Thus do I lay these counsels before you, my friend, as you enter upon life. They have been written amid the demands of a large charge and the wearying claims of public life. They might have been better. But they are the outpouring of an intensely anxious heart. Looking back upon the past, I feel, with thousands more, that the great boon of existence was the disposition to ally my nature with Christ’s when eighteen years of age. From that time with what inexpressible benignity, patience, and sympathy, has Christ helped me! And now, should I be called to no other service, in the closing moments of life the hope that these few words had induced some young men to choose Christ and all his mighty love, would be most precious and grateful to my heart. This I know, that if old age is welcomed when it brings to Christ only the relics of a wasted life; for you, when you offer him the force of your will, the glow of your affections, the opening powers of your intellect, for you there will be more than welcome; there will be “lavish acknowledgment.” He will deign to call it “the kindness of your youth,” which he will “remember” for ever. FOOTNOTES [1] There is a sin of which I can hint only to you. Alas, its terrible temptations and its awful consequences are becoming frightful. It is not safe to omit notice in an appeal to a young man who may be entering life in a great city. If you could know the little that has come to my knowledge, your very hairs would stand on end. I could tell you of the finest physical constitutions, which, after twelve months’ tampering with this perilous fascination, have become pitiable wrecks of disease. I could tell you, on medical authority, of men now dragging out a useless existence, with reason dethroned, and drivelling in idiotcy. And the punishment once done to the flesh does not depart. Life ends in early death, or is a long suffering of humiliation; yea, worse still, the suffering is perpetuated in the third and fourth generations. Young men starting in life have none to tell them these things, therefore I have forced myself to the hateful task. The displeasure of God against this sin is awful. What would you think of a man who should pluck a flower from a yawning chasm, when there were ninety-nine chances to one that he would fall into the abyss below, and even if extricated, be scarred and begrimed to the end of his days? [2] In Memoriam, p. 143.