I once went through a monastery in the old city of Florence, in Italy. It was a retreat for men who were tired of the world, or who felt so unequal to the strife and conflict of life in the world that they believed peace could be found only in retirement. The house was of the order of St. Francis. One of the monks took me into his cell, and I sat down and talked with him. It was a very small room—one door, one window, bare walls, a small table, two wooden chairs, a few books, a crucifix, a washstand, and some pieces of crockery; and that was all. In this room he lived, never to leave it except to go to the chapel, just across the corridor, and to walk in the cloisters for exercise; here he expected to die. It seemed very dreary and lonely to me. But I thought, if this were a certain and sure way of escaping from evil thoughts, and the only way, men may well submit to the confinement, the solitude, the monotony, the dreariness of this way of life. But, alas! it is not so. No close and narrow cell, no iron doors, no bolts and bars, can shut out our thoughts, for they are a part of ourselves: they are ourselves; for, “as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.”
Some years ago a country lad left his home to seek his fortune in the city. His mother was dead and his father broken in health and in fortune. The boy reached the city full of high hopes, promising his father that he would do his best to succeed in whatever fell to his lot to do. He was tall, strong and good-looking. A place was soon found for him, and until he was better able to support himself he found a home with some friends. He was a boy of good mind but with a very imperfect education, and he seemed inclined to make up for this in part by reading during his leisure hours. The situation found for him was in a large commercial house, where everything was conducted in the best manner and on the highest principles. Here he made rapid progress and was soon able to contribute to the support of those he had left at home in the country. He became interested in serious things, united with the Sunday-school, and after a while made a profession of religion. Everything went well with him for several years, until he fell in with some boys near his own age, who had been brought up under very different circumstances. Two or three of these were inclined towards skepticism in religious things, and their reading was quite unlike that to which this boy had been accustomed. Some fascination of manner about them attracted the lad to their society, and he grew less and less fond of his truest and best friends. He became irregular in his attendance at the Sunday-school, and when remonstrated with by his teacher and friends had no candid and manly answer for them. After a while he ceased going to church entirely, spending his time at his lodgings reading profane and immoral books or in the society of his new companions. Then he found his way with these friends (so he called them, but they were really his greatest enemies) to taverns and even to worse places, reading a corrupt literature and thinking he was strengthening his mind and broadening his views. A little further on and his habits grew worse, and became the subject of observation and remark. His early friends interposed, talked kindly with him and received his promise to turn away from his evil associates (who had well-nigh ruined him) and to lead a better life. He promised well, and for a time things with him were better. But after a while he fell away again into his old ways and with his old tempters, and before his friends were aware of it he disappeared and went abroad. Then letters were received from him. He was without means; he found it hard to get employment; he had no references, and the people among whom he found himself were distrustful of strangers.
One of his friends to whom he wrote for a letter of recommendation replied something like this:
“It is impossible for me to give you a letter of recommendation except with qualification. If you are seeking employment it is your duty to make a candid statement of your condition. Make a clean breast of it. Keep nothing back. Say that you had a good situation; that you were growing with the growth of your employers; that your salary had been advanced twice within the year; that one of the partners was your friend; that he had stood by you in your earlier youth; that he had extricated you from embarrassment and would have helped you again when needed, and that in an evil hour you forgot this, and your duty to him and to the house which sustained you; that you left your place without your father’s knowledge and well-nigh or quite broke his heart, and that all this grew out of your love of bad associates and your love of drink, and that while under this infatuation you went astray with bad women; and that in very despair of your ability to save yourself, and ashamed to meet your employers, you sought other scenes in the hope that in a new field and with new associates you could reform.
“If you say this or something like this to a Christian man, little as you affect to think of Christianity, his heart will open to you and you can then look him frankly in the face, and have no concealments from him. Any other course than this will only prolong your agony, and in the end plunge you in deeper shame and disgrace. If you will take this advice, you may yet make a man of yourself, and no one will be more rejoiced than myself or more ready to help you. Read the parable of the prodigal son every day; don’t think so much of your fancied mental ability; get down off your stilts and be a man, a humble, penitent man, and make your father’s last days cheerful, instead of blasting his life.
“You see that I am in earnest and that I feel a deep interest in you, else I would have thrown your letter to me into the fire.”
I believe that this young man’s fall was due entirely to the influence of his foolish, bad companions. And I know that this sad history is the record of many others; in fact, that the same experience awaits all who think it a light matter what company they keep, and who drift on the current with no purpose except to find pleasure, without regard to their duty to God. When I see, as I so often do, young men standing at the corners of the streets, or lounging against lamp-posts, and catch a word as I pass, very often profane or indecent, I know very well that a work of ruin is going on there, which, if unchecked, will certainly lead to destruction. And I wonder whether these boys and young men have parents or sisters, who love them and who yet allow them to pass unwarned down the road that leads to death.
But there are other companions, foolish, bad companions, besides those that appear to us in bodily form. They confront us in the printed page. You read a book or a pamphlet or paper which is full of dialogue. Such books are often more attractive than a plain narrative with little conversation. You enter fully, even if unconsciously, into the spirit of the story. The characters are real to you. You seem to see the forms before you; you make a picture of each in your mind, so that if you were an artist you could paint the portrait of each one. Sometimes the dialogue is full of profanity, and though you make no sound as you read, you are really pronouncing each word in your mind. And every time you say a bad word, in your mind, you defile your heart. You are in effect listening to bad words not spoken by other people merely, but spoken by yourself, and before you are aware of it you will be in the habit of thinking oaths when you are afraid to speak them out. It is even worse, if possible, when the language is obscene. Now do you ever think that when you are reading such wretched stuff you are in effect associating with the characters whose talk you are listening to, and without rebuke? They are thieves, pirates, burglars, dissolute, the very worst of society, even murderers. You may not have the courage to rebuke those who are defiling the very air with their foul talk; you may be too cowardly even to turn away from such company lest they sneer at you; but what do you say of a boy who deliberately, and after being warned, reads by stealth such stuff as I have described? Is there any one here who would be guilty of such conduct?
These evils of which I am speaking, and I do so most reluctantly, for these are not pleasant subjects—are not mere theories. They are sad realities. It was my ill fortune in my boyhood to know some boys who were essentially corrupt. Their minds were cages of unclean birds. They were inexpressibly vile. And it is this fear of the evil that one sinner may do among young boys that leads me to say what I do on this most painful subject. Oh, boys, if I can persuade you to turn away from foolish company, from bad associates, I shall feel that I am doing indeed a blessed work. For what is the object, the purpose of all this that is said to you? It is to make men of you and to give you grace and strength to assert your manhood. It is to build you up on the foundation of a substantial education, and so prepare you for the life that is before you here and for that life which is beyond. But the education of text-books illustrated by the best instructors is not enough; it is not all you need for the great work of your lives. You must be ready when you are equipped not only to take care of yourselves, but to help those who may be dependent upon you, for you are not to live for yourselves. And you cannot be fully equipped unless you have the blessing of Almighty God on your work and on your life.
I want you to be successful men, and no man can be a successful man, in the highest and best sense, unless he is a religious man. How can one expect to make his way in life as he ought, without the blessing of God? And how can one expect the blessing of God who does not ask God for his blessing? Prayers in the church are not enough; the reading of the Scriptures in the church is not enough; you must read the Scriptures for yourselves; you must pray for yourselves and each one for himself, as well as for others.