in the heavens the magnificence of his works, has not thought it

unworthy of himself to win back his creatures’ obedience and love by

sending his Son as a man. Christ has interpreted God to us. We understand

God in him. We know how to seek him, to find him, to trust him, to love

him.

After the existence of God, that of _an immortal spirit_, possessed by

every human being, lies at the basis of all religion. The argument would

be too metaphysical to prove here the immortality of the soul. I can only

suggest to you one or two considerations. There has been a universal

consent among the wisest philosophers of all times and nations, that the

soul remains after the body. “The consent of all,” said Cicero on this

subject, “is the voice of nature.” Observe also, that it is by the soul

we know of the existence of a universe. All sensation is the recognition

of effects on our senses, but that recognition is through consciousness

or mind. Note also, that the body changes, but the spirit remains. A man

may lose his hands or eyes, and the loss may have no effect whatever on

the soul. Consider again, that matter never perishes. If there is one

axiom in philosophy that is certain, it is this, that while particles

of matter may pass into new combinations, they never cease to have

existence. You may well, then, ask with Dr. Young:

“Can it be,

Matter immortal, and shall spirit die?

Above the nobler shall less noble rise?

Shall man alone, for whom all else revives,

No resurrection know? Shall man alone,

Imperial man, be sown on barren ground,

Less privileged than grain on which he feeds?”

Observe once more on this subject, there are manifold proofs that the

soul has in this state only the dawn of its being. The animals reach

perfection in a few years but men, at death, are only beginning to use

their faculties. The principle of thought, reason, and hope within them

has here only glimpses, outreachings, and aspirations of a higher life.

Are not these yearnings, this sense of incompleteness, prophecies of a

future life? Our lives here are not the tones of perfect harmony, but

rather like stringed instruments being attuned for celestial melody. And,

alas, what inequalities, what sufferings, what wrongs have some to endure

here that _require_ another state for vindication and rectification also!

If, therefore, you find one argument against the immortality of the soul,

you will readily find a hundred for it.

A further source of doubt is, _a false impression respecting holy

scripture_. You may have thought that the Bible, being called a

revelation from God, would be like a book written in heaven, and

altogether different from human works. But, in infinite wisdom and

mercy, this has not been God’s mode of revelation. He has condescended

to reveal his mind through the history, the follies, the virtues, the

sins, and struggles of men. This history is both human and superhuman.

It is human, for the men who wrote it carried into it the peculiarities

of their age and their culture. It is superhuman, for it truly and

faithfully tells the dealings of God with the first races of men, and

afterwards through Christ.

In the Old Testament history you have records of men who lived in an

earlier and ruder period of humanity; but the writing or the compilation

of these records has been controlled so as to teach the awfulness of sin,

the safety of righteousness, and the faithfulness of Jehovah. Dreadful

is it to be told of the incest of Lot; but it is merciful that we have a

justification of the warnings against the licentious nations of Moab and

Ammon, whose origin is thus narrated. It is painful to follow the history

of Saul, but it is merciful that we have such a vivid picture of the

miserable fruits of a self-love that poisoned otherwise noble impulses.

Through all the records of men in the Old Testament, you are taught, as

in the life of Jacob, that every wrong act has a seed of evil in it,

whose bitter fruits the doer has to eat, and that God’s providence is

perpetually controlling the good and the evil for the education of men

and of nations.

Look at the book of Psalms, the liturgy of prayers and praises for all

ages, the sacred ballads for humanity. There is much that is human in

these Psalms; but if God had sent down to us songs composed by the

angels, they would have been valueless by the side of those in this

incomparable book. While I am in this world of fierce temptation, of

suffering, and of moral weakness, what I want is, not so much angelic

musings and raptures, as the prayers of a man tempted, struggling,

suffering, fallen as I am; and yet a man ever reaching with such sobs

of penitence and intense heart-cries after God. I mourn David’s sin and

sufferings, but I feel grateful that the Scriptures have preserved to

me his Psalms, which interpret the fiercest beatings of my heart, the

lowliest confessions of my moral besetments, and the deepest aspirations

of my nature.

Look again at the epistles of the New Testament: you have here the

records of churches which fell, some into one error, others into

another. But these errors are such as are common to humanity. Admirable,

therefore, is the wisdom whereby inspired doctrines and consolations are

conveyed, not in any abstract method, but in their relation to the very

tendencies of our nature. Your objection, therefore, to the Bible, that

it is so human, is from an utterly mistaken impression of the mode in

which revelation could be best made to men, and from forgetfulness of its

deep, profound, and most precious adaptation to human life.

And here I cannot help adverting to the moral unfairness of infidelity.

In a recent conference of working-men, one of them told the meeting

that the history of the fall of man, in the second chapter of Genesis,

was so improbable that he rejected all which came after. Perhaps the

narrative is improbable to a mind intensely literal, unused to eastern

modes of thought, and which cannot find the truth under those partially

allegorical representations which most effectually teach the vast bulk of

the human race. The same objections are urged against the sun standing

still in the book of Joshua, and to the history of Jonah. I am not going

to reply to these objections. Infidels do not want a reply. If they did,

they would find scores. But what shall be said of the candor of a man

who, because of such objections, rejects the Old Testament, which abounds

in passages of the tenderest sympathy for the poor and for the suffering,

which demands the most exact rectitude between man and man, and which

taught a morality in those early days to which there is nothing at all

approaching in the annals of Egypt, Greece, and Rome? Let me recommend

you to turn to Leviticus 19:9, 10; Deuteronomy 24:13, 19-22.

See how the slavery of the nations was mitigated among the Hebrews

by the enforcement of the principle—which the Grecian and Roman law

denied—that it was the duty of the master to treat his servants as men,

to instruct them in his own religion, and to count them members of his

household. Shame on men who have in the Bible such consideration for the

toilers and such rebukes of oppressors, but who ignore all this, and

hold up the Old Testament to scorn because of one or two difficulties

to _their_ understanding.[3] Nothing so loudly proclaims that such

infidelity is not a thing of “honest” doubt, but of a bad mind and of a

bad heart. Difficulties there are in the Bible. I have studied most of

those difficulties, and confess with gratitude that they have one by one

disappeared. This I doubt not will be the case with them all. But to me

it seems that I should deserve the contempt of man and the indignation

of my Maker, if because of these difficulties, in times so remote and

in usages so different from modern customs, I set aside the book which

tells me of God’s profound interest in my race, which reveals my relation

to a spiritual world, which has purified the lives and pacified the

consciences of millions, and which has made just and considerate their

treatment of others.

_Miracles_ which bear witness to divine revelations are made an occasion

for doubt by some. Let us examine this objection candidly. Why are

miracles not believed? “_They contradict experience._” A few years ago

M. Boutigny, at a meeting of the British Association, caused ice to be

produced from a red-hot crucible. Surely this contradicted experience.

“_They are incredible to reason._” So is the fact that the sea once

covered the beds of sea-shells on the tops of the highest mountains.

“_The enemies of Jesus attributed miracles to magic._” The very proof

they were wrought; else they would have denied the facts, and not

resorted to this pretence. “_They are impossible, for they suspend

inflexible laws of nature._” To this modern objection I reply, there are

no laws of the universe except the direct agency of God. If, then, he

interposes to arrest a subject-law, there is no suspension of the law

of nature; the supreme law is still in operation. For example: By the

inflexible law of gravitation, a ball dropped from the top of a tower

falls to the earth. But suppose a man catches it in his hand, is the law

of gravitation suspended? Not at all. A controlling law is brought into

operation, to which, that law is obedient. Thus you have the agency of

God in miracles. Do not, I implore you, be swayed by writers who find it

the easiest of all things to multiply objections when they are utterly

indifferent about finding replies. Remember that in the first ages

miracles must have been worked, else Christianity, with the tremendous

sacrifices it demanded, could not have gained a footing in the earth,

much less have changed the religion of the Roman empire. Gibbon tried his

strength to dispute this, but never did a man so signally fail.

An exaggerated estimate of the _strength of literary skepticism_ has been

another source of doubt in these days. There are three writers especially

to whom this remark applies. The first is Dr. Colenso. He was believed

to be a learned theological scholar. Never was an estimate more false;

never did a more pedantic theologian take pen in hand. What pretensions

had such a man to be a guide, who more recently tried to prove that

there were no accredited prayers to Christ in the Bible, nor in the

Prayer-book, nor in the Presbyterian Psalter? Thirty-four instances

of direct prayer to Christ were at once pointed out in the Psalter;

more than twelve prayers to the Saviour were quoted as sanctioned by

apostolic practice in the New Testament, and passages of prayer to the

“Lamb of God” were appealed to in the Liturgy. If young men are to doubt,

let not a literary blunderer like this have weight with them. At the time

that the bishop of Natal’s work came out, a gentleman was commiserated on

the alleged overthrow of the Bible. “The Scriptures will be extinguished

now,” said the man of the world. The shrewd Yorkshireman replied: “Well,

you see I have lived long enough to hear many prophecies of this nature;

but the extinguisher has always been a wooden one, which the light has

burnt through.” My friend’s figure has remarkably come true. Dr. Colenso

had a reputation as an arithmetician; but this has well nigh gone, and

his theological books are marked sixpence on back book-stalls.

In like manner have the two other critics failed to get into the world’s

thought. Some years ago, Dr. Strauss sent forth a so-called “Life of

Jesus.” The greater part of the gospel narratives were resolved into

myths. More recently another edition came out, and facts which in the

first edition were called fabulous were now given as veritable history.

Is the “critical faculty” of such a man a safe guide to young men?

Later still, M. Renan, acknowledging that it was impossible to doubt the

substantial genuineness of the gospels and the Acts of the Apostles,

presumed to patronize Christ and Christianity. And what was his

conclusion? Do not start when I tell you: The Frenchman professes to

believe that thousands of the most bigoted Jews, and of enlightened

Greeks and Romans, renounced the venerable institutions of their fathers

and embraced a religion which demanded the severest sufferings and

sacrifices, because a woman under a love-spell of hallucination had

_fancied_ she had seen a young Galilean rabbi alive who was really dead!

Just conceive what would now be the effect on Europe of a new religion

whose fundamental fact had such puerile support. Why was it different on

educated Romans? Do not say I am deceiving you when I tell you that M.

Renan professes to believe that the apostle Paul abandoned prejudice,

station, privilege, prospects, and braved scorn, appalling sufferings,

and a martyr’s death, because he had been frightened in a thunder-storm!

Talk about credulity, was there ever credulity like this? Alas, what

monstrous absurdities will men believe rather than the plain testimony of

Scripture! Woe to the dupes of a literary skepticism which changes its

creed every five years!

