Life:
HOW WILL YOU USE IT?
Life:
HOW WILL YOU USE IT?
The following words are addressed to young men by one who, not very long ago, was one of them. If they are serious and earnest, they are non the less sympathetic and brotherly.
On the mind of some thoughtful men there is the fear that England has seen her best days, that her sun is going down, and that a decline like that of other great nations has begun. This is probably the language of mere pessimists. Albeit, even hopeful men have reason enough to be anxious. There is a frost of skepticism touching the young mind of England. There is a dread of enthusiasm which bodes ill. Young men stand in our great cities amid juggling expedients, glittering pretences, specious deceits, unscrupulous graspings after wealth or position the tides of temptation flow fast around them; a high civilization has made wickedness very facile and seductive; veteran experts in vice are found everywhere, and the very streets are allowed to be fevered walks of lustful solicitations.
If England is to be saved and is to have a great future, it will be through her young men. They are the hope of society. A man, therefore, who is indifferent to their moral dangers and welfare is no friend to his country. I will make, then, no apology while I speak to them earnestly of their life, and what it may be and can be. No doubt there are scores of empty and frivolous young men who can never be won to thoughtfulness. May God help them; for the look-out that is before them is awful. But there are many of a different stamp, and may their Father and mine help me to articulate his yearning thoughts about them.
My brother, I am not about to speak to you of what belongs to others, nor mainly of the duties you owe to others; but of what you imperatively owe to yourself, and what emphatically belongs to you. You have an existence in which the grandest and the most terrific possibilities are wrapped up. Life has been given to you. What significance is in the word! Life, with its unknown treasures and vast capabilities; life, with all its resources and opportunities; life, with all its rich enjoyments and pleasurable unfoldings; life, endowed with consciousness and divine faculties; life, which beginning with the sweetness of infancy, and passing through the open-heartedness of school days, can ripen into a beauty and strength and force of goodness which, through the long ages of immortality, will find accessions of ever-augmenting felicity, power, and blissfulness. My brother, when I discourse to you of the value of this transcendent gift of life, exaggeration is hardly possible. No language of men or angels can worthily set forth the full meaning of this gift. You, among creatures, are obviously destined to rank with the noblest on the basest of beings; the elevation with which you come into the universe is the measure of the grandeur to which you may rise, or the degradation to which you may fall.
The question therefore comes, What do you intend to do with this your life? You have come to an age when this question confronts you. You ignore your rationality by evading it. The two paths of honor and dishonor are now before you: which do you intend to take? I put the inquiry in this form—What will you do with your life?—because millions of men have been ruined, not so much through wrong intention as through want of thought. They have drifted into an evil course through a passive unthinkingness. It is not that they have resolved to do bad things, but they have not resolved to do good ones. Instead of being masters of themselves, sad to say, they have not even belonged to themselves. On their forehead might have been once written, “We are open to become the possession of whatsoever shall make capture of us.” Instead of controlling, they have been borne along by outward things, like a little boat in a dangerous stream, not carefully rowed and guided, but empty, and inviting any unskilled or wicked hand to become its master.
There are young men possessing all the capacities for a dignified and manly conduct theirs, through the hard industry of others, are all the qualifications of education and competence. They are surrounded with circles offering every facility to happiness and pure enjoyment. And what do these young men do with all this wealth of possession? I will sketch a few of the courses into which they permit themselves to be seduced. One, just out of his teens, affects a manly superiority; calls “the governor” slow; orders his tailor to make garments in a “fast” fashion; cultivates an elegant beard; secures a massive chain, and if possible, a splendid ring. His boots are a very important item to his manliness; and then what deliberation upon the color of his gloves, and the flexibility of his cane! As he steps from the door of his plodding father, he puts a finish to his appearance by lighting a cigar, and with a hat à la mode, walks out, a ready prey for the painted woman, and an advertisement for men on the look-out for unsophisticated manhood. I do not say that a young man may not have a gold chain, and trousers made in the height of fashion, if he likes—there is no religion in not having these things; but for the sake of all that is manly, do not let a young man think that this is to make a worthy use of life—to be a show thing to be looked at in the streets.