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.”