It may be in addressing you, my friend, on the spirit of doubt which

taints and enfeebles this age, that you have been influenced by what

is deemed _the attitude of scientific men_ towards Christianity. A

flagrant and most mischievous impression is abroad that scientific men

in our times are infidels. Very confidently do I affirm that it is not

so. I have attended meetings of learned societies in London, and of the

British Association in the country, and have heard these meetings spoken

of as atheistic, when out of hundreds of scientific men there were not

a dozen whose language could have justified such an imputation. Such

distinguished leaders of science as Professor Owen, Professor Phillips

of Oxford, and Sir Roderick Murchison, would indignantly repudiate the

charge of seeking to undermine the faith of England in Christianity;

and in this they would have the sympathy of an overwhelming majority of

scientific men in the British Isles. Your danger is not so much in the

facts science has established, as in the false notions which have been

caught up of these facts. A scientific discussion would be beside the

object of this address; but note these accordances between one science

and the Bible: Scripture affirms the late date of man upon the earth; so

does geology—Sir C. Lyell says, “No discovery has shaken our belief in

the extremely modern date of the human era.” Scripture teaches that the

world was once covered by water; so does geology: “It is concluded as a

fundamental maxim in geology,” says Professor Phillips, “that the whole

area now occupied by dry land was once covered by sea.” Scripture teaches

that God made the dry land to appear; and geology affirms that the

rocks, or dry land, have been upheaved from the waters. Scripture teaches

that the beasts were created after their kind; that is, each group made

up of a number of species; so does geology. The Bible, written for an

unscientific age, has thus these marvellous agreements with science in

its most recent developments. You perhaps hear of a solitary scientific

mind tracing back man to a sea-shell; but another says, “The idea that

a mollusk could become a fish, or a lizard a man, is worthy only of a

madman, and gives but poor evidence of the progress of civilization at

the present time.”[4] Indeed, there is no utterance that looks adverse

to Scripture which is not met by a decided divergence of opinion equally

scientific.

Turn from these questionings to the history of Jesus Christ as contained

in the four gospels. The most consummate learning of the enemies of the

faith cannot invalidate these gospels. Their genuineness has borne every

critical test of the most advanced scholarship. The evidence for their

absolute truthfulness is immeasurably greater than for the authenticity

of any secular book which the past has transmitted to us. You believe

that eight hundred years ago a conqueror landed in England who abolished

the Saxon monarchy. On testimony better than that for the belief in

William the Conqueror have you the fact confirmed to you, that eighteen

hundred years ago, in a strip of fair and sunny land in Asia—a land which

for two thousand years had been the theatre of events which marked it out

as the scene for some grand evolvement of historic import—there appeared

a Teacher from Galilee, just rising into the maturity of manhood. He

unites in Himself the most unusual varieties of character. He has vast

intellect and the tenderest sensibility; the calmest judgment and the

keenest feeling. He is lowly, but always magnanimous; He is meek, and yet

majestic; He is most compassionate to human frailty, but abhors human

vice; He is despised, but never fretted; insulted, but never ruffled;

never is He charged with sin, yet by a strange and precious sympathy He

draws to Himself the sinful and the outcast. He is essentially human;

is found at the marriage feast and the evening meal. He speaks parables

which childhood can understand, and over which genius wonderingly

lingers. His teaching is so profound, wise, and novel, that it for ever

shades all the teaching of the wise men of antiquity. He did works which

no other man had ever done. He invited all heavy-laden ones to come to

him for rest, and announced that He was “the Light of the world.” During

a brief ministry, over five hundred men and women so believed in Him,

that afterwards many of them laid down their lives for His sake. Very

soon after His death upon the cross, when he startled his enemies by the

loud cry, “It is finished,” a “_vast multitude_” in Rome itself enrolled

themselves as His disciples. This fact comes to us on the testimony of

the heathen historian Tacitus; and Gibbon admits it must be received as

unquestionably genuine.

This Jesus Christ we affirm to be the Son of man and the Son of God. He

is the Revealer of God. He pierced to the core of human misery, while

he wielded the resources of omnipotence; he wound about his heart human

sympathies, but now sits at the right hand of God exalted. My brother, I

solemnly tell you that to refuse to believe in Christ after the evidence

afforded will violate your candor, will trample on the rectitude of your

reasoning, and will bring on you consequences which you will eternally

deplore. I cannot utter words that deserve comparison with those of

Christ himself: “I am come a light into the world, that whosoever

believeth in me should not abide in darkness.” “He that rejecteth me hath

one that judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge

him in the last day.”

You may ask, Can a man be lost for _sincere_ doubt? If a man clings to

this doubt, if he will not candidly inquire, if he refuses to receive

testimony, he will be lost; not because of his doubt, but because of his

obstinacy. This talk of sincere doubting is often very unreasonable talk.

A man may sincerely doubt whether it is well to sow corn in the autumn

or spring, and he may sow his fields in July; but his sincerity will not

save him from bankruptcy or the workhouse. A schoolboy may sincerely

doubt the necessity of learning Euclid, history, and geography—he may

refuse the testimony of wiser heads; but his sincerity will not save him

from going into mercantile or professional life a dunce, and the chances

are that he will rue his so-called sincere doubt to the end of his days.

You, my brother, will soon pass into a world shrouded with impenetrable

darkness. There is but one voice which can tell you of a way whereby

your spirit hereafter may reach a region of light and felicity. Should

you close your ear to that voice, and nurse your doubts, and refuse to

investigate, then let me tell you that there can be nothing for you at

the last day but “shame and everlasting contempt.”

Observe also, if you want demonstration that will overbalance all

difficulties, you will never find it. In the affairs of this life men act

on the _preponderance_ of evidence. If there should appear twenty reasons

for a course of action and only five against it, he would be reckoned a

fool who became swayed by the five, and refused to inquire further. In

mercantile life, the men who will never decide and act till they have

reasons which exclude all doubt, are left behind in the progress of

society, and become the poor and despised. Your condition in this world

is a test whether you will be true and docile. If you want light, there

is abundance to guide you; if you choose darkness, God will not compel

your belief.

I remind you, again, that no man has ever grown wise or good, or left a

permanent impression on his age, as a doubter. The heroes of all times

have been men of faith. Read the Book itself. The Bible is a locked

treasure to prejudice, but it never fails to satisfy candor. As you

stand outside one of our ancient cathedrals, and look up at its chancel

window, all looks cold, unmeaning, and uninteresting. But, as has been

well said, when on a sunny morning you have entered that chancel, “how

changed is that window! It is now gorgeous in beauty, and glows with

life. Cold and dreary outside, it is warm and radiant within. Instead of

being incomprehensible and obscure, it is full of meaning and glorious

harmony?” Such is the difference between reading the Bible as a doubter

or as a critic, and going to it as one interested in its contents and

willing to be taught.

Follow for a moment the course of two young men. Your acquaintance

will supply the sketch readily. See one coming in the morning from the

chamber where he has looked with affection and trust into the face of

his Saviour; has supplicated strength to meet the day’s duties and

temptations; and has pondered the words, “Wherewithal shall a young man

cleanse his way? by taking heed thereto according to thy word.” He enters

the family circle to meet the mother’s smile, a brother’s greeting, and a

sister’s cheery welcome. His father, with proud joy, consults him as an

equal. He is a firm link in the family chain of happiness. See him as he

stands on the floor of the warehouse with uprightness. The tricky trader,

when he cannot cheat him, respects his honor. He chooses friendships

that are elevating. No profane scorner walks by his side; no impure

profligate soils the atmosphere of his home. He spends his evenings amid

cheerful enjoyments, ennobling elevations, or useful ameliorations.

Contrast the other. He rises from a prayerless bed; drags down stairs his

wearied frame at the latest possible moment; the older members of the

family have gone off to their several duties. As for him, the debauch of

the last night makes every thing wrong: the coffee is thick; the servant

slow; the very cat’s quietness upon the hearth irritates him, and with a

kick he relieves his pent-up discontent. To his mother he is rude; the

younger children have scampered away at his approach, saying their “big

brother is so sulky.” The clock sounds; he is off to business. The whole

day he is confused and hindered by the remembrance of the last night’s

pollution, or the planning for the coming evening’s pleasure. When the

evening has come, he goes where he will degrade young women in a way

which would arouse his direst indignation should another do the same to

his sister; or he enters scenes where he would die with shame if his

mother or sister could follow him. And this is the young man whose law is

a miserable and hateful selfishness, or who on a Sunday afternoon reads

an infidel book for five minutes, and then says, “Ah, I knew the Bible

was false, and Christians all hypocrites.” Poor pitiable wretch! as if

the judgment of such a man was of the slightest value against Scripture.

And observe, the end will come. A nurse very recently was summoned to a

sick-bed in Paris. The invalid was a young Englishman. Before she would

enter upon her duties, she asked if the sufferer was a Christian. Upon

being answered in the affirmative, she said: “I have seen such horrible

sights, and heard such wailings in the dying chambers of ungodly and

dissolute men, that I dare not now undertake to nurse another such a

one.” Tronchan, in his memoirs of Voltaire, says: “I wish that those who

had been perverted by his writings had been present at his death. It was

a sight too horrid to witness.” These are awful facts and foreshadowings

after a life of infidel pleasure.

Let me add a test of your sincerity. One of the most accomplished and

gifted of authoresses has told us that dark doubts on divine subjects

once shrouded her spirit. As she looked up at midnight to the vault of

the heavens, and saw the stars moving in serenity and order, the thought

came over her troubled spirit, “The Creator of those orbs must take an

interest in me, his rational creature. I hold to nothing but a dim hope

of his existence. I will take my dark mind to him, and ask him for light.

Prayer shall be with me the ‘_test of truth_.’” To that sincere cry the

answer came. Her heart, intellect, and conscience, found rest in Christ;

the Bible became to her an exhaustless fount of wisdom; in mathematical

culture and in musical taste she became distinguished, and her life

became signally useful. Two eminent men were lifted out of their doubts

by the promise in Luke 11:13. “If the Bible be true,” they reasoned,

“the Lord will give his Spirit to them that ask him. We will put this

promise to the proof.” The one—John Newton—became the most influential

preacher of the gospel in the British metropolis; the other—William

Wilberforce—became one of the best, most useful, and most honored of

statesmen.

My brother, let this be the test of your sincerity. Will you earnestly

and perseveringly ask God to fulfil this promise in you?

I shall close this address with twelve articles, which may be termed THE

CREED OF THE INFIDEL.

1. That Book is to him an imposture and pretended revelation, which

furnishes the only explanation ever offered of human misery, suffering,

and death; which responds to man’s universal craving for immortality,

and throws the clearest light upon a future state; which presents the

sublimest views of the compassion of the Creator; which paints a picture

of man which has had an exact transcript in the history of all nations,

and on behalf of which myriads rise up to testify that it has been a

ceaseless impulse to aspirations, a comfort in their trials, and has

taken away the fear of death.

2. He believes that the earlier narratives of the Bible were fabrications

intended to glorify the Jewish nation: but somehow these fabrications are

totally unlike the legendary traditions of Greece and Rome; for instead

of making their ancestors gods and heroes, they make them slaves, and

tell a history of Jacob and his sons which covers their progenitors

with infamy; and strange to say, these fabrications imposed upon later

prophets, who were the sternest denouncers of falsehood, and are now

imposing upon six millions of Jews, who, with a tenacity unparalleled and

sacrifices ceaseless, cling to the ritual and history of their ancestors.

3. He believes that by some unaccountable species of literary deception,

unlettered or fanatical men have pretended to give four narratives of the

founder of Christianity, which the greatest modern critics confess are

“the very gold of simplicity, integrity, and truthfulness,” and which

present an image of Jesus Christ that brings most vividly into view the

very perfection of humanity, that has furnished a model for the noblest

spirits among men, and that surpasses in beauty and grandeur all that

poetry ever sung of human genius ever conceived.

4. He believes that the writers of the New Testament were either knaves

or fools; and yet they taught the purest, wisest, most elevated, and most

self-sacrificing system of morals the world has ever seen.

