The Yale expositor., 1898-12-23

Die. why so! Because the large ma
jority of people quit this life before
twenty-five years of age, and the possi-
biiity is that If you do not take posses
sion of this religion, and religion does
not take possession of you while you
are young, you will never come into
alliance. Mrs. Mckinley, the mother
OF our president, said to me at the
White House:s 81 am living on bor-
rowed time, for am over eighty years
OF age" My reply to her was the re-
ply l make to you: "All those who
are over fifteen years of age are living
on borrowed time, since the majority
of people 90 out OF the world before
fifteen years of age"
Moro young men would take this ad-
vantage which l speak OF if they did
not have the notion that religion puts
one into depressing process. They
have heard. for instance. the absurd
preachment: you ought to live
every day as though it were your last"
Such a lachrymose man l would not
want anywhere 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 10 smell Of var
nish ot coffin-lids in our genuine re-
ligion. Get in right relation 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 a manly
religion, one that will extirpate from
your nature all that ought to be ex-
tirpated, and irradiate it with every
virtue, and make it glow with every
anticipation.
Do not postpone 10 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 forty years OF age, you will never
amount to much.
Young man, start right, and the only
way to start right is to put yourself
into comparionship with the best
friend a young man ever had-Christ
the Lord. He will give you equipoise
amid the rocking of life's uncertain
ties. He will support you in day OF
loss. He will direct you when you
come to the forks of the road and
know not which road to take. He will
guide you in your home life. II 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
fortune. II your earthly projects fail,
and you are put in financial straits, He
will see to it that that is the best con-
dition for your soul, and the discipline
and the hardship will make you more
and more of man. If you live on to
old age, He will make the evening
twilight as bright as, and perhaps
brighter than, was the morning twi-
light, and when your work on earth is
done, the gates of better world will
open on expansions and enthrone-
ments and felicities which St. John de-
scribes, sometimes as orchards, some
times as shaded streets, and sometimes
as crystalline river. and sometimes as
an orchestra with mighty instruments,
blown on by lips cherubic, or
thrummed by fingers seraphic, and in
habitants always fearless. and songful,
and respondent, so that the mightiest
calamity of the universe is the portion
of that one who fails to enter 1t.
Young man, seek only elevating and
improving mpanionship. Do not let
the last scion of noble family. a fell
low with big name but bad habits,
Tor he drinks and swears and is disso-
lutte, 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. / 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,
when with hawks or falcons they went
forth to bring down partridges, or
grouse, or pigeons, and being very
thirsty, came to a stream struggling
from a rock, and releasing the falcon
from his wrist, he took the bugle
which he carried, and stopping the
mouth piece of his bugle with tuft of
moss, he put this eXtemporized cup
under the water which came down,
drop by drop, from the rock until the
cup was full. and then lifted 1t to
drink, when the falcon he had re-
leased, with sudden swoop, dashed the
cup from his hand. By the same pro-
cess he filed the cup again, and was
about to drink when the falcon by an
other swoop dashed down the cup. En-
ragged at this insolence and violence of
the bird, he cried, II will wiring thy
neck If thou doest that again." But
having filled the cup a third time the
falcon dashed it down. Then Sir Brasil
with his fist struck the bird, which
futtered and looked lovingly and re-
proachfully at him and dropped dead.
Then Sir Brasil looking up to the top
of the rock whence dripped the water,
saw a great green serpent, coiled fold
above fold, the venom from his mouth
dropping into that from which Sir
Brasil had filed his cup. Then ex-
cloirned the knight "What n kind