Civilization goes on its soft way, and takes under its smiling protection persons who walk upon the earth's higher places, and finds for them kind excuse and screens them from harsh frown, as they pass from their pleasures back to its silvery paths, leaving behind them as the price of their pleasures misery and ruin of which we may not speak in this place. No fouler crimes debased old Rome in its worst days than the crimes which the civilization of England's metropolis condones. But the heart of the people does not condone them: and if a great voice does not say this, we shall wonder and be sorry. In the mean while let the parents and guardians of the young, and let the young themselves, shrink back from civilization as a guide to their way and as a power for keeping them safe, in the place of the Living God. And our closing word shall be to the young. I said just now that the world could not grow old. And because of the world having within it the seeds of a ceaseless vitality, that is true. The world as it now is cannot grow old. But a nation may grow old, may decay, and die. And the youth of a nation--its young people--carry with them its destinies. If there is in these more of wilfulness, of selfishness, of slothful and luxurious bias--less of energy, of gentleness, of kindness, of manliness, of purity--than there was in those who were young twenty--thirty years ago, then decrepitude is growing upon the nation. It is sinking. The sap of its life is drying up. But the young are not likely to think much of what they do or of what they are, as it concerns the nation. Let them think of it as it concerns themselves. My younger brethren, shall the life that you are living be a blessing to you and not a curse? Shall it be to those around you a blessing and not a curse? Then hold fast your faith in the Living God. Is it drooping in some minds? Do they ask where they shall find Him? The Jews of old time wore fringes on the borders of their garments, and upon these were written some words of the law. It was an ordained thing. "And ye shall look upon this fringe," it is said in a noble passage of the book of Numbers, "it shall be to you for a fringe, and ye shall look upon it, and ye shall remember the commandments of the Lord your God, and do them, that ye seek not after your own heart and your own eyes, but that ye may remember, and do all my commandments and be holy unto your God." We wear no fringes on the borders of our garments. But the law is written in every heart. Look upon it, young men and young women, and remember--_That is God_: not a stream of tendency or any such vague and fantastic shadow. But, _That is God_--the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and in Him your Father.