5. He believes that in the most enlightened and skeptical age of the

Roman Empire, thousands of men were such arrant fools as to give credence

to a history of Christ which was full of lies, and to a record of

miracles which had never been worked, and this at a time so near to the

events, that an imposture could not have escaped detection for an hour.

6. He believes that “a vast multitude” of Romans, Greeks, and Jews

deserted, for a fanatical superstition, the splendid temples of their

fathers, the schools of philosophy of which they had been proud, and the

religion of their ancestors, which had been enriched by the grandest

historical associations.

7. He believes that the early propagators of Christianity, and the

believers in it, acted altogether contrary to ordinary motives of

weak or bad men; they embraced a creed which, instead of gaining them

aught, exposed them to the most diabolical cruelties, and held to their

testimony in the face of tortures, banishment, and a shameful death.

8. He believes that, although Christianity is a lying system of priestism

or fanaticism, it nevertheless, according to irrefutable testimony,

abolished the ferocious deeds of the amphitheatre, overthrew the horrid

rites of paganism, introduced an era of benevolence, and marked a new

starting-point of progress for the human race.

9. He believes that twelve obscure, penniless Jews, with a higher wisdom

than was claimed by Socrates, Cicero, or Plato, taught the only religion

which has been proved to be adapted to every country and every condition

of man on the surface of the wide globe.

10. He believes that the Christian Sabbath, or the weekly seventh-day

rest, is an institution indispensable to the present physical condition

of men and animals; that without it modern civilization would bring to

myriads of men and beasts unbroken toil, disease, and premature death;

but that this seventh-day rest is a purely human institution, having

come, he scarcely knows how, from men who were foisting on the world

false and illiterate traditions under the name of divine revelations.

11. He believes that the writings of the Christian Scriptures, although

an ill-constructed collection of falsehoods, have never been proved

false by the subtlest ingenuity of their enemies, but have been most

firmly held to be true by men of the profoundest intellect, of the most

resolved and persevering investigation—the very scholars, thinkers, and

master-spirits of humanity, such as Newton, Bacon, Milton, Boyle, Locke,

Pascal, Davy, Chalmers, and a host besides.

12. He believes that those great nations of Europe which are immensely

in advance of all the nations of antiquity, and of all the heathen and

Mohammedan nations of Asia at this time, and which are distinguished

for their liberty, wealth, culture, arts, schools, asylums, charity, and

beneficence, have become so while under the sway of a miserable system of

religious superstition, which a few unlettered fanatics palmed upon the

world eighteen centuries ago.

Skeptic, is this thy creed? Then, O man, great is thy credulity!

Trifler, who callest the Bible “weak folly,” take heed! thy despising of

Christianity may be shown to be thy folly and culpable weakness, which

will have to be deplored by thee for ever.

My doubting brother, you may turn the tables when reproached with the

beliefs of Christians, and point to the absurdities involved in THE

CREDULITY OF INFIDELITY.

POWER OF CHARACTER: HOW YOU MAY ASSERT IT.

Although it is perfectly true that we may so exalt our importance as

individuals as to feed self-conceit; although as a rule men think they

have more talents than they really possess, it is nevertheless certain

that there is not one man in ten who makes the most of himself for the

purpose for which he was created. The great waste of life is wasted or

perverted power. What noble youths come out of schools and colleges;

how few afterwards make their lives noble. With what opportunities do

many enter upon business and professions, and afterwards sink into the

grave with scarcely a trace to indicate that they ever lived. There have

been hundreds who could have rivalled the patriotism of Hampden, or

the humanity of Howard, or the eloquence of Chatham, and who have left

behind them no one memorial of their existence. It is recorded that a

fellow-student once said to Paley: “You are a great fool to waste your

best years in the dissipations of a university; you have talents for

something better.” To multitudes of gifted young men has the like thing

been said, but said in vain. Paley took the hint, which was roughly

given. And now “there is no name in the English church that stands higher

than his, and no name in the vast circles of English literature that has

a more permanent fame.”

The great things of this world have been accomplished by individuals.

Vast social reformations have originated in individual souls. Truths

that now sway the world were first proclaimed by individual lips. Great

thoughts, that now are the axioms of humanity, proceeded from the centre

of individual hearts. No warlike host delivered the children of Israel

from the bondage of Egypt, but one man—Moses. No senate of statesmen

raised Israel to a pitch of greatness that proclaimed a theocratic

nation to the world, but one man—David. No school of divines gave to

England the Bible in the mother tongue, but one man—Wyckliffe. No learned

society discovered America, but one man—Columbus. No association of

science revealed the clue to interpret the laws of the universe, but one

man—Galileo. No parliament saved English liberties, but one man—Pym. No

assembly of theologians wrote the book, which nest to the Bible has had

the most potent influence on the English language and on English hearts,

but one man—John Bunyan. No confederate nations rescued Scotland from

her distracted councils, from her political and ecclesiastical enemies,

but one man—Knox. No chambers of commerce taught Europe to abolish the

restrictions of trade, but one man—Richard Cobden. Doubtless these men

found their coadjutors; but all through the ages God has put immense

honor upon individuals.

Young man, do not let others fashion what your life shall be. Thomas

Carlyle says somewhere that he would like to stop the stream of people

in the Strand, and ask every man his history. But, “No,” says the sage,

“I will not stop them. If I did, I should find they were like a flock of

sheep following in the track of one another.” Alas, men begin to lose

their individuality of conviction the moment they step into the world.

Here is a young man beginning life’s business. He feels, as he starts, an

impulse to be pure and noble. He is surrounded by clerks in an office. A

fortnight passes, and one evening, when he is hurrying home after office

hours, he hears a fast young man whisper at the desk, “Poor fellow,

he’s off to be pinned to his mother’s knee.” Now, what would be the

right thing for that youth to do? To say at once, “Yes, and God forbid I

should ever forget what I owe to my mother.” Let him say this, and the

insulter would be shamed, if shame were not dead. He would respect the

self-assertion of his fellow-clerk. Does the new-comer say this? No; his

ears turn red; his face is suffused with a blush; and in a night or two

the poor weak one dares some trick of folly to show his independence, and

to prove that home influences do not bind him. Thus, alas!—how shall I

say it sorrowfully enough?—thus he makes a sacrifice of his individuality

on the altar that a profligate clerk has built up for him; and then, step

by step, he weaves around himself the bonds of pleasure, till, amid the

dark storm of shipwrecked character, blasted reputation, wrung hearts at

home, worn-out health, and miserable self-reproaches, he sinks to his

unhonored grave, leaving only a memory of disgrace to those who have

loved him.

I have known many a young man who has seen the right path as plain as

noonday. God has mercifully flashed clear conviction of duty upon him.

No mental mistake has hindered him. His judgment has been convinced; his

feelings have been moved; he has felt sure that it would be better for

him, for this life and for the nest, to take a decided position on the

side of God and righteousness. And what has hindered him? What has led to

waste and self-remorse? Has he been persuaded by the wise? Has he been

reasoned out of his convictions by the influential? No; he has been moved

by the jeer of a dandy or the sneer of the coquette; he has quenched his

conviction before the mocking taunt of some empty-brained street lounger;

has lowered his own high tone of morals lest he should seem _singular_ in

the little circle of worldly society surrounding him. Do you say, “Can a

man set himself against society?” If society quenches the true in you, if

it binds you, if it robs you of moral manhood, if it makes you its slave,

there can remain no question to you as to what is your duty. Scorn to

degrade yourself by yielding up your individuality to suit the whim of,

it may be, the worthless and vulgar.

You are stepping into life, where you will find thousands who became

vicious because they never formed the resolve to live nobly. Such men

are the dead leaves that fall upon the stream and flow, not by any vital

power or aim in themselves, but by the eddying current around them. There

is many a sot who is imbruted, because he never determined that he would

not be a drunkard. There is many a useless one who has become a cipher,

because he never resolved to give to his life a meaning. There is many

a filthy blasphemer who is profane, because he never resolved that the

foul oath should not soil his lips. There is many a defiled, polluted,

and diseased one, because he never resolved that he would not be the

companion of a whore. This is the sorrowfulest of all things—men ruined,

sinking into sin, vulgarity, uselessness, vileness, not because they

intended to be bad, but because they had not the courage to resolve to be

good.

It is yet more deeply to be lamented that the young men who are thus

ruined are mostly the open, the generous, and the frank. A cold nature

that no one cares for, that is not wanted in the drinking-room, or

smoking-room, or billiard-room, passes into manhood without hurt; but

good-natured and gleeful young men have a weak side whereby they become a

prey to the dissipated. They are companionable and sympathetic, therefore

miscreants suck them by temptation.

It would be grateful to our feelings if this compromise of individual

character were confined to the men who disregard the claims of virtue. It

is by no means so. A philosophic statesman, J. Stuart Mill, in his Essay

on Liberty, complains that no period of England’s history has been so

little marked by individual originality and force as our own. Certainly,

whether we look upon the merely moral or the professedly religious

circles of our country, we find everywhere the tendency to sink the man

in the crowd, the Christian in the church. This shifting of personal

responsibility from the one to the many is the secret alike of national

and of individual ineffectiveness. Only look around you, and you will see

hundreds who might assert for themselves, and for the cause of truth and

philanthropy, a position of dignity and power, who are hindered by the

maxims and habits of others.

There is a prevailing impression that it is women, with their quick

sensibilities, who are the most susceptible to the influences of fashion

and opinion. It admits of question whether this prevailing weakness in

our days is not on the side of young men. They do not so much make

manifest their subserviency, but it is not the less deteriorating and

real. Take a few examples.

Here, in a select neighborhood, is a young man who affects style. A place

in the omnibus would fit his limited means. But no; the omnibus is all

very well for men whose position is made, and for young fellows who have

no standing in society; but for him, a horse and groom must form a part

of his appointments. So he burdens himself, or speculates, or runs into

debt, that horse or “trap” may be at command. And thus he, who by manly

independence, and an expenditure according with his circumstances, could

have risen to be honored and esteemed, shrinks away at length into some

lower neighborhood, or drags out a vexed and discontented life, because

he has forgotten the honor which he might have commanded at the outset,

had he lived out his honest conviction and not made himself a mere

imitator.

Or take other cases. Yon beardless youth must smoke the, to him,

nauseous cigar or meerschaum, because “Tom Grandeur” struts down

High-street, looking large behind his curling smoke. Nay, “My Lord

Meek,” who cares no more for a hunt or race than the most refined and

timid lady, enlarges his stables, buys a fine stud, makes up his book

for the St. Leger; or, with a sore heart, joins the “throw off,” caring

not a whit for the brush, but very much that he may not be outdone in

his equipage or establishment. All through society this abnegation of

individuality weaves its web. Nor is the effect circumscribed to the

frivolous and weak. Men think in cliques. It is intolerable to some to

be out of fashion with the political opinion of their set. Never was

contradiction so contemptible as that into which they are betrayed. It

would be ludicrous, were it not too serious an indication of the want

of principle. One month you hear men denouncing a political opinion and

its prominent advocates, with all the vituperative energy of which their

nature is capable. The next month, forsooth, they have adopted that

precise opinion, and eagerly rush to share some leaf of the laurel which

they hope will fall upon them through the tergiversation of their party.

