Weekly expositor. (Brockway Centre, Mich.) 1882-1894, 1891-10-23
What the Young Ought to Think About
BY PROF. c. }. THORPE.

Life's object on earth has long been
regarded by most men to be to prepare
for an eternal career. Until recently
the attainment of II certain faith was
held to be that preparation in COM
pleteness-and that not of mans own
thinking but of Gods grace. Without
weighing the mighty potency of the
hereafter upon conduct, strictly mum
dane existence lies more or less in the
future-a future hinged to the present
and the past. Hence ever i'll all minds
there must exist the question, What
should be done to-day that tomorrow
may be welcomed with equinimity and
hope?
Inspired by this laudable object, in
all times more or less, man has under
taken to learn not only what sutficeth
now, but also what will be useful and
required farther on. Nor has this sem
timent moved men severally only; it
has actuated them collectively TO un-
dertake to shape the young for the du-
ties that certainly pertain to later life.
Thus has originated all that is designat-
ed education and culture-a systematic
movement in recent years, vast as the
area of the world and the unnumbered
Great, and good because right, this
intelligent foresight applied to youth
in the three hundred years of its evo-
luton has wrought more for peace,
prosperity, happiness than all the
armies whose marchings have shaken
earth in the bloody past-than all the
creeds whose demands place ceremoni-
ais before science and prefer content
ment to inquiry.
Yet however vast, the mass of ideas
which throng the minds of men, with
out purpose and choice, are useless,
perhaps baneful. This is no unweighed
sentiment. Reflect and answer why
youth unheeding walk the earth whose
stones bear its undreamed of history
written in their bosoms; why the plants
are plucked of their leaves and bios
SONS yet come and go without study;
why the myriads of living creatures
bear to so few one true thought of their
natures, their conditions, their past.
These facts indicate a blind, a cruel
error visited upon the young forever.
In world of endless indictments to
study. little that is solid and sure is
CLEANED, and no habits of inquiry fix
ed. All is superficial and transient.
This fact comes not alone, but bear
ing u plea for 2 remedy. Thinking
proceeds necessarily in youth, leaping,
flashing, resting moment to bound on
again like the mountain rill, obedient
to unknown law. The remedy for
random thinking and worthless, HARM
full thoughts is methodical study con-
cerning matters of known worth in fur
nishing useful facts and still more USE
full habits-habits that direct thought,
encourage honesty and cite the nature
of responsibility. Let anyone review
his infancy, yea, his manhood, and es-
innate for himself his mental and NOR
al possessions. Parceling them as USE
ful, inert and harmful, he will be
| amazed at the smallness of the first lot
and the growing largeness of the 9TH
ers. Nor should he wonder why life is
such battle with conscience that he
is shorn like shaven Samson of most of
his will to choose and plan and strength
to do. Divided against himself man
surely falls. The cause begins at birth
in drifting through sport and task, see
ing all, grasping, methodizing nothing.
Hence when infancy merges into adult
life, too often memory has recorded
nothing thoroughly and nothing at all
but the most striking of isolated events.
Such manhood begins as menagerie
appears-an aggregation of haps and
hurts, heats and hatreds, longings and
disappointments, knowing little of the
nature of environment and the need of
sharpened sight, wisdom of choice,
soundness of judgment. and that pa
tience in study whose fruit is under
standing.
Manifestly then education should
begin with awakening consciousness
and proceed through life to its end
without rest or vacation. Children
must be taught to read as they run if
they are to be demanded seriously of
in later years,-read beauty and its
use, Joy and its fit sources, hope and
its sure foundations, right and Its per-
feet fruitage; else in the intellectual
and moral spheres there must ever re-
main the present clashing of elements
i'm war tending to chaos