In other words, a man cannot wallow through the mire to the skies. No man can have two standards, one to be followed until he be forty or fifty, and then suddenly put away. No man can divest himself of the lower ideal which he has adopted as a temporary expedient, because in the meantime it has come to have the mastery over his soul. Putting aside the great choice, the hour comes when a man finds himself incapable of the great refusal and the standard to which he gave his temporary adherence, to be abandoned in the years of opulence and safety, becomes his despotic and inescapable master. It is no more possible to have two standards in the world of the spirit than it is possible to prescribe two different moral standards for men and women. Unity must be sought and achieved at the outset, not a lowered standard in the beginning and a higher standard in the end. The habit of the soul cannot be altered at will. Once to every man and not a thousand times comes the moment to decide, and the earlier decision will in part, if not in whole, be determinative of every later choice. And if, young men and women, there were nothing else for which to prepare, there is the future, there is the holy calling of parenthood to be pursued by most of you. Have I not the right to appeal to young men and women to-day to remember how much or how little they can make of their own lives, and may we not base such appeal upon the truth that they are to be the makers and the molders of the morrow; that unless their lips and lives proclaim the voice of God in the soul of man, there will follow a little-souled and mean-hearted generation instead of a race of great-hearted and noble-souled men and women. A beautiful passage in an allegory recently presented upon the stage tells of the song of unborn souls, which are dreaming of the parenthood to be their lot upon earth and looking forward with heavenly joy to the supreme felicity and benediction of parenthood. The most important duty of youth is to prepare with consciousness and consecration for life’s highest duty,—the duty of parenthood. Shall that future be polluted, shall that heritage be befouled? In reminding young men and women as I do that they are the trustees of the morrow, that they hold in their keeping the destiny of all the future, I am tempted to ask a question. What if I were to bring a little child before you, some beautiful child of a year or two, and what if some man sitting in this company were to come hither and for some unknown reason strike that child: would it not be with difficulty that we could restrain ourselves from doing violence to such a creature? What of the men and women committing a crime infinitely more hurtful, who would not strike a little child, but who, none the less, are ready to doom unborn generations to a heritage of evil, of hurt, of shame? What young man or woman will not think upon that?