You have, alas, the same thing among so-called religious men. Many a

young man has powers which would bless the church and the world, but

for his maudlin regard for what others may think of him. He is, it may

be, a young man whose father’s religiousness gave him universal sway

in his town or neighborhood. No workman but honored him; no cottager

but felt the sweetness of his sympathy. The son of this great and good

man is thrown among Ritualists. This is the religious fashion of the

hour, and therefore it fascinates him. He adopts it, not because he is

convinced of its truth, but because it suits what he deems his “æsthetic

taste.” Deplorably ignorant of the past struggles of English history,

he is gratified with the crowded churches in which he can witness

this pictorial religion of waving censers, purple-robed priests, and

picturesque altar arrangements. He falls into the cant of saying that

Protestantism is “unsymbolical.” The white-robed choristers and lighted

candles respond to what he terms the “holy symbols” of the faith. He

begins now to think the religion that made his home a very paradise,

his wise father a man of power, and his mother saintly, is a very

vulgar thing, and only inculcated by unlettered men and unauthorized

teachers. And thus the poor soul excuses himself from the demands of

personal exertion and personal fidelity to conscience; loses himself in

the easy externalisms or poetic dreamings which secure him the favor

of sentimental pastors, and the smiles of young ladies with pendant

crosses on their breasts. It is pitiable, but it is also sad, to think

what ineffectiveness of life comes to a young man who, instead of being

the dupe of weaklings, might have allied himself with the grandest of

Englishmen, and left behind him records of abiding influence.

There is no circle where a man can escape this peril of being unduly

swayed by others. Many well-principled young men, who are free from

the follies I have glanced at, lose their power to influence through a

deplorable lack of force. Instead of quickness, briskness, strength,

in the warehouse, they do their work in a dreamy, sentimental way.

Their religious coterie is composed of people who are slow, sedate,

and lack vigor. They are taught to think that religion consists in

unctuous prayers, sanctimonious looks, effusive utterances, instead of a

consistent filling up of duty, care for their employers’ interest, and

faithful discharge of daily tasks. Oh, do not forget it is the action,

it is the life in the very sphere which God has appointed, that is the

opportunity for the manifestation of religion. All mere emotion is like

the steam from the engine—of no value except as an indication of ability

to work.

There is another danger. You will find a class of religious men not

at all sentimental, but who will sneer at what they term religious

earnestness. A young man’s worst enemies are often cold, formal, routine

Christians—Christians who think that to stand well with the world, to get

into “good society,” to be always very respectable, and to have as little

cross-bearing as possible, is the golden mean of religious life. Young

men, in the name of all that is true and noble, set yourselves against

this style of religious profession. The worst weakness in the world is to

fear to do a right thing because others will criticise it.

There were many Christian men in Wittemberg who said to Martin Luther,

“You don’t mean that you are going to hang up these theses on the church

door.” “Yes,” said Luther; “they are true; they assail damning error; my

fatherland is bowing down to antichrist.” “Pause,” said the men who would

stand well with everybody. “Is not this zeal without knowledge? Think

how you will scandalize the University; how you will drive off men who

would follow you in a more discreet course.” “Avaunt!” said the reformer.

“The people are perishing in ignorance. The crowds of the common people

who come into the city to market will read these words. Yours is not

discretion, but cowardice.” He did the deed; and as the result of that

act, Europe received the Protestant Reformation, and the night of the

middle ages was ended.

On one occasion, Nehemiah was urged by his friends to desert the post

of duty, to conceal himself in the courts of the Temple, for fear of

would-be assassins. With heroic decision, he replied, “Should such a man

as I flee? And who is there that, being as I am, would go into the temple

to save his life? I will not go in.” Brave, perfumed words!

During the mighty struggle for West Indian emancipation, Sir Thomas

Fowell Buxton was about to divide the House of Commons; his friends

appealed to him not to divide. They came one by one, sat down by his

side, urged and implored him not to divide; ministers of the crown

besought him to give way. In the whole House there was only one who

hoped and prayed that he would be true to the cause of the slave, and

that one was his daughter in the gallery. He was true to the cause of

humanity; and that division, Lord Althorp declared, decided the question

of emancipation. The question was next introduced before the House as a

Cabinet measure.

There went from Manchester to the British parliament, about twenty-five

years ago, a comparatively young man. He went up to London from a

conference of ministers of religion who had assembled to secure cheap

bread for the people. That conference had been satirized; not a solitary

ecclesiastical dignitary had ventured to be present; the leading journal

had attempted to cover it with ridicule. That young senator ventured to

defend the conference before a crowded House of Commons. His reference

was hailed with contemptuous laughter; the greatest statesman of the

day rebuked him. Observe! that young man lived to receive an apology

from that statesman, to hear him introduce the measure which had been so

unpopular, and to receive himself the designation which his name will

bear through all coming times, “The Apostle of Free-trade.”

I say, where you feel that you are right, be true to yourself; do not

take your cue from other men. They may be weak, or prejudiced, or

trimmers, or cowards. Why should you lose your individuality for them?

“Oh, blessed is he to whom is given

The instinct that can tell,

That God is on the field when He

Is most invisible.

“And blessed is he who can divine

Where real right doth lie,

And dares to take the side that seems

Wrong to man’s blinded eye.

“Oh, learn to scorn the praise of men;

Oh, learn to live with God;

For Jesus won the world through shame,

And beckons thee his road.

“God’s glory is a wondrous thing,

Most strange in all its ways;

And of all things on earth, least like

What men agree to praise.

“For right is right, since God is God,

And right the day must win;

To doubt would be disloyalty,

To falter would be sin.”

To make full assertion, therefore, of your personal character, let me ask

you to bear in mind these counsels:

1. _Do not tamper with convictions._ God in mercy sends you luminous

hours. He is the pitying Friend of your soul, and is constantly

persuading it to a higher life. I am quite sure that you cannot pass

into manhood without heavenly visitations. Do not, I implore, neglect

these visitations. Do not quiet your conscience by a subterfuge. Do not

hold the performance of a clear duty in suspense.

Behold a scene of which history tells us. There are two men standing face

to face in a Roman court in a maritime city. The one is a young king, his

beautiful queen by his side. There is all the pomp and circumstance of

station. Chief captains and principal men fill the royal court. Waiting

servitors surround the doors, and an eager multitude fill the avenues.

The other is an unattended, unbefriended prisoner, with a chain upon

his hand. That prisoner tells of a solemn moment when heaven flashed

conviction upon his path. He reasons with resistless logic and eloquence

in proof of the truth of Christianity. The young king listens—is moved;

it is not merely the prisoner that stands face to face with him, but

God himself; and his convicted conscience cries out, “Almost thou

persuadest me to be a Christian!” The assembly breaks up. The king is

alone in his chamber, and muses: “I become a Christian—the member of

a despised sect! There is clearly truth in what I have heard; but for

me to be a Christian, what will the world think of me? My interest and

pleasures forbid it.” The subject is dismissed, and we have not the

faintest intimation that another opportunity of salvation ever again

visited that man. He followed his race in the pursuit of ambition and

vice; he gradually lost influence and power; his days became troubled

and disastrous, and his name remains, like other Herods, unhonored and

disgraced. What of that other man—that unbefriended prisoner? He is the

foremost man in the world for all after times. One excepted, no name is

repeated among men so often as his. _His_ life is the life of Christendom

in these ages, and will be more and more. He has done more for truth,

righteousness, and human salvation, than any other sinful mortal in all

ages of the world. What was the secret of this majesty of influence? He

told it in that court. When heaven had flashed conviction upon his path,

he did not allow pleasure nor prejudice nor interest nor public opinion

to sway him. These are his words: “_I was not disobedient to the heavenly

vision._”

My friend, it has been to many a man a dreadful struggle to repent and

turn to God. There have been temptations formidable, and a vacillation

of the heart most perilous. But no man can be excused from the conflict.

A young man, who became one of the most devoted and constant Christians,

was accustomed to insist upon decision, decision, decision, to every

young man whom he addressed. Said he, “If you expect God to help you, you

must be perfectly _decided_.”

2. _Guard against the temptations of the times._ Far be it from me to

utter a word that would debar you from the recreations and excitements

appropriate to your age. Joy and cheerfulness are your strength and

heritage. Monkish austerity and sanctimoniousness are rarely virtues.

But our modern civilization has multiplied, under the name of pleasure,

the facilities of vice. The perils that assail young men in great cities

are so many, so seductive, and so ruinous to body and soul, as to make

an observer tremble. If, then, you would be obedient to the heavenly

teaching, you must resolutely resolve not to “go in the way of evil men.”

There was a time in England when places of business were homes. The

employer admitted young men to the domestic sanctities of his family.

They received aid from him in the formation of acquaintances, and had

even access to his own circles of recreation. Now, young men in cities

can scarcely be said to have a home. Some have not even the privilege of

a common room, or a fire in their chamber. They are open, therefore, to

every allurement that promises pleasure. Places of business, moreover,

are huge establishments where the loose moralist can cover vice by

self-deceivableness, and where the subtle infidel, the scoffer, and

the licentious mingle together. Religion is ridiculed, and the clergy

spoken of with a sneer. Filthy books are sold and circulated—books of

infamy, which minister to the vilest tastes, which taint and befoul the

imagination with unclean images, and which a man can no more look at

without defilement than he can touch soft pitch and be clean.

Alas, wherever a young man turns for worldly amusement he meets danger.

Large towns swarm with brilliantly lighted saloons, which hold out their

meretricious attractions. There is the drama, music, and art. It was

ascertained that in two hours one evening, six hundred young men entered

one music hall in London. Were these rooms harmless, he would be an

enemy to human happiness who objected to them. If they are demoralizing

and ruinous to the health and character of the inexperienced, he is

a friend who points this out. It is little suspected how women with

bedizened head-dresses and flaunty robes are holding the last shred of

their modesty; how married men hide under white waistcoats polluted

hearts; how, while “gray hairs dance, devils laugh and angels weep;” how

bankrupts wear forced smiles, and the wretched try their poor jokes;

how the victims of disease and death hide their ghastliness by flowers,

and light their rapid progress to the grave by flaring gas-light. It

is little known how thousands of young men from the religious homes of

Scotland and Wales pass into a speedy oblivion after their feet have once

crossed the threshold of these rooms in English cities. Alas, what a

tale might be told of fathers’ hairs whitened, mothers’ hearts crushed,

sisters’ eyes swollen with tears, over sons once the pride of their

homes. If you would be pure, then, you must avoid these places. They will

speedily prejudice you against religion. They will turn your doubts into

blank unbelief and atheism. They will quench in you even the desire for

immortality. They will turn into terror or scoffing every restraining

influence. And what help can there then be for you for this world or for

the next?

3. _Have faith in the significance of your life._ There is no

exaggeration when a living writer says: “If there were the smallest

star in heaven that had no place to fill, the oversight would beget a

disturbance which no Leverrier could compute. One grain of sand, that

did not fall into its place, would disturb, or even fatally disorder

the whole scheme of the heavenly motions. Every particle of air has

its appointed place, and serves its appointed end.” God, dear young

man, means something by you. Yours may not be the highest, but there

is some high work which you may fulfil. The low grass-tuft is not the

branching cedar towering for centuries on Lebanon; nor is it the fragrant

orange-blossom, which is plucked to deck the bridal wreath; but neither

the orange-blossom nor cedar could render the service of that lowly

grass-tuft. In sacred converse with your Maker, breathe the prayer,

in this the formative period of your existence: “Lord, what wilt thou

have me to do? Why have I an existence among these living souls of this

creation? Why hast thou given me these grand and awful endowments of

thought, reason, intelligence, speech? I look round on the universe,

and see all creatures fulfilling their appointed service. I see the sun

filling the whole hemisphere from day to day with his light and heat.

