BV 109C 
 
 ) .S69 185:^ 
 
 
 Smyth, 
 
 Thomas, 1808- 
 
 -1873 
 
 The nature and claims of 
 
 Young 
 
 Men's Christ 
 
 ian 
 
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THE 
 
 NATURE AXD CLAIMS 
 
 OP 
 
 YOUNG MEN'S 
 
 BY THE REV. THOMAS SMYTH, D.D. 
 
 CHARLESTON, S. C. 
 
 The glort of toung men is their steength."— Prov. xx. 29, 
 
 PHILADELPHIA: 
 
 J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 
 
 1857. 
 
Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1857, by 
 
 Rev. THOMAS SMYTH, D.D. 
 
 in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the 
 Eastern District of Pennsylvania. 
 
 STEREOTYPED BY L. JOHNSON & CO. 
 PHILADELPHIA. 
 
DEDICATED, 
 
 WITH HEARTFELT CON&RATULATIONS FOB THEIR PAST 
 ACHIEVEMENTS, 
 
 WITH EARNEST HOPES, EXPECTATIONS, AND PRAYERS FOR THEIR 
 
 FUTURE PROSPERITY AND PROGRESS, 
 
 TO THE 
 
 |0ung Pni's C|rfatian Ji$$0riati0ns 
 
 IN THE UNITED STATES 
 
 AND THROUGHOUT THE CHRISTIAN WORLD; 
 
 AND, PERSONALLY, TO MY GREATLY ESTEEMED FRIEND, 
 
 ROBERT C. GILCHRIST, 
 
 U. S. C. 
 
 AND 
 
 ^usibjent of ll^e l^oKttg Pitt's Christian g^ssotialion 
 
 OF CHARLESTON, S. C. 
 
Hot precious a thing is youthful energy, if only it could be preserved 
 entirely englohed, as it were, within the bosom of the young adventurer, 
 till he can come and offer it forth a sacred emanation on yonder temple 
 of truth and virtue. But, alas! all along as he goes towards it he ad- 
 vances through an avenue formed by a long line of tempters and de- 
 mons on each side, all prompt to touch him with their conductors and 
 draw the divine electric element, with which he is charged, away. 
 
 John Foster. 
 
 The way of every man is declarative of the end of every man. 
 
 Cecil. 
 
 Youthful excesses are drafts on manhood and old age, most generally 
 finding them bankrupt and beggars or not finding them at all. 
 
 Voices of Nature. 
 
 Habits of youthful piety are drafts on God, payable at sight, for tho 
 support and comfort of manhood, old age, death, and immortality. 
 
 Ibid 
 
 Sinful habits are grave-clothes of souls, by which they are bound by 
 Satan for an everlasting burial. Ibid. 
 
 Centre-pieces of wood are put by builders under an arch of stone, 
 while it is in the process of construction, till the keystone is put in, 
 Just such is the use Satan makes of pleasures to construct evil habits 
 upon : the pleasure lasts perhaps until the habits are fully formed, but, 
 that done, the structure may stand eternal ; the pleasures are sent for 
 firewood, and the hell begins in this life. Coleridge 
 
 Though tht way i?e dark and long, 
 Think of them that now on high 
 Have attain'd the victory. 
 In a moment 'twill he past, 
 And the endless die be cast 
 In that place where time is not, 
 Thoughts that are on earth forgot 
 Take their place and ever dwell. 
 Set in calm unspeakable. 
 And enshrined in silence stay 
 To abide the dreadful day. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Prefatory Remarks 5 
 
 The Principle of Association 7 
 
 All Association powerful — Christian Association glorious... 13 
 
 The Principle of Association originated by Christianity 15 
 
 Christianity provides for Christian, as well as Ecclesiastical, 
 
 Associations 17 
 
 The Glory of Man, and of Young Men apecially 29 
 
 Great Men have performed their Great Actions while young. 33 
 
 The Strength of Youth a Solemn Trust 34 
 
 Youthful Sins Manhood's Sorrows and Death's Pangs 37 
 
 The Glory of Youthful Piety and Young Men the Strength 
 
 of every Community 43 
 
 The Peculiar Temptations of Young Men 44 
 
 Youth the Crisis of Man's Character and Destiny 47 
 
 The Number and Importance of Young Men in any Com- 
 munity 48 
 
 The Importance and Claims of Young Men's Christian 
 
 Associations 49 
 
 The Advantages they secure to Young Men 50 
 
 All Christian Young Men of every Denomination may unite 51 
 "Why these Associations require Liberal Assistance and 
 
