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.