I see at night the stars lighting up the arch of the firmament, each

keeping his appointed place, the silent preacher of obedience to thy

will. I see the bird that balances its pinions on the air, testifying of

thy goodness. I learn that the tiny invisible insect is answering its

purpose in preserving the salubrity of the atmosphere and the purity of

the water. I find every fragrant violet of the hedgerow and every shock

of corn fulfilling a mission of serving. I learn from thy word of the

higher spirits that dwell in thy presence, that they have their appointed

work; that angels are ministering spirits, and do thy commandments,

hearkening to the voice of thy word; and as I thus behold a universe

where each has its appointed place, I utter the prayer more earnestly,

“What is the meaning of my life, Father of spirits? I share thy counsels;

reveal thy thought respecting me.” Deeply am I convinced, my brother,

that if with some such prayer you enter upon this period of your life,

your existence wall prove no meaningless thing; it will be instinct with

influence, and will have an end to which you will come with unutterable

rapture.

I have in the foregoing considerations helped to answer the question

how you may assert the power of your personal character. I by no means

say that you should disparage associations. The most useless men are

those who will never combine. Exaggerated individuality makes a man

impracticable, and sometimes insupportable. On the other hand, our modern

danger lies in another direction. It is so to shape ourselves by others

as to destroy force and effectiveness.

Gibbon tells us a tragic history, which has been more amply narrated by

Count Montalembert in his “Monks of the West.” The gladiatorial games

of Rome were continued until the beginning of the sixth century of our

era. They had turned a civilized people into savage cannibals. There,

in that enormous amphitheatre, whose tiers rising above tiers remain

to this day, tens of thousands of spectators looked down on the bloody

spectacle, and thousands of victims were slaughtered. A holy man in the

East heard of the deeds of blood. The fire of a righteous indignation

seized him. He travelled to Rome; arrived there as the imperial games

were being celebrated. His soul burned against the cruelty and the

impiety. He entered the Colosseum; burst through the waves of the people

all palpitating with ferocious curiosity. He threw himself between the

gladiators engaged in the sanguinary combat. In the name of the God of

heaven he commanded them to cease their murderous strife. The pagan

multitude were for a moment panic-stricken with the holy audacity of

the Christian. Then they cried out; they rose on him; they tore up the

arches; stones hissed around him; the gladiators completed the work of

death. But the blood of the martyr was the last shed in that arena. The

horrid custom, which had so long resisted the voice of humanity, ended

with that testimony. The nobleness of the sacrifice showed the horror of

the abuse. The emperor Honorius proscribed the games of the gladiators,

and they have never been revived.

Without any such sacrifice you may learn from it the might of a simple

act of decision for truth and conscience, and that by such noble deeds

your life may have immortal issues. Where the timid will start back in

fear, there you may bless the coming ages. The achievements of duty have

been grander than those of the warrior. Wordsworth says of duty:

“Flowers laugh before her in their beds,

And fragrance in her footsteps treads:

She does preserve the stars from wrong,

And the eternal heavens through her are fresh and strong.”

At the beginning of manhood you stand now; a few years, and you will

stand at the end. The span is brief; the earthly life is only one. These

lines are written for your sake alone. No interest can another have in

your living a noble life that is comparable to the interest you have

in yourself. If you find at the end of life that you have made a grand

mistake, it will be a mistake you never can undo. Soon the shadows

will flee, and men will be judged, not by the earthly standard, but by

what they have been and have done. Sometimes when bales of merchandise

leave England for a colonial port, the price put upon them there is

very different from that they had here. So when you have gone through

the gates of death, the angels will not ask how you stood with this

world; but they will estimate you by your fidelity, your sympathies, the

consecration of your life to chat which was true and good. Alone you

will go into that eternity, as alone you came into existence. Alone will

you tread the path to the throne of God; alone you will be judged; alone

will your opportunities come up in review; alone will you carry through

eternity the results of the one earthly life you have lived. Said a noble

youth, who lived long enough to fulfil high promise: “I shall die as an

individual; I shall be judged as an individual: I am resolved, therefore,

to live as an individual.” It is just this purpose to which, in God’s

name, I summon you in this address. Let it be so, my brother. Take thy

place with the illustrious ones of all times who have lived to bless the

world. Pass on to manhood and to immortality with the seal of God upon

thy brow. And then, when death has done its mission, disenthralled of

flesh, thou shalt rise to the unobstructed sphere where hinderance never

comes, and where thou shalt begin an illimitable work. There, with thy

life grafted upon the infinite, it will be fruitful as no earthly life

can be.

GRANDEUR OF DESTINY: HOW YOU MAY REACH IT.

The belief in the doctrine of growth is of infinite moment to a young

man. The difference between one man and another lies here. Find a

young man who does not believe in the doctrine of moral growth, or is

indifferent to it, and you may safely affirm that waste or perdition

is being invisibly inscribed upon his forehead. On the other hand, let

a young man be thoroughly persuaded of the possibility of the highest

moral and spiritual progress, and he not only has hold of a truth that is

saving, but if faithful, he will reach a majesty of character, a force,

and a beauty of spirit of which no mortal can conceive. Let me illustrate

the subject of this address. You look at a seed-corn when lodged in the

earth. Growth is its law. After the first discipline of wintry frosts,

it uplifts its stalk beneath the warm breath of the south; then unwraps

from its careful green foldings its delicate ear, and lifts it up for the

golden sun to ripen it. Arrived at perfection, it offers itself to man

for higher uses, and becomes part of his strength. Or, again, the acorn

having found its place in the favorable soil, puts out feelers, and sends

them into the earth for more moisture. Modestly it breaks through the

ground to take its place among its compeers of the forest; drinks in the

air, rains, and dew of heaven; extends its little branches, twigs, and

leaflets, that its receiving-power may be greater. Growth, unceasing, is

its law. Its beauty is the charm of the woods in May; its topmost leaves

quiver in the breeze of summer; its strong arms beat back the storms of

autumn; and for generations and centuries it grows in its magnificent

completeness.

And who shall limit the growth of a young man? How true of him, “it

doth not yet appear what we shall be.” Like the youth who climbed

mountain-heights with “the banner of strange device,” so he may ever see

“_not yet_” shining like a star on the brow of the future. The youth,

the trusting Christian, the devoted worker, the mature saint are but the

lowest steps of his ever-ascending destiny.

One of the grandest mornings of my life was, when I reached the pass

of St. Gothard across the Alps. Having ascended above the sultry airs

of an early Italian summer, and slept three thousand feet above the

sea-level, I rose at four in the morning, and begged the privilege of

sitting on the roof of the diligence by the side of the conductor. How

invigorating was the fresh mountain-air of the morning, like the first

love of a young heart to Christ. But as the road toiled upward, more

and more ravishing was the joy. The mountain-pines now began to open

vistas of wondrous beauty; the graceful tops of the larches waved in

their uninvaded home; the granite rocks, with a thousand precipitous

forms, stood like sentinels to nature’s most majestic domains; the Ticino

poured down to the sultry plains below its rushing sound of waters.

There behind was the river, gliding on like a silver thread of light;

and there before were glimpses of giant peaks, with the light burnishing

the peerless white of their eternal snows. But for nine rapturous hours

we went higher; and as we ascended, fresher grew the air, more beautiful

the leaping waterfalls, more sublime the pass through galleries of rocky

labyrinths, more thrilling the transition from gloomy defiles to spots of

pastoral loveliness, and more exciting the emotion as we stood at length

about nine thousand feet above the valley below, amid the sinless silence

of the everlasting hills.

In a loftier sense than this, higher and even higher may be a Christian

young man’s progress. Follow him. He is active and devoted in all that

blesses man; he rises in harmony of character and effectiveness of

influence; he comes to have a name in the community of men, and is a

man of mark among his fellows; to those coming on the stage of life he

becomes the pattern-man; and those who once sneered at his decision and

aspirations would now be glad to catch the skirts of his garments.

“Not yet,” he may say, “have I reached the stature of growth.” Fruits

of goodness ripen in his life; wider is the sphere he fills; he is yet

more loved, trusted, and honored; till at length he sees the gate and

the glory of the city he is going to; above the sounds of conflict he

breathes supernal air, and listens as there reach him from afar the

sounds of heavenly music. And when the golden gates have been thrown back

to give him entrance, and the angels have welcomed him, and the great

and good of other times have clasped hands with him, even then growth in

power and blissfulness shall be the law of his being. He will rise to

be a companion of the mighty spirits of the universe. Higher, stronger,

wiser, freer, mightier, more capable of knowing, blessing, enjoying will

be his glorious and eternal career.

I am dealing in no figures of speech. This is the grandeur of man’s

destiny. This is the true law of life; and none the less true that so

many miserably fall short of it.

And now, young man, I speak to you who are just starting on a career

that may be thus sublime; and to you I say there is a _divine secret_ of

this eternal growth. That secret is in one word—_receiving_. Look again

at nature. The flowers grow by receiving. Place them where they can

receive neither sunlight nor moisture, and they will droop and die. As

the sun arises by morning in the heavens, they turn to him their expanded

bosoms, that his warm beams may fall there. They spread out leaves to

take in more rain; they fold themselves in restful quiet at night, that

dew-drops may settle on their buds and stems. After this manner man

grows. Among the sentences of Scripture there are two which deserve to be

written on the walls of a young man’s chamber in letters of gold: “A man

can receive nothing except it be given him from heaven.” “Every good gift

and every perfect gift is from above.”

I do not mean to affirm that you are to be passive. Go again to nature

to learn her parable. The plant grows by receiving; but it is not, like

rocks and stones, dull and inert; it avails itself of its advantages for

growth. It coöperates in working out its perfection. It opens its ducts;

it builds upon itself new lengths of wood; it is faithful to its gifts,

and makes every new attainment a plea for larger blessings.

Dear young man, study _your_ nature. In the truly-developed man there

are three powers—body, soul, spirit. This three-fold distinction which

is made in the Bible, remarkable to say, is also that of the latest and

maturest philosophy. The _body_ grows up from childhood by receiving;

and even in mature strength it builds up a ceaseless waste by the same

process. The _soul_ or _intellect_ grows by receiving. It receives

information; allows itself to be cultured; avails itself of the stores

which other times have acquired. It never creates. What seems so is

only reaching the full meaning or placing in new combinations what it

has received. There is, however, a _spirit_ in man. To this I turn your

thoughts. Deep in your nature is the grandest of all your endowments.

There, unthought of, it may be, is that divine faculty which separates

you from the brutes and allies you to the seraphim. There, smouldering in

darkness or selfishness, is a spirit which nothing earthly can satisfy;

which sends forth aspirations after God; which hungers after the good;

which protests against that filth of animal indulgence under which it

is often buried; but which, on the other hand, can be moved, and grow,

and expand, and become the dominant principle, and bring all evil into

subjection to itself, and become elevated in wisdom and ascendency,

till, shaking off every encumbrance of corruption, its powers are free,

glorious, and triumphant.

