Part 2 (1/2)
If you have these, I know that the details of your lives, whether they concern your pleasures, or your business, or your studies, will take care of themselves. But remember this prerequisite. Do not go away saying, ”my pastor says I may lawfully indulge in this or that, and I need give myself no further trouble about it.” I say to you no such thing. I say that you want your whole nature renewed by the indwelling of Christ, and that without this you are not safe in the world one moment. That without this you are in continual danger of conformity to the world. Without this you are in no condition to decide in what you may engage, or how far you may engage in it without abuse. Withal, you _will_ need to trouble yourself about these matters; to study G.o.d's law; to watch closely your own heart and life; to avoid needless temptation; to exercise strong resolution when pleasure beckons you beyond the bounds erected by Christian duty. I bid you rejoice in your youth. I bid you use those amus.e.m.e.nts which are innocent in themselves, freely and with grat.i.tude to G.o.d, but to beware of their abuse. I can safely tell you some things which G.o.d's word will teach you as to this matter. It will tell you that where you make pleasure the end and rule of your life, and duty the exception, you are guilty of abuse. It will tell you that when pleasure saps the fountains of your health, when it steals away your hours of sleep, and tempts you to excessive indulgence of appet.i.te at an hour which nature prescribes for the rest and recuperation of your organs, when it leads you to expose yourself to sickness by inadequate clothing-it is a gross abuse for which G.o.d will hold you accountable. It will tell you that when any description of pleasure trenches on the limits of modesty, it is an abuse; that the public embracing of young men and women in the vile dances of the day, is an offense against decency, an abomination against which manly n.o.bleness and maidenly delicacy ought to cry out with all their power. It will tell you that when pleasure of any kind interferes with your covenant obligations to the church, and keeps you from the ordinances of G.o.d's house, it is an abuse; a conformity to the world, against which G.o.d warns you in this text.
Come then and give yourselves to Christ, not repelled by any false, ascetic views of his religion, but believing, as his word ent.i.tles you to believe, that it is the promoter of innocent joy, of healthy and grateful recreation, of the highest and purest pleasures. Come, and he shall show you by his own life how to be in the world, yet not of it. How to live in strictest conformity to duty, and yet be free indeed, and exhibit to the world a broad, n.o.ble, generous Christian life-a life in the spirit and not in the letter. He shall teach you to live by the insight of love, and not by the prescriptions of a bare scheme of duty. Oh, that you may grow to the stature of perfect men and women in Christ; that you may be living examples of a reasoning service, models of a piety, enthusiastic yet judicious; all aglow with the love of Christ carried into every detail of your lives, into your pleasures, your conversation, your business; bringing everything, great and small, into conformity with the law of Christ, and making the whole life move sweetly and harmoniously round him.
You will not then be a worldly church. You will not then be stumbling blocks to the kingdom of Christ. You will be living epistles, read and known of all men, and they, seeing your good works, shall glorify your father which is in Heaven.
THE CHURCH AND THE YOUNG MAN.
A Sermon Delivered on Sabbath Morning, November 4, 1866,
In The First Presbyterian Church, Troy,
At The Request of The Young Men's Christian a.s.sociation.
2 Sam. xviii, 5. ”_And the king commanded Joab and Abishai and Ittai saying, deal gently for my sake with the young man, even with Absalom._”
There are few pa.s.sages of Holy writ more beautiful or suggestive than this. Notwithstanding the astounding character of Absalom's rebellion; though the mind of the sovereign and father of his people is torn with indignation at this outrage upon his throne and person, and is busy with plans for the security of his kingdom and the repulse of the invader; though David is stunned and bewildered at this high handed display of ingrat.i.tude and rebellion on the part of his favorite child, the father finds place to a.s.sert itself amid the cares of the sovereign, and to breathe a word of caution to his generals respecting the person of his dearly loved boy.
In accordance with the request of the Young Men's National Christian Convention to the churches, I propose to devote this service to a discussion of their relations to the church. I take this text as setting forth a similar charge given by our Lord and King Christ to his militant church, to deal gently with the young man. I therefore invite your attention to the following points respecting the relations of young men to the church:
I. The church _must_ deal with them.
II. The church _ought_ to deal with them.
III. How the church should deal with them.
I. _The church must deal with young men._
Absalom, however foolish and wicked his revolt, however strange his rebellion against his royal father, notwithstanding his youth and inexperience, was a stubborn fact, with which the leaders and counselors and armies of the kingdom found themselves obliged to deal. Otherwise David would have been dethroned and his authority violently usurped. If not dealt with so as to suppress him, he must be dealt with in the more unpleasant capacity of a suppressor and tyrant.