 Large Resources 54 
 
 3 
 
4 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 An Appeal to Merchants and Citizens 55 
 
 Why all Christians, and Young Men specially, require 
 
 Association 58 
 
 Association only Powerful when Voluntary 61 
 
 Christian Young Men urged by Gratitude to Piety, Zeal, 
 
 and Devotion 64 
 
 The Power of Association exercised by Books, etc. as much 
 
 as by Persons 66 
 
 The Explanation of a Mystery 69 
 
 Christian Young Men earnestly implored to seek the Salva- 
 tion of others 71 
 
 Illustrations of the Power of Christian Young Men 75 
 
 Christian Young Men must exemplify Christian Charity... 80 
 
 Youth is Fruitful of Expedients 88 
 
 Youth is also Bold and Energetic 88 
 
 What Young Men's Christian Associations have already 
 
 done 89 
 
 What these Associations may yet accomplish 94 
 
 The number of Christian Young Men in the United States. 95 
 
 The Glorious Confederation of all Christian Young Men... 97 
 
 Christian Young Men the Bond of National Union 100 
 
 The Communion of Citizenship and the Communion of 
 
 Saints 110 
 
 The Appeal 113 
 
 Sketches of Young Men 115 
 
 The Place for Young Men 121 
 
PEEFATORY EEMARKS. 
 
 The substance of the following volume was prepared 
 at the instance of the Young Men's Christian Association 
 of Charleston, S.C, and was delivered as one of a course 
 of lectures during the past year. As some things in its 
 application refer to that city, it is deemed best to retain 
 their original form, both for usefulness there and as an 
 illustration of the analogous and proportionate adaptation 
 of such associations to other cities and communities. 
 
 The substance of the discourse, however, was devoted 
 to an exhibition of the nature and claims of such asso- 
 ciations in general, and may, it is hoped, and as the 
 author has been encouraged to believe, be useful for dis- 
 tribution, as an introduction to a true knowledge of 
 their character and importance, — as an encouragement to 
 young men who are not, as well as those who are, pro- 
 fessors of religion, to become associated with them, — and 
 also as a portraiture of what these associations ought to 
 be, what by the blessing of God they may be, and what in 
 order to fulfil their perfect work and ministry of love they 
 must be. 
 
PREFATORY REMARKS. 
 
 And may that divine Saviour from whose glorious gospel 
 these associations derive their life make this and every 
 other means employed for their advancement powerful, 
 through His Holy Spirit, to the salvation and sanctification 
 of many souls! Then shall these thoughts 
 
 However poor portray'd, set forth to view 
 
 With feeble eloquence, be such as may 
 
 Arrest some glance, some thought, which, entering in 
 
 The door of the life-kindling, shaping soul, 
 
 May haply there take root in tender soil. 
 
 In youth's soft heart plant the immortal shoot 
 
 Of heaven-born virtue, which shall bear him fruit, 
 
 And bind his locks with amaranthine wreath; 
 
 May to the fount of action entrance find. 
 
 That streams which issue thence may bear the tinge 
 
 Of hope and dread expectance of the Judge 
 
 With echoing blast of the archangel's trump. 
 
 Reader and writer on that morn must meet : 
 
 Thrice happy, could this theme arouse but one. 
 
 That, when all hearts are open'd, then this mark— 
 
 (On which men's fate is made to hang alone) — 
 
 Whether he has loved God or has loved self, 
 
 Has lived to Christ, or while he lived was dead,— 
 
 May on his soul be found by God impress'd 
 
 This is the mirror wherein souls are seen ; 
 
 This is the Book. On this the scale depends. 
 
 This is announced to the eternal years, 
 
 And such alone pass to the rest of God. 
 

 In addressing you, my young friends, I will, 
 without preface, endeavour to present the nature 
 and claims of Young Men's Christian Associations. 
 
 In doing so, the very first point to which atten- 
 tion shall be directed is the principle of association 
 on which these Societies are based. 
 
