The Bible tells you to rejoice, therefore do so without fear. God has given you health, strength, spirits, hope, the power of enjoyment. And why, save but that you may enjoy them, and rejoice in your youth? He has given you _more_ health, _more_ strength, more _spirits_, than you need to earn your daily bread, or to learn your daily task. And why? To enable you to _grow_ in body and in soul. And that you will only do if you are happy. The human soul, says a wise man, is like a plant, and requires _sunshine_ to make it grow and ripen. And the heavenly Father has given you sunshine in your hearts that you may grow into hearty, healthy-minded men. If young people have not sunshine enough, if they are kept down and crushed in youth by sorrow, by anxiety, by fear, by over-hard work, by too much study, by strict and cruel masters, by dark and superstitious notions about God's anger, by over-scrupulousness about this and that thing being sinful, then their souls and minds do not grow; they become more or less stunted, unhealthy, unhappy, slavish, and mean people in after-life, because they have not rejoiced in their youth as God intended them to do. Remember this, you parents, and be sure that all harshness and cruelty to your children, all terrifying of them, all over-working of them, body or mind, all making them unhappy by requiring of them more than the plain law of God requires; or by teaching them to dread, not to love, their Father in heaven--All these will stunt and hurt their characters in after- life; and all are, therefore, sins against their heavenly Father, who willeth not that one little one should perish, and who will require a strict account of each of us how we have brought up the children whom He has committed to our charge. Let their hearts cheer them in the days of their youth. They will have trouble enough, anxiety enough hereafter. Do not you forestall the evil days for them. The more cheerful their growth is the more heart and spirit they will have to face the trials and sorrows of life when they come. But further, the text says to the young man, Walk in the ways of thy heart. That is God's permission to free men, in a free country. You are not slaves either to man or to God; and God does not treat you as slaves, but as children whom He can trust. He says, Walk in the ways of thine own heart. Do what you will, provided it be not wrong. Choose your own path in life. Exert yourselves boldly to better yourselves in any path you choose, which is not a path of dishonesty and sin.