I surely need not say, Turn not back. Should the eagle which has soared higher than his compeers break his pinion, he would drop lower than the lowest. It is related that in the American War of Independence, the army of Washington had crossed a bridge over a deep river. With the river behind and the enemy in front, the great general proposed the question to his officers: “Shall we burn the bridge?” “Burn it!” said the staff; “we may want it for a retreat.” “Retreat!” said Washington; “if that is the only reason for retaining it, then it must perish.” “Burn the bridge!” was his instant order; and it was laid in ashes.
5. Cultivate helps to the spiritual life. That life cannot take care of itself. It sprung forth first to meet the touch of God’s Spirit, and it can only grow and become strong by communion with the Spirit. You see some who appeared to be religious youths at fourteen, and who are worldly at twenty. No doubt there were fine religious susceptibilities which were quickened into activity at the former period, and which gave them vantage ground for a fine start; but they lived on themselves, which is the same as feeding the body upon emptiness. No wonder their apparent religious life should have died. It is very much to be deplored, that with the facilities which are afforded to many through early closing movements, the opportunities for social religious culture should be passed by. Remember the secret of growth I have indicated—coöperation with God. When a man has saplings in his orchard which bear only wild fruit, like a good orchardist he seeks to improve them by grafting. He cuts his grafts from a last year’s growth of wood; takes care that they do not evaporate their moisture; then on the stocks grafts his scions If a sapling is unbenefited; if the wood above the graft is just like the wood below, which it ought not to be; or if the fruit be of a mongrel kind, partly of the original stock and partly of the scion, what will he do? Try again, it may be. But if, after repeated trials, he has the same result, he will reject his unprofitable stocks, and turn his attention to fresh young trees. This is Christ’s law of spiritual life. That which beareth not fruit receiveth no more attention from the husbandman. “When a young man has much given to him—religious training, divine movements on his soul, glimpses of the beauty and blessedness of a religious life—if then there is a self-confidence, badness of heart, levity with Scripture, negligence in prayer, trifling with holy things, indifference to growth, then Christ suspends the vital influences. The branch remains, but it is sapless, lifeless, joyless. If the little life is in thy heart, my brother, let me implore thee to seek its growth by prayer, by public and social worship, by seeking acquaintance with the mind of the Spirit in holy Scripture. The Times newspaper—and the testimony of a secular journal may have weight on this matter—said not long ago in a leader: “We question if any person of any class ever read the Scriptures regularly and thoroughly without being or becoming not only religious, but sensible and consistent.”
6. Ally yourself with the like-minded. You will take your character from your chosen companions. You may not mean it, but you cannot help it. “He that walketh with wise men will be wise,” saith the proverb, and the reverse side is true also. As a religious young man you cannot stand alone. Associate yourself with the aspiring. Seek the sympathy and helpfulness of a Christian church. You will not do this because you are strong, but because you feel weak. You will go into a church not because you are wise and holy, but because you need prayers, and the impulse of mutual fellowship. There is a most unreasoning prejudice in this age against church communion. “Do not be a sectary,” you will be told. You may reply: “There never has been an age in England when the very best, holiest, and most useful men were not counted sectaries.” The grandest works which have gone to save and bless the world have been done by Christian denominations; the noblest of men have been in firm alliance with some Christian church. The outsiders have mostly been the critics, the sentimental, and the ineffective. As a young man, a Christian organization offers a grand scene for your labors and for your dignified influence.
It may be you feel you cannot take your place among the righteous. Let me then conjure you not to let a day pass without resolving that you will give yourself in loyalty through Christ unto God. He is calling you through these words to glory and virtue. He strives with you to win your love. His garments have been dyed in blood for your salvation. He bows himself to you and deigns to knock at the door of your heart. Oh, for the sake of what is holiest, dearest, infinite, do not resist his pleadings. On this the starting-point of your manhood, you are in your own power. God appeals to you and says: “I set before you life and death.” The end of life now seems far off. Believe me it will come sooner far than you think. Ceaselessly, noiselessly, swiftly will life pass. Your life must be looked back upon. If, after your opportunities, it is proved to have been a life of waste and evil influence, heavier will be your remorse and doom. May God in mercy grant that yours may be the place among the consecrated ones who have blessed humanity, and who now know the meaning and grandeur of a destiny that called them to glory and immortality.
Thus do I lay these counsels before you, my friend, as you enter upon life. They have been written amid the demands of a large charge and the wearying claims of public life. They might have been better. But they are the outpouring of an intensely anxious heart. Looking back upon the past, I feel, with thousands more, that the great boon of existence was the disposition to ally my nature with Christ’s when eighteen years of age. From that time with what inexpressible benignity, patience, and sympathy, has Christ helped me! And now, should I be called to no other service, in the closing moments of life the hope that these few words had induced some young men to choose Christ and all his mighty love, would be most precious and grateful to my heart. This I know, that if old age is welcomed when it brings to Christ only the relics of a wasted life; for you, when you offer him the force of your will, the glow of your affections, the opening powers of your intellect, for you there will be more than welcome; there will be “lavish acknowledgment.” He will deign to call it “the kindness of your youth,” which he will “remember” for ever.
FOOTNOTES
[1] There is a sin of which I can hint only to you. Alas, its terrible temptations and its awful consequences are becoming frightful. It is not safe to omit notice in an appeal to a young man who may be entering life in a great city. If you could know the little that has come to my knowledge, your very hairs would stand on end. I could tell you of the finest physical constitutions, which, after twelve months’ tampering with this perilous fascination, have become pitiable wrecks of disease. I could tell you, on medical authority, of men now dragging out a useless existence, with reason dethroned, and drivelling in idiotcy. And the punishment once done to the flesh does not depart. Life ends in early death, or is a long suffering of humiliation; yea, worse still, the suffering is perpetuated in the third and fourth generations. Young men starting in life have none to tell them these things, therefore I have forced myself to the hateful task. The displeasure of God against this sin is awful. What would you think of a man who should pluck a flower from a yawning chasm, when there were ninety-nine chances to one that he would fall into the abyss below, and even if extricated, be scarred and begrimed to the end of his days?
[2] In Memoriam, p. 143.
[3] Not very long since, a public lecturer was proceeding to Sheffield, and in a railway train astounded me by arguing that the apostle Paul preached the gospel before Jesus Christ was crucified. A Sunday-scholar of seven years of age would have taught him better. I was lately in a large meeting in Pentonville, when an intelligent man, who avowed himself a skeptic, who had read Mr. Buckle’s “History of Civilization,” declared that men who believed the Bible could never be expected to attend to man’s social condition; for that Christ taught, in John 6, that we were “not to labor for the meat which perisheth.” Now mark, the very verse before the one quoted tells us that a multitude had followed Christ, not at all caring for what he would teach them, but because he had fed them with loaves and fishes. Their miserable motive he exposed, and bid them labor for meat which endured unto everlasting life. Suppose a son of this skeptic had taken what professed to be a letter from his mother, and singled out a clause from its context to bring the letter into contempt before a meeting, what would that father have called such a son? A scoundrel. God probably pities him as he would not his son. But let young men take heed of reasoning which is not merely a reproach to candor, but to common intelligence.