 The principle of association holds a conspicuous 
 place among the most potent forces that are now 
 acting upon the world, — silent, invisible, and unpre- 
 tending in its working, and yet powerful in its 
 results beyond all other moral agencies. This has 
 become proverbial. "Union is strength," and 
 "United we conquer, while divided we fall," are 
 now familiar applications to every interest of hu- 
 manity of our Saviour's aphorism that a house 
 divided against itself cannot stand, and of those 
 other scriptural proverbs that "in the multitude of 
 
 7 
 
YOUNG MEN S 
 
 counsellors there is safety," and that in them also 
 ^^ purposes are established." 
 
 The foundations on which this principle of associa- 
 tion is based are deep-laid in the most essential 
 powers and sympathies of our nature. It takes 
 hold of them all, and combines them all in one con- 
 centrated, steady, and progressive force. 
 
 Association becomes wisdom, by the united coun- 
 sels of the multitude it brings together. 
 
 Association is also power; for this wisdom is 
 power, — power to ascertain the true character and 
 dimensions of the evil to be overcome or the good 
 to be secured and the best time and manner in which 
 that evil is to be assailed, and thus bring together 
 all the resources of such combined energy that 
 can be brought to bear upon the designed end. 
 Ants are very insignificant creatures; but when 
 associated together they can build cities, fill them 
 with well-stored granaries, and wage resistless war- 
 fare against their enemies. A bee is very tiny, 
 and, individually, very powerless; but bees when 
 associated in swarms are more than a match for 
 the fiercest animal, and for man himself. A single 
 wolf may well be dreaded; but a full pack of hungry 
 wolves must blanch with fear the stoutest heart, 
 even though clad in mail and armed cap-a-pie. 
 And thus also it is that, while one sinner can destroy 
 much good, and one spiritual enemy is to be feared, 
 it is when combined in a godless confederacy, or 
 
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. 9 
 
 into a well-disciplined host, that virtue and patriot- 
 ism may be filled with well-grounded alarm and 
 aroused to that conflict which finds in union strength, 
 and in patriotic valour, victory. 
 
 Association therefore becomes wisdom and power 
 for evil or for good in proportion as it is the combi- 
 nation of the wisdom and power, the virtue or the 
 vice, of many. And while in itself it is only an 
 abstract principle, having no vitality or will, it be- 
 comes endued with marvellous potency, and generates 
 even the principle of life. Life depends not upon 
 the existence of any individual particles or even of or- 
 ganic structures, but upon a body in which many such 
 are organically united and fitly joined together by 
 that which every joint supplieth, and the whole ani- 
 mated and controlled by one living spirit. And so 
 it is not in any single separate member of a class of 
 people that their social, civil, political, moral, or reli- 
 gious life is found, but in the association of that class 
 in some form of organized and well-conducted union. 
 Osiris, whatever we make this mythological cha- 
 racter to represent, is dead and inoperative so long 
 as his members lie scattered over the world, and 
 becomes instinct with life and power only when 
 these disjecta memhra are reconstructed in one 
 living body. A body may be organically perfect in 
 every limb, joint, and muscle. The lungs may 
 play and the heart beat. The eyes may see and 
 the ear hear, and the hand grasp and the feet move. 
 
10 YOUNG men's 
 
 And, wliile tlie mouth, can receive and the stomach. 
 digest nourishing food, that body may live and move 
 and have being. And yet it may be a paralyzed, 
 feeble, halting, and imbecile body, incapable of any 
 active, strenuous, energetic exertion, of any high, 
 patriotic, or benevolent enterprise. But let those 
 various organs receive the vitalizing, sustaining co- 
 operation of all tbe myriad invisible nerves; let 
 these, however silently and involuntarily, contribute 
 each in their own minute locality their proportion 
 of strength; and, by that association of parts and 
 powers, a body otherwise feeble and inoperative 
 becomes strong, and powerful, and capable of indo- 
 mitable energy. 
 
 The power of any body, therefore, lies not in the 
 combination of organs all equally strong, vigorous, 
 and important. Some are and must be such. Some 
 are and must be prominent : — the eye to see, the 
 tongue to speak, the head to plan, the hands to 
 execute, and the feet to convey and sustain. But 
 these are not on this account more essential, though 
 more observed and honoured. The lungs which 
 play, the heart which beats, the nerves which feel and 
 receive and give quick and lightning sensibility, are 
 equally essential. And, in like manner, an association 
 of men, to be strong, must combine rich and poor, 
 humble and great, learned and ignorant, wise and 
 simple, thinkers, labourers, soldiers to fight, sappers 
 and miners to prepare the way and remove obsta- 
 
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. 11 
 
 cles, those that "wait beside the stuff" and manage 
 the internal concerns, and the poor wise man 
 whose counsel on an emergency may save the city. 
 