Young men are a fact in society; and as such cannot be without relations to the church. Not only so, they are an important fact; a prominent fact; a potent fact. They are a force in the business, the social, the political, the governmental relations of the community. If they have not wisdom, they have strength and energy. If they have not caution, they have enterprise. If they have not experience, they have tact, intelligence and knowledge. If they refuse to follow old rules, they succeed ofttimes in the use of their own methods. Society concedes much to them, entrusts them with serious responsibilities, seeks them for positions of power and influence, is powerfully swayed in whatever direction they choose, as a body, to throw themselves, applauds and welcomes their success.
The relations of such a body to the church of Christ must be important.
This ma.s.s of manly strength, energy, independence, intelligence and enterprise must, if set on fire with Christian ardor and enlisted on her behalf, greatly conduce to her prosperity; while it cannot but be a serious hindrance to her success if this element is neutral, or arrayed against her. If neutral, indeed, it is against her. If she have not the young men incorporated with her members.h.i.+p, at work in her sabbath schools, in regular attendance on her ordinances, woven into her social relations, throwing their strength and generosity and enthusiasm into her benevolent enterprises, contributing their fresh thought to her a.s.semblies, working, through the closer intimacies which mark their age, to increase her numbers, she will have to move under the drag applied by their indifference, resist their fascinations exerted in drawing others away from her standard, contend sharply against the skepticism to which youth is naturally p.r.o.ne, and if they are won at last, win them when the freshness of youth is gone, and by a double expenditure of power. The church _must_ deal with them as the friends or as the enemies of religion; must appropriate or resist their power. They come to her in the flush of their manly strength, like the Roman envoys to Carthage, holding in their robes peace and war, and offering the church her choice.
II. _The church ought to deal with them._
1. In simple consistency with her own principles. Not only to touch them where she must, but where she can. Not to regard them as aside from her peculiar work, but as const.i.tuting a peculiarly important and interesting part of her work. She professes to labor for the salvation of men, where can she find excuse for failing to provide _special_ appliances if need be, for the salvation of young men? She professes to be an _educator_ as well as an evangelizer. Here is material in its most inviting shape, and at the stage best adapted for her moulding. She professes to provide for the extension of her doctrine and spirit. Can she, with any show of reason, neglect the force furnished her in this ma.s.s of youthful energy and enthusiasm. She professes to rescue men from danger. Does she see any danger more imminent than those which menace young men, any temptations more seductive, any ruin more pitiable? Does she see any more susceptible of these influences than youth with their high spirits, superfluous energy and glowing pa.s.sion? Does she see any victims which appeal more powerfully to her compa.s.sion than these sons and brothers in whose success and virtue are bound up the hopes and affections of thousands of parents, every one of whom cries to the world and to the church, ”deal gently for my sake with the young man?”
2. But the church ought to deal with them, in the absence of other appliances to reach them. The church has few enough, far too few; but there are fewer elsewhere. Take business. What does it furnish? It deals with the young man. Not always gently either. It deals with his youthful strength; with his clear and active brain; with his enterprise and energy.
It uses these to build up trade and acc.u.mulate wealth. It deals, I say, not always gently. It is often exacting and severe. It often binds burdens too heavy for youthful shoulders. It often refuses leisure which health imperatively demands, and denies compensations which might furnish less temptation to crime. But I am not here to speak of these now. How does it deal with the young man morally? Does business take into the account, to any great extent, the fact that young men are moral and intellectual beings? How much leisure does it afford them for mental or religious culture? Alas, with the most charitable view of the case, with the n.o.ble exceptions clearly recognized, business presents a sad aspect in this regard. The maxim ”_business is business_” is carried too far. What the _world_ may think or do in this matter is not the question here; but to Christian men, who believe or profess to believe that religion belongs everywhere, business should be something more than business. How many Christian business men recognize in its contact opportunities for the exertion of Christian influence as well as for making money? How many see in their clerks something besides the hired arms or brains to carry on their trade? How many recognize them as beings with social instincts as well as with sharp wits; immortal souls as well as clear heads; susceptibilities to temptation as well as to self-interest; young men who are to fill a place in these democratic communities, to cast their votes, exert their influence, be each the centre of a greater or smaller circle, be fathers to train up children and perpetuate their own moral character and sentiments whatever they be? How many consider the influence which their position of employer gives them over the moral destiny of these youth; the power they may wield through the truly affectionate and confidential relations subsisting between them? How many concern themselves as to where their clerks go after business hours, what a.s.sociations they form, whether they have a place of wors.h.i.+p or not? How many of you business men, here to-day, are in the habit of asking the young men in your employ to accompany you to church, or to Bible cla.s.s, or to prayer-meeting?
