You live. A definite responsibility is thereby placed upon you. Not as a burden to be borne with sadness, but rather as an act of beneficence has the Creator called you into being and sent you forth upon your mission in the world. He sends you to a world full of beauty. Sunshine, fragrance, and melody are about you. Yet you may not be conscious of it. Blindness or perverted vision may cloud the sky and fill the earth with shadows. The clamors of selfish interest or lawless passion may change the harmony into perpetual discord and din. Evil associations, impure thoughts, and unholy practises create false ideas of life. "Faults in the life breed errors in the brain, And these reciprocally those again; The mind and conduct mutually imprint, And stamp their image in each other's mint." Yet for him who hath eyes to see, the world is full of beauty. Nor beauty only; but design is everywhere manifested, revealing the presence of a supreme Intelligence and immeasurable love in fitting out for man a perfect habitation. Whatever of wretchedness the world holds is man-made. It is proof positive of a purpose to make man happy that so many instruments of pleasure are placed at his hand. Each sense and organ has its objects of exercise and enjoyment. Every natural instinct, desire, and appetite is recognized, and its proper, legitimate indulgence provided for. Blessed are they who find life joyous and who choose it, not from a fear of death, but for what there is in life--who can say: "I find death perfectly desirable, but I find life perfectly beautiful." You have life and you have youth. You live in life's morn; the spring-time of your existence is upon you. Quick perceptions, swift and keen intelligence, strong limbs, rich, pure blood, and a hope that "springs eternal," are a portion of the heritage of youth. With faculties unimpaired by age or excesses, you awake to an existence which shall never end, and begin a destiny which shall be whatever you, by the use or abuse of those faculties, shall determine. Hereditary influences count for something. Environment has much to do with the shaping of a life. Yet a responsibility without evasion rests upon each individual soul. Not one is saved or lost without his own voluntary contribution toward that end. It is an awful responsibility, commensurate with the rewards offered to integrity and fidelity. The thought that you must stand at the judgment-seat and answer for this life should impress the most thoughtless with the importance of seed-time.