How full of plain utility is the first resolution! “Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed thereto according to thy word.” I do not recollect that anywhere the matter of merely intellectual clearness is made the subject of direct instruction in the Bible. But, without doubt, they who purify their hearts and manners, by taking heed according to the Word of God, take the most expeditious method of thoroughly clarifying the merely intellectual vision. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God;” not alone in the happy heaven that we love to think lies just beyond the years of earth, but probably they shall also see him in the theological and natural and social sciences of our human life.
In the second resolution is found the secret of many a pleasant face and many a strong and happy heart. And here I wish to make a few observations especially to the young. I wish to speak about Walter Aimwell’s life’s being very real to him. Boys think that is a matter of course; but it is not. Their lives seem real to them,—that is a matter of course with healthy boys. But if they live to the age when they should put away childish things, and they do not put them away, and do not live in the very best manner of Christian manliness known to them, or to be easily found out by them, then their lives will not seem real. The most fortunate of them will have a vague sense of having been disappointed. Perhaps they will not feel as though life had strongly or directly opposed their will; but they will grasp at things, indeed their fingers may actually close about things they think dear to them, and it will not seem as though they had. Persons whose natural capacities are as good as the average, and who live in civilized communities, grow so that trivialities cannot fill their minds with any sense of satisfaction. Leaving out of consideration the sin, it is the smallness of folly that makes the frivolous heart feel empty. It is as though a giant should sit down on the floor, and, grasping a sugar-plum in his great hand, try to coax up the look and feeling of riches and delight manifest in the baby opposite who has a similar sugar-plum. No wonder the giant does not feel happy: he does not even feel the sugar-plum.
They who do not live up to the spirit of Walter Aimwell’s second resolution, though they may not always be bitterly miserable, cannot he richly happy, nor even fully alive.
The third, fourth, and fifth rules are commended by almost every child; supposed to be adopted by almost every adult, and just about as universally violated; although the obligation is none the less binding, nor the penalty any the less sure, on account of the multitude of the wrong-doers. Walter Aimwell, like everybody else who has given an example of “holy living and holy dying,” had great respect for the little things of every day. Early in life he took one of his “decisive steps” in regard to these matters; and he was one who would not go backward. A very unusual success crowned his efforts to keep these resolutions.
His rule in regard to speaking the truth, pure and simple, is approved by all, and seems very easy to follow. But truthfulness is a virtue not to be possessed but by those who have many others. It requires a sterling character to speak the truth. Genuine humility is one of the first requisites of truth-speaking, and that, of course, is inconsistent with all vanity, pride, ambition, and petty spite, or sullen revenge. Humility is necessary even for the seeing of much truth, to say nothing of saying it. Next to the humility needful to see the truth without subjecting it to the refractions of our own wicked moods, a steady, faithful mind and will are almost indispensable to keep us from involuntarily giving hue to recital, according to the partialities or prejudices of our hearers. Humility, courage, strength, are prerequisites to truth-telling, no more to be dispensed with than conscience.
His seventh rule is one of which perhaps he stood in more need than many persons, especially at the time when it was adopted. He had such a keen sense of the ludicrous, and such aptness sometimes to make it appear to others, and the Sabbath being the day on which the apprentice-boy was least restricted in companionship, it is highly probable that he sometimes offended his own taste as well as conscience by the utterance of words that disturbed the thoughts necessary to the restoring of the soul. Probably it is a good general rule; and the majority of objectors to it will be found among those in no great danger of breaking it, but who, if they do happen to think of anything funny, cannot forego the rare pleasure of saying it, even if it rudely break the meditations of those who are trying to keep the Sabbath holy.
Perhaps the abrupt and pithy wording of the eleventh rule may fall with somewhat of gloom upon some young hearts, whose owners are playing the part of butterflies. But then, none but poor little worms, comparatively poverty-stricken in regard to the gifts of God, ought to be ambitious of being butterflies. He who can feel the quiver of wings that stretch six feet should not flutter about a pink, nor balk his royal bosom of its full breath by running his head into a lily-cup. Let him soar away to the sunshine above the mountains. He will be better satisfied to battle with a cloud than to nestle under a rose-leaf.
That resolution did not affect Walter Aimwell with gloom. Without doubt, he very faithfully kept it; for he often spoke of death,—not making occasions for the subject, but naturally, as it will often present itself to those who do not fear it. I think the only thing in the universe that he dreaded was sin. He had been born into the new life; and although in the initiatory processes of that new birth the thought of death may have struck his mind with peculiar force, he had become so occupied with living the immortal life that death was regarded simply as one of the many things incident to the beginning of that life. He knew God had given him duties and pleasures to satisfy the measure of his capacities before death, and he had not a doubt that the same God would do the same thing after death. He had no gloomy thoughts or feelings upon the subject.
Take particular notice of the fifteenth and sixteenth resolutions. We often hear it said, “There’s no use in striving against nature.” “Don’t blame him; it is natural for him to do so.”