Let me quote to you a sentence from one of the profound religious

thinkers of our age: “The religious talents compose the whole Godward

side of faculty in us. There is the talent of being illuminated,

permeated, guided, exalted by the Spirit of God. There is also the talent

or capacity of religious love. Man can appropriate the love of God, which

can pour itself in as a tide with mighty floods of joy and power. There

is also the power of faith, which can fall on God in recumbent trust,

and appropriate him in all his personality of goodness and love. These

talents are the highest, noblest, closest to divinity of all the powers

we have.”

Most of the visitors to the Exhibition of Industry of 1862 saw that

costliest of all diamonds, the Kohinoor. There was a time when that

priceless gem gave not out a ray of brilliancy. Deep in the darkness it

lay; no light shone on it; no light came back from it. But it was placed

in the light; its opaque substance was opened. Its power of receiving had

freedom. It now allowed the minutest ray unimpeded passage through its

mass. And then how marvellous the transformation. It shone and glittered

and shot back light like the most brilliant star.

By these analogies have I sought to reveal to you the nature of that

spiritual growth to which you are summoned. Hearken, I implore you, to

the cry of your own immortal spirit. Open your nature, that you may

receive the quickening life of the Almighty. You hear at this time much

about religious cant and hypocrisy. It seems as if even the better

class of novelists of our period could never expound their own moral

principles without a contemptuous sneer at the religious phraseology or

life of their fellow-Christians. But let me tell you, the cant which is

the most irrational, and the hypocrisy which is the most insane, is that

which deems it manly to live without communion with God. Ashamed to be

in communion with heaven! Ashamed to be inspired by your Creator! What

madness would be this—if the sapphire should be ashamed of the light that

makes its beauty; if the quivering beech-leaves should be ashamed of the

sunbeams that dance on their smooth surface; if the flowers should be

ashamed of the daybreak that reveals their hues; if fields, hills, and

the whole realm of nature should be ashamed of the precious influences

which the heavens pour down upon them. But for you, a child of God, to

be ashamed of receiving illumination and impulse, wisdom and elevation,

from the Father of your spirit, is the most pitiable misjudgment of which

any creature can be capable. Talk of religious cant—there is no cant

that is so hateful, because there is no cant that is so unreflecting

and senseless, as that which sneers at man having fellowship with his

Maker. It is God, my brother, who gives to every star its brightness,

to every cloud its nameless colors, to every lily its snowy whiteness,

to every tiny ocean-shell its mingled hues. Oh, then, go to him. Ask

him to condescend to bless you with his indwelling life, to give power

to the right thing in your nature, to irradiate you with his light, to

actuate you by his love, and to be an impulse of perfection within you.

As you open your nature to receive God, the spirit within you will spring

forward; it will respond swiftly to the touch of its original Source;

it will rise in protest against the weaknesses and passions that have

choked and smothered it. Blessed with the movements of God, it will glow,

develop, acquire ascendence; it will bring all your nature into harmony

and peace; it will be an impulse to all that is “lovely and of good

report.”

But observe this, my friend—if you will hearken to your carnal

inclination; if you will give heed to the drivelling folly of fools;

if you will not receive Christ; if you will have none of his counsels,

none of his institutions; if you will choose none of his ways—then in

you there never can grow up a spirit trained for perfect bliss. Men

object to hell. What is hell, but to be outside the loyalty and love

of heaven? It is an infinite right due to the universe to keep out of

heaven a spirit that has rejected the aid that would have made it fit

for heaven. It may be a mercy to keep a soul, all of whose tastes are

carnal and earthly, out of heaven, as it is a mercy to take a creeping

worm out of uncongenial sunlight, and place it in darkness. If you have

allowed idiots to teach you that it is manly to sneer at prayer to God,

what right have you to complain if you remain unblessed by God? If you

deliberately choose darkness instead of light, what wrong is done you

if you are left in the “outer darkness,” whatever that may be? If a

flowering plant should say, “I will not have what heaven’s influences can

do for me,” it would be righteously excluded, in its hideous deformity,

from the monarch’s banqueting-hall. Ah, that plant _must_ be obedient.

But you, akin to the angels, have the awful liberty of disobedience. If

you choose not Christ, it will be because you harden your heart against

him; because you close your nature to the heavenly drawings that would

bless you. There is a passage of Scripture of fathomless significance.

The gracious gifts of God to the spirit of man are said to be to eternal

life, but “sin” is said to “_reign unto death_.” Yes, the principle

of sin in the nature, if yielded to, if not overcome by God’s Spirit,

quenches the innocence of infancy and the purity of youth; corrupts the

imagination, defiles the affections, inflames the passions, hardens the

feelings, degrades soul and spirit to be slaves to the flesh, deadens

religious capacity, extinguishes holy susceptibility, darkens the

understanding to the things of God, makes gross the heart, dulls the

hearing, murders the angel in a man, and kills every heaven-directed

aspiration; and then—and then—what remains for such a spirit but to

abide in death, and be left to wander for ever in the unknown realms of

disloyalty and everlasting darkness?

On starting in life, then, I would charge and beseech you to rise to

the true elevation of your nature. Among men there are _five classes_.

The _lowest_ class are the slaves of fleshly appetites. These are the

sensual, the debauched, the lascivious, the drunken. The _second_ class

obey the world, and judge after the worldly standard. These are the

lovers of pleasure, lovers of style, lovers of money, lovers of power.

The _third_ class are the intellectual. Wisely they culture intellect,

but they neglect the heart. They acquire information, but not benevolent

emotions. They investigate nature, but do not see the glories of nature’s

God. Higher still, there is the _fourth_ class—the moral. They are the

soul of honor; they love liberty; they teach political principles; they

profess to comprehend the duties that man owes to his neighbor. The

summit, however, of greatness, is when, with attention to intellect and

moral laws, there is the development of the capacity of religion. It is

here humanity culminates—the development of the spirit in man. These

of the _highest_ class are lighted up from within by the Spirit of God.

By the inbreathing of the Almighty, they have understanding of things

unseen; they do not despise intellect, but intellect in them is warmed

and vivified by a divine brightness; they honor morality, and seek a

right standard for measuring its duties; they fall into the movements of

the Perfect Mind and the Perfect Love; they learn to renounce self, to

control the fleshly; they acquire a disposition that can forgive; they

are prompted to do good, and are enlarged with beneficence; they have

aptitude for spiritual enjoyments, and receive constantly new accessions

of joy and power, whereby they become fitted for those blissful regions

where love, purity, nobleness, peace, and benignity have place for ever.

Young man, just beginning your immortal existence, behold your true

destiny. Oh, for God’s sake and your own sake, do not fall short of it!

Here is the culminating point of humanity. Do not be degraded, and live

unworthy of yourself. This is the end of Christ’s gospel: not merely to

save, as a man is saved from fire or from drowning—just brought out of

the water or the flames alive; but to save by conducting a human spirit

to the victory over sin, self, and the world. “I am come,” said the

Saviour, “that they might have life, and that they might have it more

abundantly.”

This elevation to which I call you is not in opposition to other

attainments—it embraces them. Piety will not give the intellectual talent

which nature has withheld; but, if true, it will vastly improve whatever

intellect a man has. It will not supply high reasoning powers if they

were not there before; but it will save reason from that blindness of

conceit and prejudice whereby so many are fatally hindered and misled.

With piety, a man’s intellect will be keener, his understanding will be

sounder, his judgment will be wiser, and his tastes improved and refined.

Rich and Cobden is represented as having declared that he never felt

confidence in a man who was not possessed by religion; he was not at all

sure what action he would take. Myriads of facts confirm the observation

of the statesman. Of two poets, otherwise equal, the Christian is the

greater, of two statesmen, the Christian attains the more permanent fame;

of two artists equally gifted, the Christian takes the higher place; of

two merchants equally practical and far-seeing, the Christian reaches

the surest success. There were Arabian sheiks as magnanimous as Abraham;

but none acquired his ascendency over all times and nations. There were

in Egypt many learned men besides Joseph; but none so influential. There

were many great kings of the East besides David; but none reached his

elevation. There were many wise men in Babylon besides Daniel; but none

so illustrious. There were in his age many scholars like Paul; but none

who so powerfully affected humanity. There were many Saxon kings who

loved their country like Alfred; but none so great. There were in his

times many who loved liberty like Milton; but none whose writings are

more read in these. There have been many investigators of nature like Sir

Isaac Newton; but none so distinguished. There have been many soldiers

who have won splendid honors like Washington; but none whose name is

such a spell of might to a great nation as is his. There were many great

statesmen in England when this century commenced; but none who died so

popular and so honored as Wilberforce. There have been many princes who

have been cultured and benevolent; but none whose name “hereafter and for

all times” will be such “a household word” as that of Albert the Good.

_These were all men of sincere piety._ Ah, I might tell out a record of

names that would have towered to the loftiest heights; but around which

there are sad and awful memories through the absence of a governing and

master sentiment of the soul. No prejudice is so contradicted by facts

as that which conceives of piety as allied with weakness. Piety is the

nurse, the handmaid, the inspirer of all that can give man greatness. “A

man’s religion,” says Dr. Huntingdon very finely, “fertilizes the whole

field of his being. It makes his business safer, his scholarship wiser,

his manhood manlier, his joy healthier, his strength stronger. It is the

crown of his enterprise and the charm of his affections, the humility

of his learning, and the glory of his life. And because it has sight of

things not seen and eternal, it is the splendor, the transfiguration, and

the sanctity of things seen and temporal.”

Observe, however, it is not greatness to which I would urge you. There

is the _attractiveness_ of piety, which, in the humblest sphere you

can exemplify. Oh, the beauty and power of a man who has tranquillized

passion, has subdued the lower appetites, has acquired gentleness and

considerateness, amenity and affectionateness; and who, reposing in the

love of Christ, and taught by the Spirit of Christ, is having formed in

his life some transcript of the superhuman loveliness which dwelt in

Christ himself.

This, then, is the point to which I come. If you would have your nature

to reach the highest place of which it is capable, yield yourself to God.

You cannot create the good in yourself. You can no more form yourself to

the divine and heavenly than the rosebud can open its beauties without

sunlight or atmospheric moisture. It is your happiness to receive. It is

your privilege to open your nature that you may receive. The holy and

all-helpful Spirit will swiftly draw near at the voice of your sincere

cry to him. Myriads have proved this on earth: a multitude which no man

can number affirm it in heaven.

It was once my privilege to know one—the Rev. Jonathan Glyde of

Bradford—in whom the combination of excellencies I have sketched was

exemplified. His had been for many years the reach after this moral and

spiritual perfection; and he attained, as many admiringly witnessed,

his own ideal of gentleness and dignity, consideration for others and

abnegation of self, beautiful humility and scholarly attainment, saintly

purity and unfailing charity, childlike reliance upon the Saviour, and

unwearied zeal for his fellow-men. When he was dying he was heard gently

to murmur, “Higher, higher!” His attendants, misconceiving his meaning,

approached the head of his bed to raise the pillows. Seeing their

mistake, he fell back upon the Latin word, and with an ineffable smile,

raised his enfeebled hand, saying, “Excelsior, excelsior!” To his waiting

spirit the glimpse was given at that moment of the career of immortal

glory, growth, and blessedness which was then before him.