Take the community at large. _Its_ influence, if exerted in this direction, must be chiefly confined to furnis.h.i.+ng some counter attraction, moral, but not necessarily religious, to the attractions of the haunts of sin. And a great work can be done here, in which men of the most opposite religious theories, and men with no religion at all can unite. There, for instance, is the temperance question. There is a variety of views on the subject; but all agree that intemperance is an awful evil, and one which all moral and religious men are called on to resist and suppress by every possible means. _We_ believe that the only effectual method of reforming a drunkard, or of keeping a man from becoming one, is to make him a Christian. That will reform in _all_ respects. But we cannot bring the community to agree on this platform. Here then is one where all can unite, namely, in organizing some force to overbalance the attractions of the dram shop. It need not be distinctively religious, only free from vicious a.s.sociations. The saloon keeper understands perfectly that not one young man in ten comes to his haunt originally to drink or in which to gamble.
He wants a warm and pleasant room to sit down and chat with his companion; to read his evening paper, or it may be to procure a meal. So this minister of corruption proceeds to make provision for these natural and healthy cravings, that, through them, he may excite those unnatural and depraved desires, the satisfaction of which const.i.tutes his chief source of profit. He furnishes his rooms tastefully and comfortably. He provides food of all kinds prepared to please the most fastidious palate. A small sum will secure a quiet and cosy retreat where the youth and his friends may pa.s.s an evening. But he furnishes the bar with its tempting array of liquors. He gathers there his array of well dressed and gentlemanly confederates who are always ready to challenge to drink, and to sneer at the principle which refuses. He has his licentious pictures to stimulate the pa.s.sions, and abundant facilities for their gratification. And thousands of youths who went thither at first, only because they could find no other retreat, have come at last to frequent it for the gratification of the basest appet.i.tes, and have gone from its doors at last, hopeless, homeless drunkards.
Now suppose a community should say (and no individual with a shadow of moral sense could say otherwise), the rumseller takes an unfair advantage.
He unites things which may just as well be separated. There is no necessity that all the light and comfort and retirement should be a.s.sociated with liquor and licentiousness. Let us furnish these to the hundreds of poor young men who have no retreat but their offices and boarding houses. Let us build a house or hire a large suite of rooms. Let us have a suitable person employed to dispense proper refreshments at a reasonable price. Let us have a reading room furnished with the best papers and periodicals, and with a good library. Let us have a conversation room, where young men can chat or play their game of chess or backgammon. Let us have a ten pin alley, and even a smoking room. Would not this be in the interest of temperance as well as of many other virtues? Would it not keep scores of young men from the gin palaces? Could not society, independently of any religious views, easily inaugurate and carry out such a plan? It has been done, and has worked wonders. The slight approach towards it made by our Young Men's Christian a.s.sociation, saying nothing now of the religious adjuncts, has proved what a strong, well organized effort might effect in this direction. And yet what has our communities of this character? What organized appliance have our cities anywhere to act upon young men? There I know are the Young Men's a.s.sociations, and they are good as far as they go; but they make provision chiefly for intellectual wants. Their libraries, and reading rooms, and lecture courses are doing a good work; but after all it is for the community at large, male and female, as well as for young men. There is a lower cla.s.s of wants peculiar to young men, and to young men of a certain cla.s.s, which will be supplied somehow, and which a proper effort may supply judiciously, without injury to the youth, and in a way to create wants and lead to a.s.sociations of a higher character. If the moral and Christian part of the community do not supply them, the immoral part will.
3. But the church ought to deal with young men, _because she has the means_. She has organization. The community at large is not organized to carry out such efforts. Special organizations have to be made when such a movement is undertaken by it; and even then the _personal sympathy_ and cooperation of individuals, except perhaps through their purses, is not secured. A moral movement agitated outside the church requires a good deal of time and effort to bring it into contact with men's minds, and to get them enlisted in it. It has to work princ.i.p.ally upon individuals. But the moment a question of moral reform starts with the church, it works from the very first upon and through an organization. That is the reason why the agents of all great benevolent enterprises and reform movements try first to get before the churches. The subject is presented to ma.s.ses. It reaches the larger part of the community through their religious detachments, so to speak, and by the mouth of their chosen and respected religious instructors. The organization is already formed to discuss the question, to decide upon it, to raise means for carrying out the enterprise, to delegate men to represent this or that branch of the church in it. Added to this is the personal sympathy evoked. As a moral question it is brought home to the church on her own ground. If it concerns the salvation of men, every individual, as well as the church at large has to do with it. It appeals to him as a man and as a brother; to his prayers, to his pocket, to his effort.
The church has the wealth. I need only say, that the church represents by far the largest proportion of the money of our communities. Take our own city for instance, and count up our wealthiest men, and you will find that the most of them are not only members of congregations, but also members of churches.