Young Men; In Business

by William Guest; J. D. Wells

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.”