 Thy servants militant below 
 
 Have each, Lord, their post; 
 As thou appoint'st who best dost know 
 
 The soldiers of thine host : 
 Some in the van thou call'st to do 
 
 And the day's heat to share; 
 And in the rearward not a few 
 
 Thou only bidd'st to bear. 
 
 Blessed and most gracious encouragement to all — 
 in all times, ages, circumstances, and with whatever 
 of strength, talent, means, or influence — to associate 
 together in the Lord's service, under the Master's 
 eye, and with the Master's promise that if there be 
 only a willing mind it is accepted, " not according to 
 what a man hath not, but according to what ho 
 hath," and to what he purposeth in his heart. 
 
 By no new path, untried before. 
 
 Thy servants dost Thou lead; 
 The selfsame promise as of yore 
 
 Supports the selfsame need : 
 The faith for which thy saints endured 
 
 The dungeon or the stake. 
 That very faith, with hearts assured, 
 
 Upon our lips we take. 
 
 Though scatter'd widely left and right. 
 
 And sent to various posts. 
 One is the battle that we fight 
 
 Beneath one Lokd of hosts. 
 
12 YOUNG men's 
 
 We know not, wo shall never know, 
 
 Our fellow-labourers here ; 
 But they that strive one strife below 
 
 Shall in one joy appear. 
 
 They need, Lord, thy special grace 
 
 That fight in this world's view. 
 But in the sick-room face to face 
 
 Is Satan vanquished too : 
 Both need the same protecting hand 
 
 To keep them undefiled, 
 And both shall in Thy presence stand, — 
 
 The martyr and thy child ! 
 
 But association not only concentrates knowledge, 
 accumulates power, and creates social life; it 
 awakens sympathy. As face answereth to face, so 
 does tlie heart of man to man. It is instinct with 
 sympathy. It responds with electric force to every 
 impulse from kindred souls. Individually, man 
 holds his opinions timidly, and ventures to act upon 
 them cautiously and with doubting unbelief. But 
 when they are embodied in a constitution, adopted 
 by others, and represented in living acts, they re- 
 ceive a strength which is ever augmented by the 
 play of sympathy in a community of associated 
 efforts. Common principles, interests, employments, 
 and enjoyments, are its very life-blood and im- 
 part at once vitality, energy, and sympathy to any 
 society. 
 
 Association is, on all these accounts, the fountain 
 of PLEASURE. It draws together. It inspires con- 
 
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. 13 
 
 fidence. It gives play to all the social tendencies 
 of our nature. It entices a man out of his own soli- 
 tary egotism, vanity, and pride; irradiates his gloom; 
 sweetens his bitterness; cheers his solitude; dries 
 his tears; inspires hope; kindles ambition and 
 rivalry to excel ; and enlarges, ennobles, and elevates 
 by the full activity it provides for all the powers both 
 of mind and body. 
 
 But, to pass on from this very fruitful topic, I 
 would only further remark that association secures 
 
 PERMANENCE, STABILITY, and GROWTH. Life in 
 
 one may wane, while it waxes strong in another. 
 Faith in one may be weak, while in another it is 
 vigorous. Hope may shine tremblingly in one, and 
 yet burn brightly in his neighbour. Health may 
 fail in some, and yet increase and strengthen in the 
 rest. Interest in the common object may lose its 
 power over some, while others become ignited and 
 rekindle the expiring fire. And thus, while exist- 
 ing members may perish, yet this takes place so 
 gradually that the association may remain un^ 
 changed, or even strengthen and increase 
 
 ALL association POWERFUL — CHRISTIAN ASSO- 
 CIATION GLORIOUS. 
 
