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.