Connecticut western news., 1898-12-22

blank proposition. If you want them, you can have them on your side for the earnest asking-omniscience omnipres. enoe, omnipotencel Gan you imagine a greater contrast than young man un- dertaking life alone-life, with all its confrontments of temptation and ob- stacle-and young man undertaking life with every wing of angel and every thunderbolt of heaven pledged for his defense and advanoement-the differ ence between young man alone and a young man befriended by the Maker and Upholder of the universe. The bat tie of life is so severe that no young man can afford to decline any help, and the mightiest help is God. One night in the year TAI Count Lessook went to escort the Princess Elizabeth of Russia to throne which was then unoccupied. She halted, she hesitated, she wondered whether she had better go to the palace and mount the throne of all the Russias- Then Count Lessock drew upon paper two sketches, the one of herself and the count in disgrace and on the scaffold and the other of herself on throne amid huzzaing subjects. When she saw plainly that she must make 8 choice, she chose the throne put be- fore the young men of Washington and the young men of America the choice between overthrow and endorsement. You may have what you will. Will you be the slave of passion and sin and death or conqueror empalacedp The Ipanish proverb was right when it said, "The road of By and By leads to the town of Never"
 No Coffin Lid Religion.
 More young men would take this ad- vantage which speak of if they did not have the notion that religion puts one into depressing process. They have heard, for instance, the absurd preach ment, "You ought to live every day as though it were your last. Such lachrymose man 1 would not want any where around me. On the contrary, you ought to live as though you were going to live great while in this world and to live forever in the next world. There is no smell of varnish of coffin lids in our genuine religion. Get in right rela- tion with God through Jesus Christ and you need not bother yourself the rest of your life for two minutes about your death or about your funeral. Here is manly religion, one that will extirpate from your nature all that ought to be extirpated and irradiate it with every virtue and make it glow with every an ticipation.
 Neither would have you adopt that other absurd preachment, that the things of this world are of little importance as compared with the next world. On the contrary, you cannot sufficiently appre- ciate the importance of this world, for it decides your next world. You might as we'll despise schoolhouse because it is not university. In the schoolhouse we prepare for the university. If this world is of such little importance, do not think the first born and the last born of heaven would have spent 33 years down here to redeem it.
 Do not postpone to the fifties or even the forties of your life that which you can be and do in the twenties or thir- ties If you do not amount to much be- fore 40 years of age, you will never amount to much. Jefferson wrote the Declaration of American Independence at 33 years of age. William Pitt was prime minister of England at 24. Ra- phael's great paintings were all finished before he was 37 years of age. Cortes was 31 when he overcame Mexico. Gro tius was attorney general at 24. Gus tavus Adolphus expired at 38. At 27 Calvin published his immortal "Insti- tutes" Alexander the Great died at 37, and lesser men get armed for the chief good or evil of their lives before they reach their midlife.
 Young man, start right, and the only way to start right is to put yourself into panionship with the best friend a young man ever had-Christ the Lord He will give you equipoise amid the rocking of life's uncertainties. He will support you in day of loss. He will di- rect you when you come to the forks of the road and know lfet which road to take. He will.guide you in your home life, if you are wise enough to have a home of your own. If you live on to great prosperity, he will show you how to manage a fortune. If your earthly projects fail, and you are put in finap oial straits, he will see to it that that is the best condition for your soul, and the discipline and the hardship will make you more and more of a man If you live on to old age. he will make the evening twilight as bright as and per haps brighter than was the morning twilight, and when your work on earth is done the gates of better world will open on expansions and enthronements and felicities which St. John describes, sometimes as orchards, sometimes as shaded streets and sometimes as orys- talline river and sometimes as an or ohestra with mighty instruments, blown on by lips oherubic or thrummed by fingers seraphio and inhabitants always fearless and songful and resplendent, so that the mightiest calamity of the uni verse is the portion of that one who fails to enter it.
 Sin h Expensive.
 Young man, seek only elevating and improving ompanionship. Do not let the last scion of noble family, fel- low with big name, but bad habits, for he drinks and swears and IS disso- lute, take your arm to walk down the street or spend an evening with you, either at your room or his room. Re- member that sin is the most expensive thing in Gods universe. 1 have read that Sir Brasil, the knight, tired out with the chase, had a falcon on his wrist, as they did in days of falconry, ho., hox bo fo1o fhar forth tn hiring down cartridges or grouse
 A FRIEND IN NEED.