 As an ASSOCIATION, therefore, we cannot but 
 regard this society as a body which commands our 
 most lively and earnest attention to its principles 
 
14 YOUNG men's 
 
 and ENDS. As an association, it is an embodiment 
 of knowledge, power, life, sympathy, enjoyment, 
 and permanent and progressive stability. But 
 wlietber it is such for good or evil depends upon its 
 principles and ends. An association is a living, 
 organized, gigantic power. But, if its associating 
 principles are evil, it will only resemble the accumu- 
 lated mass of snowy particles which congeal upon 
 the mountain's brow until they constitute the 
 avalanche, the fall of whose illimitable mass carries 
 resistless destruction to the plains beneath. But 
 if, on the other hand, its cohering principles are 
 beflign, such an association resembles the accu- 
 mulation of those same vaporous particles in the 
 clouds of heaven, which are borne along by the 
 winds until they pour down upon every dry and 
 thirsty field the refreshing, fertilizing rain. 
 
 What importance, therefore, is attached to this 
 society by the fact that it is a Christian associa- 
 tion, — an association based upon Christian truth; 
 animated by Christian principle; actuated by Chris- 
 tian motives; breathing only the atmosphere of Chris- 
 tian love; inspired by Christian fellowship, sympathy, 
 and experience ; guided and sustained by Christian 
 life ; looking for its wisdom and strength to heavenly 
 teaching and divine power ; cementing its bonds by 
 mutual prayer, intercourse, and encouragement; and 
 aiming only at the Christian and God-like ends of 
 mutual instruction, improvement, usefulness, health. 
 
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. 15 
 
 happiness, and prosperity, and all these for the body 
 as well as for the soul, for this world as well as the 
 world to come, for eternity as well as time ! 
 
 What sublimity and glory are found in the con- 
 templation of such an association ! How does it 
 tower above all others outside of the church, like 
 David among his brethren, or Mount Zion among 
 the other hills of the Holy Laud, or the church of 
 God among all other associations existing, or capable 
 of existence, among men ! 
 
 THE PRINCIPLE OF ASSOCIATION ORIGINATED BY 
 CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 This leads me to observe that the principle 
 of association, like every other good and perfect 
 gift, is from above, and is the direct result of that 
 very Christianity which constitutes the avowed 
 basis of this society. Though apparently so obvious 
 and simple, and so capable of universal application, 
 nevertheless, the principle of association was alto- 
 gether unknown in the ancient world and among 
 the most civilized and refined nations. Men were 
 indeed always banded together by the force of 
 circumstances, by sudden and temporary impulse, 
 by stern necessity, or by the overmastering power 
 of despotism. But anterior to Christianity men 
 had no principle to combine them together into 
 voluntary and permanent bodies, and no common 
 
16 YOUNG men's 
 
 end to sustain and animate their hopes. The very 
 reverse was the object aimed at by every govern- 
 ment, and by every individual. Separation, segre- 
 gation, and cautious isolation were necessary alike 
 to personal security and to undisturbed public 
 authority. 
 
 " They forged the links of martial law, that bind, 
 Enslave, imbrute, and mechanize the mind." 
 
 Combinations were conspiracies, or the explosions 
 of a volcano, — the terrific ministry of inward fires, 
 which after their devastating outburst soon con- 
 gealed, and left the world neither wiser, nor better, 
 nor disenthralled. The will of one or of a few 
 men, or the caprice of tumultuous passion and 
 wild cabal, determined the fate and fortune of mil- 
 lions. 
 
 The principle of association had its origin in 
 Christianity and its first exemplification in Christian 
 churches. Here first the world saw men volunta- 
 rily combining together upon the basis of truths 
 individually received, — under rules and forms pub- 
 licly acknowledged, — ^under officers chosen from 
 among themselves, — and for the accomplishment of 
 ends common to them all and yet not bearing upon 
 the selfish interests of any. 
 
 Here first was exemplified that divine spirit of 
 Christian love, — 
 
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. 17 
 
 "That fire which in each breast burns all beside, 
 All that is earthly, all of selfish love, 
 Projects of low-brow'd indolence and pride, — 
 Until they feel in Christ they live and move 
 And breathe regenerate life of those above." 
 
 Thus promulgated and developed, the world has 
 learned the unspeakable value of this principle, and 
 tas found in it the lever for overthrowing the 
 mightiest dynasties, and for accomplishing the 
 greatest revolutions in political and scientific 
 theories; so that association is now the very first 
 principle in all movements for social, civil, or moral 
 reform. 
 
