The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1897-08-20

nan who started life with good health
and good education and a Christian ex-
ample set him, and opportunity of USE
fulness, who gathered all his treasures
n put them in one box and then
dropper it into the sea.
Now, how is this wholesale slaughter
to be stopped? There is not a person
who is not interested in that question.
The object of my sermon is to put a
weapon in each of your hauds for your
own defense. Wait not for Young
Mems Christian associations to pro-
tect you or churches to protect you.
Appealing to Tod for help, take care of
yourself.
First have a room somewhere that
you can call your own. Whether it be
the back parlor of a fashionable board
ing house or a room in the fourth story
of a cheap lodging 1 care not. Only
have that one room for your fortress.
Let not the dissipator or ncdea step
over the threshold. If they come up
the long flight of stairs and knock at
the door, meet them face to face and
kindly yet firmly refuse them admit
lance. lave a few family portraits on
the wall, if you brought them with you
from your country home. Have a
Bible on the stand. If you can afford
it and al play on one, have an instru-
ment of music-harp or flute or cornet
or melOdeOn or violin or piano. Every
morning before you "a that room
pray. Every night after you come home
in that room pray. Make that room your
Gibralter, your Sevastopol, our Mount
Zion. Let no bad book or newspaper
come into hat room IN more than
you would allowa cobra to coil on your
table.
Take care Of yourself. Nobody else
will TAX care CT you. Your help will
not come up two or three or o u flights
of stairs; yOur help will come through
the roof, down from heaven, from that
God who in the 5000 years of the
worlds history never betrayed a young
man who tried to be good and a Chris
tan. Let me say in regard to your adj
verse worldly circumstances, in passing
that you are on a level now with those
who are finally to succeed. Mark my
words, young man, and think of it thir-
ty years from now. You will find that
those who thirty years from now are
the m~illiOnaires of this country, who
are the orators Of the country, who are
the poets of the country, who are the
strong merchants of the country who
are the great philanthropists of the
country-mightiest in church and state
are his morning on a level with you,
not an inch above, and you in strait
ened circumstances now.
Herschel earned his living by playing
a violin at parties, and in the inter-
stices of the play he would go out n
look up at the midnight heavens, the
fields of his immortal conquests. George
Stephenson rose from being the fore
man in a colliery to be the most re-
nowned of the worlds engineers. No
outfit, no capital to start with, Young
man, go down to the library and get
nrn hnnEc on6 Vno1 Of rrho4 u-ArIor
full mechanism God gave you in your
hand, in your foot, in your eye, in your
ear, and then ask some doctor to lake
you into the dissecting room and illus
trate to you what you ave read about,
n never again commit the blasphemy
of saying you ave no capital to start
with. Equipped! Why, the poorest
young man is equipped as only the God
of the whole universe could afford to
equip him. Then his body-a very
poor affair compared with his WONDER
full soul-oh, that is what makes me
sOlicitOus. 1 am not SO much anxious
about you, young man, because you
have SO little to do with as I am an
xious about you because you have SO
much to risk and lose or gain.
YOUNG MEN IN GREAT CITIES.
There is no class of persons that so
stir my sympathies Is young men in
great cities. Not quite enough salary
to live on, and all the temptations that
come from the deficit. Invited on all
hands to drink, and their exhausted
nervOus system seeming to demand
stimulus. Their religion caricatured by
the most of the clerks in the store and
most of the operatives in the factory.
The rapids of temptation and death
rushing against that young man forty
miles the hour, and he in a frail boat
headed up stream, with nothing but a
broken a to work with. Unless AL
mighty God help them they will go un-
der.
All, when I told you to take care of
yourself you misunderstood me if you
thought I meant you are to depend
upon human resolution, which may be
dissolved in the foam of the wine cup
or may be blow out with the first
gust of temptation. Here is the helmet
the sword of the Lord God Almighty.
Cloth yourself IN that panopy, and
you shall not be put to confusion. Sin
pay we'll neither in this world nor the
next, but right thinking and right be-
lieving and right acting will AXE you
in safety through this life and in trans
port through the next.
1 never shall forget a prayer 1 heard
a young man make some fifteen years
ago. 1t was a very short prayer. but
it was a tremendous prayer: 20 Lord,
help us. We find it so very easy to
do wrong and SO hard to do right. Lord,
help u.s." That prayer, I warrant you,
reached the ear of God and reached his
heart. And there are 100 men who have
found out-1 900 young men, perhaps,
who have found out-that very thing.
1t is SO very easy to do wrong and so
hard to do right.
I got a letter one day. only one para
graph, which I shall read:
Having moved around somewhat. I
have run across many young men of
intelligence, ardent strivers after that
Observation-Disclosures Of one
Of these I would speak. He was a
young Englishman of % or "a years,
who came to New York. where he a
no acquaintances, with barely SUM-
cient to keep him a couple Of weeks. I
a been tenderly reared. perhaps /
should say too tenderly, and was not
naod fo oopu3nD his living and f0unA If