And now, in view of what has been said, let me add these counsels.

1. _Religion is the necessity of your existence._ If, like Cain, you had

stood at the beginning of the race, there might have been some excuse

for you in attempting to find happiness without God; but you stand with

the open book of six thousand years behind you. There has not been a

solitary case of a nation, or individual, who resolved to find permanent

happiness in sensual things, who has not been disappointed. Read history:

you will see how the experiment has been tried again and again, and has

always failed. Babylon tried it, with every advantage of Oriental luxury

and splendor, and failed. Greece tried it, with every advantage of art

and literature, and still the wisest men busied themselves to find the

lost treasure of human happiness. Rome tried it, with every advantage of

wealth and spectacle, and the more we pierce to the heart of society in

Rome’s proudest days, the more do we find despair preying there. England

tried it in the days of the second Charles. Puritanism had been silenced;

godliness was satirized on the stage; lust was the commodity of poets

and wits; license was the fashion; but the unrest and craving of society

grew deeper, louder, and more troubled, as rivalries, intrigues, and

licentiousness abounded.

It has been the same with individuals. You have been told of the gay Lord

Chesterfield recording at the close of an enviable life of fashion and

pleasure, “I am now wise enough to feel and attest the force of Solomon’s

reflections, that all is vanity and vexation of spirit.” Mr. Lewes tells

us in his life of Goethe, that the great poet wrote at thirty years of

age: “The period in which I have mingled with the world I dare not yet

trust myself to look at. God keep me, that I be not as those who spend

the day in complaining of headache, and the night in drinking the wine

which gives the headache.” In advanced age the celebrated skeptic said

of himself, “They have called me a child of fortune, nor have I any wish

to complain of the course of my life; yet it has been nothing but labor

and sorrow, and I may truly say that in seventy-five years I have not had

four weeks of true comfort. It was the constant rolling of a stone that

was always to be lifted anew.” To me, as a Christian, such a testimony is

inexpressibly affecting. In the seventh volume of “Gibbon’s History” you

will find a description of the founder of the city, palace, and gardens

of Zehra, three miles from Cordova. Three millions sterling were spent.

Sculptors and architects were invited from Constantinople. Nothing that

the world could render to minister to the tastes and passions of the

caliph was wanting. After his death this authentic memorial was found

in his cabinet: “I have now reigned above fifty years in victory or

peace; beloved by my subjects, dreaded by my enemies, and respected by my

allies. Riches, honors, power, and pleasure have waited on my call, nor

does any earthly blessing appear to have been wanting to my felicity. In

this situation I have diligently numbered the days of pure and genuine

happiness which have fallen to my lot: they amount to FOURTEEN! O man,

place not thy confidence in this present world.”

In mentioning these things, I have no desire to detract from the

real happiness there is in human life. There are a thousand sources

of enjoyment that are open to you. Life is joyous—it has its endless

gratifications; but I solemnly tell you that you will be utterly

disappointed if you seek happiness apart from personal goodness and from

God. Why should you ignore the testimony of all times? Why should you

not avail yourself of this universal experience? Why should you, by the

wreck of your own comfort, add your life to be another beacon of warning?

No doubt sin has its fascination; but if men whose opportunities were

greater than your own tell you that at “the end it biteth like a serpent

and stingeth like an adder,” is it not consummate folly for you to shut

your ears to the testimony? You are too good for the world; “you are

of too noble a make and too lofty a mien” to give yourself to any thing

lower than God. There was a young man starting in life, as you are. He

had not your advantages. He was surrounded by the licentiousness of a

corrupt paganism. He went wildly astray into vicious indulgence. Little

more than thirty years had gone over his head when he turned aside

from the gratifications of passion, and then he poured out his soul in

“confessions” which have come down to us, and which tell us in eloquent,

pathetic tones that man is doomed to an unsatisfied craving till he turns

to know, to love, and to serve God. You may be able to read these noble

Latin words which have been well quoted by a university preacher from

the great Augustine’s first confession: “_Fecisti nos ad Te, Domine, et

inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in Te._”

2. _Take heed of the first wrong step._ In the Life of the late Mr.

Baines, Member of Parliament for Leeds, it is recorded that one day

he was watching an apprentice, whose habits were doubtful, fold a

newspaper. At the first fold there was a wrinkle, and at every succeeding

fold the wrinkle grew worse and more unmanageable. Mr. Baines said

significantly, “Jem, it is a bad thing to begin wrong.” The poor fellow

found it so, for he soon after fell a victim to his vices. “Who ever was

content with one sin?” said a heathen moralist. There are, indeed, young

men who, in an unguarded moment, have gone into scenes of temptation, and

have turned away with horror and recoil, like a bird that, having strayed

into the poisonous atmosphere of chemical works, has rushed back quickly

to the pure air of heaven. But such cases are the exceptions. There is a

witchery about sin. One lie demands a second to back it; and thus a man

becomes that most contemptible and hopeless of men, a confirmed liar. A

great preacher, the late Dr. Winter Hamilton, once said that he had known

men of all other kinds of wickedness converted; but a confirmed liar he

had never known converted. One night in a music and dancing saloon may

so pollute the imagination as to break down the barriers of years. One

throw at a gaming-table, one bet on a race, may so excite the craving

for this perilous speculation that it may be followed by the frenzy

and suffering of years of gambling. One indulgence of the lusts of the

flesh may so damn a man in his own eyes that in a year he may be utterly

foul. Dear young man, nothing deadens the conscience so much as sin;

nothing creates a desire for repetition so much as sin; nothing so rises

in its demands from every concession made to it so much as sin. Among

the most striking things in our language is a sentence of Jeremy Taylor

on the progress of sin: “Sin startles a man—that is, the first step;

then it becomes pleasing; then it becomes easy; then delightful, then

frequent; then habitual, then confirmed; then the man is impenitent, then

obstinate; then resolves never to repent, and then is damned.” My young

brother, it is in mercy that our heavenly Father sweeps away all the

trifling with sin by those strong but loving words, “Thou shalt _not_.”

Our poor self rises; passion raises its tempest of desire; experts in

vice solicit; the wrong waits to claim us and hold dominion over us, and

our good God, who sees the end, says, “Go not in the way of evil men;

avoid it, pass not by it, turn from it, and pass away.” It is just now,

when boyhood is over, that you are to gain the victory. Hearken to that

true man within you. Listen to that protest of God’s Spirit in your soul.

Resolve to obey and conquer, and the victory will make you stronger, and

make temptation weaker. No one, however, can win the victory for you. The

test to prove whether you will be ignoble or noble, is for you to grapple

with. With the first temptation, then, contend; for it may be a fight for

life or death.

I know there is a maxim very common that “a young fellow must sow his

wild oats.” They shall not be my words that reply to that saying. They

shall be those of a man who knows the world, and an ardent lover of

the pure pleasures of the world. “In all the range of accepted British

maxims,” says Mr. Thomas Hughes, M. P., “there is none, take it all in

all, more thoroughly abominable than this one as to the sowing of wild

oats. Look at it on which side you will, and I will defy you to make

any thing but a devil’s maxim of it. What a man, be he young, old, or

middle-aged, sows, _that_, and nothing else, shall he reap. The one only

thing to do with wild oats, is to put them carefully into the hottest

part of the fire, and get them burnt to dust, every seed of them. If you

sow them, no matter in what ground, up they will come, with long tough

roots like couch-grass, and luxuriant stalks and leaves, as sure as there

is a sun in heaven—a crop which it turns one’s heart cold to think of.

The devil, too, whose special crop they are, will see that they thrive,

and you, and nobody else, will have to reap them; and no common reaping

will get them out of the soul, which must be dug down deep again and

again. Well for you if with all your care you can make the ground sweet

again by your dying day. ‘Boys will be boys’ is not much better, but that

has a true side to it; but this encouragement to the sowing of wild oats

is simply devilish, for it means that a young man is to give way to the

temptations and follow the lusts of his age.”

As I am in these addresses to picture life as it is, and to let facts

speak, I will still add corroborative instances that have fallen under

my own observation. I feel sure that hundreds of young men would have

shunned vice if facts had been told them of its issues. They have few to

tell them. It is intensely disagreeable to tell them. But I cannot see

young men coming into our great cities without forewarning them of the

rocks ahead of them. While these sheets were passing through the press,

I had a most painful illustration of the ruin and sorrow following upon

the indulgence of sin. A young man came to London, bearing with him the

confidence and affection of a godly and afflicted mother, the pride of a

Christian father, and the yearning love of pure and beautiful sisters.

Because of his intelligence and probity, he was placed in a situation

of trust, and went on well while the thought of home and its sanctities

was with him. The tempter tried her arts, and caught him in her wiles.

The expenses of the dancing-room and the habits it led to were beyond

his limit of wealth. He took from intrusted money; the embezzlement was

not at first discovered. He grew confident. Satan wrapped blinding folds

around him. Alas, the success was brief. From a gloomy prison he sent

up a message to ask my prayers for him. I do not know him. None will

know him through this reference. At twenty-one he has brought a dark

shadow over his life-dawn. Deep as is the darkness, it may be God’s only

means of answering his mother’s prayers. Alas, for five years of his

imprisonment has that mother’s heart to be riven!

When I was a minister in Leeds, a fine youth came to that town. He was a

native of a far-off land. He came to acquire mechanical knowledge more

perfectly prior to becoming head of a great house. Wealth and possessions

were before him. An attached family circle delighted in him. He was

amiable, fascinating, and naturally generous. A group of wild young men

determined to allure him to pleasure and sin. He fell into the snare.

The billiard-room was visited; it led to the tavern, and then to the

brothel. His kind employer remonstrated with him and pointed out the

consequences of his courses. It was of no avail. He had consulted the

“secret physician,” or, rather, quack. A severe cold brought to a climax

his virulent disorder. His magnificent form was tossed upon a bed of

anguish. Loved ones hastened over the sea to seek to save him. It could

not be. So loathsome was his chamber that nurses could hardly be secured

to attend him, and those most loving him rushed overpowered from his

bedside. His pearly teeth all dropped out, and at length, decayed and

agonized, he died a dreadful, hopeless death.

3. _Be courageous._ I have spoken of the perils of great cities. I

might speak of their grand opportunities. They are the schools for the

highest education of which man is capable. They have their thousand

instrumentalities for noble development. They have their incitements to

the most pleasurable excitation. They bring a collision of mind largely

beneficial. They open channels for benevolence and greatness as no other

places do. But my advice is, let no man come to a great city without

courage. If he is weak, yielding, cowardly, let him not venture upon the

encounters of a city life. Let a youth aim to live a godly life, and

the sluggish will sneer, the empty-souled will laugh, the wicked will

throw out sarcasms. Woe to the man who cannot brave the laugh of fools.

My friend, it is the first step that costs. My observation leads me to

say that fast and depraved men, with all their brag, are the greatest

cowards. They like to make conquest of the inexperienced, but their

forced laugh very poorly covers the secret awe they have of the manly

and the firm. They know what is the right thing to do, spite of their

sarcasms. Do I say, Trust in yourself? By no means; if you wish to be

brave, God will provide you armor. If, on the other hand, you go into

the world saying, “I am not of the sort that yield; I am, afraid of no

danger,” then let me say there is fear for this self-confidence. It is

a proverb we need to repeat to ourselves: “Seest thou a man wise in his

own conceit, there is more hope of a fool than of him.” But be sure, my

young brother, God is interested in your going the right way. He loves

to help those who call upon him. I think of David as a young man crying

to his pious mother’s God: “Save the son of thy handmaid.” Morning by

morning ask God to arm you from head to foot, and then be strong and

courageous.