 CHRISTIANITY PROVIDES FOR CHRISTIAN, AS WELL 
 AS ECCLESIASTICAL, ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 The time, we hope, has also come, when, under the 
 inspiration of Christian truth, Christian principle, 
 and Christian motives, this divinely-originated 
 principle of association will be employed in combin- 
 ing together the talent, influence, piety, and energy 
 of all who call upon the name of the Lord Jesus 
 Ciirist, both theirs and ours, for the advancement 
 of the cause of Christ, the promotion of each other's 
 welfare, and the best interests of their fellow-men. 
 
 God forbid that I should say aught to dim the 
 lustre or cloud the glory of the churches of Christ ! 
 
 " There my best friends, my kindred, dwell; 
 There God my Saviour reigns." 
 9* 
 
18 YOUNG men's 
 
 In a Christian church I was myself born, nurtured, 
 and fed. With it are associated my earliest aspira- 
 tions, my warmest thoughts, my purest joys, my most 
 sincere and substantial pleasures here on earth, and my 
 clearest views and most satisfying earnests of heaven. 
 The heart needs a resting-place such as the world, 
 with all its paradises, and home, with all its delights, 
 cannot give; and it finds this in the church. The 
 soul needs a temple where it may retire, apart from 
 all human teachers and all the vain janglings and dis- 
 cordant voices of man's philosophy, and, sitting at 
 the feet of Jesus, have its best principles strength- 
 ened, its loftiest aspirations encouraged, its sublime 
 instincts realized, and its unutterable and unquench- 
 able longings satisfied; and it finds this in the 
 church. The soul needs also a sanctuary where it 
 may retreat from every stormy wind that blows and 
 from every rude and heart-lacerating grief; and, as 
 it sits under the droppings of the sanctuary with 
 great delight and hides itself there under the sha- 
 dow of the all-protecting wings until eveiy calamity 
 is overpassed, it finds this refuge in the church. 
 The church is the fold where the "foot-sore tra- 
 veller," weary and heavy laden, finds rest, and the 
 social spiritual home — 
 
 " So like a little heaven below" — 
 
 where the sad and solitary and broken-hearted, who 
 go mourning amid the desert crowds of cities, find 
 
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. 19 
 
 sympathy and solace and a welcome greeting 
 among tlie brotherliood of Christ, — 
 
 " No more a stranger or a guest, 
 But like a child at home." 
 
 Christianity has certainly not yet developed all its 
 energy as the light, the leaven, and the salt of the 
 earth. As the power of God not only for the salva- 
 tion but also for the regeneration of the world, its 
 force is still to a great extent latent, because un- 
 applied. Like some mighty engine which gives 
 motion to a thousand wheels for the perfection of 
 some useful products of manufacture, but which is 
 capable of accomplishing indirectly still greater re- 
 sults, so is it with Christianity. Directly and pri- 
 marily, it is designed to impart vitality and perma- 
 nent activity to Christian churches, of which its 
 TRUTH is both the pillar and the ground. To these 
 pertain the promises, provisions, ordinances, and 
 preaching of the gospel, — the grand instrumentality 
 for the world's conversion unto God; and churches 
 therefore are ordinarily the birthplace of souls and 
 the wells of salvation. 
 
 But, in addition to this primary and organic de- 
 velopment, Christianity is capable of, and is designed 
 to accomplish, manifold beneficial results. It does 
 not bring forth and train up and teach all things 
 whatsoever Christ has commanded, to its children, 
 that, when nurtured in the admonition of the Lord 
 
20 YOUNG men's 
 
 and grown to the stature of men in Christ Jesus, 
 they may keep at home beside their mother's lap, 
 dandled upon the knee of indulgence, fondled in 
 the bosom of her soothing affection, feasted on the 
 joy her promises afford, and luxuriating in the 
 beauties of holiness. Oh no ! she trains their hands 
 to war, to labour, and to endure hardness as good 
 soldiers of Jesus Christ. Girding up their loins and 
 pointing to the hosts assembled for battle — 
 
 What dread spectators watch their destined way ! 
 How 'mid assembled worlds they stand alone ! 
 "Come on/^ she cries; "list in the heavenly war, 
 With shield of faith and with the Spirit's sword, 
 Strong in the mail of God's unfailing word — 
 The Urim and the Thummim of the Lord." 
 
 She sends them also into her vineyard to work. 
 She leads them forth to the out-lying field, which is 
 the world 3 and, as the eagle stirreth up her nest and 
 sendeth forth her new-fledged young that they may 
 circle with her in her heavenward flight, so does the 
 church send forth her sons into the field of duty and 
 of conflict, that they may fight manfully the good 
 fight of faith, work the work of God, and learn 
 
 How much by prayer one fervent soul may throw 
 Into the scale where kingdoms now are weigh'd. 
 
 It is therefore the very object of the education 
 imparted by Christian churches to make their children 
 wise to win souls for Christ ; to save the perishing 
 
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. 21 
 
 from death; to multiply the trophies of redeeming 
 love; to bring in many outcast wanderers to their 
 Father's house; to scatter wide around them the 
 seeds of life immortal ; and thus to prove that, while 
 her end is salvation and her destination eternity, 
 Christianity is the life and power of all charity, 
 philanthropy, patriotism, morality, order, and of what- 
 soever things are just, true, pure, honest, lovely, and 
 of good report, — if there be any virtue and if there 
 be any praise among men ; to prove that Christianity 
 is, in short, the true catholikon for rent and torn hu- 
 manity, — a law of attraction operating in the very 
 highest region of humanity, the region of thought 
 and conviction, — and " a prophecy that the Babel- 
 isms of men shall yet be healed by the consummated 
 act of which the day of Pentecost was but the be- 
 ginning and the pledge." 
 
 To this invisible and silent operation of Chris- 
 tianity in its indirect influences and beyond its eccle- 
 siastical limits, will be attributed without contro- 
 versy the origin and progress of modern civilization ; 
 the triumph of law, order, and liberty, which are 
 its natural offspring; the sense of personal re- 
 sponsibility, and its collateral rights; the elevation 
 of morals ; the power of conscience in creating con- 
 scientiousness, and, therefore, confidence; and that 
 ever-widening commerce which is based upon the 
 pre-existence of these fruits of the tree of life, and 
 which is so opening up all parts of the world rapidly 
 
22 YOUNG men's 
 
 and so indissolubly binding them together in one 
 vast community, — 
 
 Many, yet one, in union manifold. 
 
 To the Christian, therefore, the world is a field of 
 duty, life a sacrifice to duty, his fellow-men the 
 objects of his love and pity which duty does not 
 less require than acts of justice and of honesty: — 
 
 For around, in silence dread, 
 
 All unseen above his head 
 
 Like an amphitheatre, 
 
 Stand the angelic inmates there, 
 
 Watching how man does his part. 
 
 There are writ the deeds of men. 
 
 With a diamond-pointed pen, 
 
 On a plate of adamant 
 
 For eternity to chant. 
 
 Syllabled in courts above, 
 
 They are writ, and they shall last, 
 
 Dipp'd in colours of the heart 
 
 That none from his own doom may part. 
 
 Such is the educated, intelligent, heaven-directed 
 Christian : — 
 
 Holiness unto the Lord 
 
 Marks his staflF, his scrip, his board. 
 
 Harp and spade, and book and sword, — 
 
 All the royal priesthood use. 
 
 Faith through all doth worth infuse; 
 
 Giving even immortal worth 
 
 To the lowliest tasks of earth. 
 
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. 23 
 
 So that, lit by holy love, 
 Lustrous as the stars above, 
 Each with its own colour dight 
 Is replete with living light. 
 
 Animated by sucli a spirit^ the Christian cannot 
 live alone, or for himself alone. He is borne to- 
 wards heaven on the wings of zeal. His very 
 prayers come back to him laden with thoughts of 
 love, and he is thus led to associate himself with all 
 who, like him, are eager to devote themselves to the 
 zealous prosecution of every good work. 
 
 Christianity therefore provides in itself — in the 
 very spirit it infuses and the principle of association 
 it embodies — for the union of all its followers, not 
 only in churches, but in all things practical, evan- 
 gelical, and experimental, wherein, notwithstanding 
 their ecclesiastical differences, they are "agreed, and 
 in advancing which they are able to walk by the 
 same rule, to mind the same things, and to be zeal- 
 ously affected, striving together for the furtherance 
 of the gospel, and provoking one another to love 
 and zeal and good works." 
 