4. Having decided on the right course, _go forward_. That right course is

before you. No past guilt of yours is a barrier. “Christ has put away sin

by the sacrifice of himself.” There is an open pathway of reconciliation

on which you may walk. But oh, for God’s sake and your own sake, when

you have found that path, do not stand still. I have known young men who

started well: their standard was high; their ideal of what Christianity

demanded was just and lofty. They resolved they would scorn the mean,

the money-loving, the selfish in life. They wound their conscience up

to that point. But there the finger stopped, just at that figure: it

told out still what their ideal had been at starting. And this was all;

the clock did not go. They now have no sound, no tone about them. They

still say they scorn the mean, without aiming to _do_ noble things; they

still tell you they hate avarice, but they are not benevolent; they have

their theories about selfish Christians, but none bless them for their

self-renouncing deeds. This is of all things the most pitiable, that a

man should sink lower than his own standard, and go through life false to

himself.

“To thine own self be true;

And it must follow, as the night to day,

Thou canst not then be false to any man.”

I surely need not say, Turn not back. Should the eagle which has soared

higher than his compeers break his pinion, he would drop lower than the

lowest. It is related that in the American War of Independence, the army

of Washington had crossed a bridge over a deep river. With the river

behind and the enemy in front, the great general proposed the question to

his officers: “Shall we burn the bridge?” “Burn it!” said the staff; “we

may want it for a retreat.” “Retreat!” said Washington; “if that is the

only reason for retaining it, then it must perish.” “Burn the bridge!”

was his instant order; and it was laid in ashes.

5. _Cultivate helps to the spiritual life._ That life cannot take care

of itself. It sprung forth first to meet the touch of God’s Spirit, and

it can only grow and become strong by communion with the Spirit. You see

some who appeared to be religious youths at fourteen, and who are worldly

at twenty. No doubt there were fine religious susceptibilities which

were quickened into activity at the former period, and which gave them

vantage ground for a fine start; but they lived on themselves, which is

the same as feeding the body upon emptiness. No wonder their apparent

religious life should have died. It is very much to be deplored, that

with the facilities which are afforded to many through early closing

movements, the opportunities for social religious culture should be

passed by. Remember the secret of growth I have indicated—coöperation

with God. When a man has saplings in his orchard which bear only wild

fruit, like a good orchardist he seeks to improve them by grafting. He

cuts his grafts from a last year’s growth of wood; takes care that they

do not evaporate their moisture; then on the stocks grafts his scions If

a sapling is unbenefited; if the wood above the graft is just like the

wood below, which it ought not to be; or if the fruit be of a mongrel

kind, partly of the original stock and partly of the scion, what will he

do? Try again, it may be. But if, after repeated trials, he has the same

result, he will reject his unprofitable stocks, and turn his attention

to fresh young trees. This is Christ’s law of spiritual life. That which

beareth not fruit receiveth no more attention from the husbandman. “When

a young man has much given to him—religious training, divine movements on

his soul, glimpses of the beauty and blessedness of a religious life—if

then there is a self-confidence, badness of heart, levity with Scripture,

negligence in prayer, trifling with holy things, indifference to growth,

then Christ suspends the vital influences. The branch remains, but it

is sapless, lifeless, joyless. If the little life is in thy heart, my

brother, let me implore thee to seek its growth by prayer, by public

and social worship, by seeking acquaintance with the mind of the Spirit

in holy Scripture. The _Times_ newspaper—and the testimony of a secular

journal may have weight on this matter—said not long ago in a leader: “We

question if any person of any class ever read the Scriptures regularly

and thoroughly without being or becoming not only religious, but sensible

and consistent.”

6. _Ally yourself with the like-minded._ You will take your character

from your chosen companions. You may not mean it, but you cannot help

it. “He that walketh with wise men will be wise,” saith the proverb,

and the reverse side is true also. As a religious young man you cannot

stand alone. Associate yourself with the aspiring. Seek the sympathy and

helpfulness of a Christian church. You will not do this because you are

strong, but because you feel weak. You will go into a church not because

you are wise and holy, but because you need prayers, and the impulse

of mutual fellowship. There is a most unreasoning prejudice in this age

against church communion. “Do not be a sectary,” you will be told. You

may reply: “There never has been an age in England when the very best,

holiest, and most useful men were not counted sectaries.” The grandest

works which have gone to save and bless the world have been done by

Christian denominations; the noblest of men have been in firm alliance

with some Christian church. The outsiders have mostly been the critics,

the sentimental, and the ineffective. As a young man, a Christian

organization offers a grand scene for your labors and for your dignified

influence.

It may be you feel you cannot take your place among the righteous. Let

me then conjure you not to let a day pass without resolving that you

will give yourself in loyalty through Christ unto God. He is calling

you through these words to glory and virtue. He strives with you to win

your love. His garments have been dyed in blood for your salvation. He

bows himself to you and deigns to knock at the door of your heart.

Oh, for the sake of what is holiest, dearest, infinite, do not resist

his pleadings. On this the starting-point of your manhood, you are in

your own power. God appeals to you and says: “I set before you life and

death.” The end of life now seems far off. Believe me it will come sooner

far than you think. Ceaselessly, noiselessly, swiftly will life pass.

Your life must be looked back upon. If, after your opportunities, it is

proved to have been a life of waste and evil influence, heavier will

be your remorse and doom. May God in mercy grant that yours may be the

place among the consecrated ones who have blessed humanity, and who now

know the meaning and grandeur of a destiny that called them to glory and

immortality.

Thus do I lay these counsels before you, my friend, as you enter upon

life. They have been written amid the demands of a large charge and the

wearying claims of public life. They might have been better. But they

are the outpouring of an intensely anxious heart. Looking back upon the

past, I feel, with thousands more, that the great boon of existence

was the disposition to ally my nature with Christ’s when eighteen years

of age. From that time with what inexpressible benignity, patience, and

sympathy, has Christ helped me! And now, should I be called to no other

service, in the closing moments of life the hope that these few words had

induced some young men to choose Christ and all his mighty love, would

be most precious and grateful to my heart. This I know, that if old age

is welcomed when it brings to Christ only the relics of a wasted life;

for you, when you offer him the force of your will, the glow of your

affections, the opening powers of your intellect, for you there will be

more than welcome; there will be “lavish acknowledgment.” He will deign

to call it “the kindness of your youth,” which he will “remember” for

ever.

FOOTNOTES

[1] There is a sin of which I can hint only to you. Alas, its terrible

temptations and its awful consequences are becoming frightful. It is

not safe to omit notice in an appeal to a young man who may be entering

life in a great city. If you could know the little that has come to my

knowledge, your very hairs would stand on end. I could tell you of the

finest physical constitutions, which, after twelve months’ tampering with

this perilous fascination, have become pitiable wrecks of disease. I

could tell you, on medical authority, of men now dragging out a useless

existence, with reason dethroned, and drivelling in idiotcy. And the

punishment once done to the flesh does not depart. Life ends in early

death, or is a long suffering of humiliation; yea, worse still, the

suffering is perpetuated in the third and fourth generations. Young men

starting in life have none to tell them these things, therefore I have

forced myself to the hateful task. The displeasure of God against this

sin is awful. What would you think of a man who should pluck a flower

from a yawning chasm, when there were ninety-nine chances to one that he

would fall into the abyss below, and even if extricated, be scarred and

begrimed to the end of his days?

[2] In Memoriam, p. 143.

[3] Not very long since, a public lecturer was proceeding to Sheffield,

and in a railway train astounded me by arguing that the apostle Paul

preached the gospel before Jesus Christ was crucified. A Sunday-scholar

of seven years of age would have taught him better. I was lately in a

large meeting in Pentonville, when an intelligent man, who avowed himself

a skeptic, who had read Mr. Buckle’s “History of Civilization,” declared

that men who believed the Bible could never be expected to attend to

man’s social condition; for that Christ taught, in John 6, that we were

“not to labor for the meat which perisheth.” Now mark, the very verse

before the one quoted tells us that a multitude had followed Christ, not

at all caring for what he would teach them, but because he had fed them

with loaves and fishes. Their miserable motive he exposed, and bid them

labor for meat which endured unto everlasting life. Suppose a son of this

skeptic had taken what professed to be a letter from his mother, and

singled out a clause from its context to bring the letter into contempt

before a meeting, what would that father have called such a son? A

scoundrel. God probably pities him as he would not his son. But let young

men take heed of reasoning which is not merely a reproach to candor, but

to common intelligence.

[4] See Quarterly Journal of Geological Society, No. 86, p. 88. See note,

p. 129.

In Business

Rev. J. D. Wells, D. D.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

Boys PAGE 7

CHAPTER II.

Employers in Relation to Boys 9

CHAPTER III.

Boys in Relation to Employers 13

CHAPTER IV.

Young Men and Success 22

CHAPTER V.

Other Conditions of Success 32

INTRODUCTION.

Several years ago a man, now venerable for age and character, gave

the writer some valuable hints about boys and young men in relation

to business. He had himself begun life a poor boy, and achieved large

success. Coming to New York more than sixty years ago, he was familiar

with all the changes in methods of doing business up to the time then

present. Nor has he ceased to be active in the affairs of a large concern

at this later day. The passing years have made him old and have not

left me young. The thoughts he gave me, supplemented by my own reading,

observation and reflection, move me to set down some things that may be

helpful not only to the classes of persons already referred to, but to

others as well.

The great change in business methods does not warrant any change in the

characters and habits of those who have a right to expect success in any

true meaning of the word.

I would gladly speak a helpful word to the thousands of boys and young

men who are looking hopefully into the future, and yet may not have in

mind the true conditions of well-doing for themselves or their employers.

Boys and Young Men in Relation to Business.

CHAPTER I.

_BOYS._

If there were no boys there would be no young men and no old men. To

this truism add the saying, “The boy is the father of the man,” and our

subject has dignity and greatness at the outset. There may be aspects of

it that provoke merriment; but there are more of a different character,

and we are kept sober-minded in view of them.

The boy on shipboard is the “monkey.” The boy among types and presses

is the “printer’s devil.” The boy at school is “Jack,” or “Bill,” or

“Dick,” “hail-fellow well met,” and a peer among peers. The boy in

college, if any boys go to college, is a “Freshman,” bound—if not happily

emancipated of late—to serve the learned “Sophomore,” or take a ducking,

or something worse, for his disobedience.

In business the boy is just what his character, his companions and his

employers make of him. He may be a butt of ridicule, or a greenhorn to

be ripened into smartness and wickedness by those who are older and

wiser and worse than himself. He may be a poor drudge, to sweep and run

of errands, which may be all right; or to suffer untold indignities and

cruelties, with no uplifting to a better future and very little pay for

very much work, which is all wrong.

Or, by way of contrast, he may be treated from the start as having in him

the germ of real greatness, the undeveloped qualities of a man yet to be

acknowledged as the peer of those he serves, and the possible superior

of them all. No one but God knows what may be hid and struggling for

opportunity and recognition and reward in the obscurest little fellow who

takes the lowest place in any store or office or shop.