 The existence of various churches leads to mani- 
 fold good results, and is, no doubt, an intended adap- 
 tation to the present weak and imperfect condition 
 of even the holiest Christians. The evils incident to 
 such different churches are, however, very great, 
 and constitute a very serious hinderance to the pro- 
 gress of the truth. It may therefore be well ex- 
 
24 YOUNG men's 
 
 pected that some provision has been made for the 
 accomplishment of the incalculable good, and for the 
 avoidance of the serious evils of so many separate 
 tribes, with their selfish jealousies, in the one Israel 
 of God. Now, this, we think, is found in the prin- 
 ciple of association combining together Christians of 
 every evangelical name, for the united prosecution 
 of labours of love, — a fact powerful enough to 
 answer all the objections of captious and sneering 
 infidelity, — the spontaneous avowal that all the dis- 
 ciples of the Great Teacher are servants of the '^ one 
 Lord," and animated by " one Spirit." 
 
 For whai else did the divine love and wisdom 
 of God reveal and exemplify this powerful prin- 
 ciple ? Not surely to be dormant. Not to putrefy 
 like corrupted air imprisoned in some pent-up well, 
 there to breed the morbific elements of sectarian 
 jealousy and bigotry, of malice, hatred, and all un- 
 charitableness. Not to be caught up and imbibed 
 by the world without and appropriated to its own 
 temporal and transient interests. Nor was this 
 principle of association revealed that in the hands 
 of God's enemies it might confederate together the 
 oowers of earth and hell against the church and her 
 sacred oracles and ordinances. No ! This principle 
 was given, that, like the vital air we breathe and 
 the balmy waters by which we exist, it might find 
 its vitality, power, and purity preserved and multi- 
 plied by free and loving expansion, — by an illimit- 
 
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. 25 
 
 able diffusion permeating every lane and byway, 
 every field aiid garden, giving and receiving, blessing 
 and being blessed, as it goes ; — and that it might 
 combine together in one atmosphere of holy love, 
 in one swelling tide of Christian activity, all the 
 separate particles of divine life- 
 Love is like the ocean, — 
 Ever fresh and strong; 
 Birth and life and motion, 
 
 Speed and strength and song, 
 With which, the world surrounding, 
 It keeps it green and young. 
 
 Yes ! love is ever flowing, 
 
 Flowing ever down. 
 And through all lands going 
 
 Fi-om the heavenly throne. 
 
 What a Satanic perversion of this principle of as- 
 sociation, then, has led Christians hitherto to run down 
 Christianity into exclusive sects, to erect around 
 them impassable walls, and to employ so'much of their 
 talent and ingenuity in perpetuating old rents and 
 in multiplying new ones ! 
 
 Christians have too long and vainly endeavoured 
 to secure perfect unity in all things believed, — in both 
 the credenda and the agenda, the belief 2LU.di the prac- 
 tice of Christianity, — and to make this the basis of 
 unity, communion, and love. It is now time to 
 allow Christian love to exercise its irrepressible 
 
 desire to embrace as brethren in Christ Jesus all 
 3 
 
26 YOUNG men's 
 
 who give evidence of having within them in living 
 efl&cacy the truth as it is in Jesus. This will gene- 
 rate not an ecclesiastical union merely, but what 
 is still more heavenly, a personal and divine union, — 
 personal between believer and believer of every 
 name, — and divine between all believers and Christ 
 their Head. This also will originate and increase 
 Christian zeal. For, as the heat of the earth is pro- 
 duced not so much by the direct rays of the sun 
 shining upon it or from its relation to that body, as 
 by the refraction and reflection of heat imparted, so 
 it is not merely by the direct influences of Christ 
 upon the heart that Christian zeal is enkindled, but 
 still more by that zeal reflected and refracted in 
 the atmosphere of love by Christ's peculiar people 
 made by His Spirit zealous for good works. 
 
 Indeed, analogy may lead us to suggest — what the 
 word of God authorizes us to believe — that this wide 
 sphere of Christian development is essential to the 
 order and harmony of churches themselves. There 
 is an analogy between the Christian system and our 
 planetary system. In both we find numerous inde- 
 pendent bodies, separate and complete in their own 
 organization and revolving upon their own axes 
 and within their own proper sphere, and, by the 
 necessary laws of their planetary or ecclesiastical 
 existence, giving light within that sphere. But in 
 both also we are led to the contemplation, as neces- 
 sary to the perfection of the system, of a still wider 
 
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. 27 
 
 sphere, in wliicli all these revolving bodies are at- 
 tracted and preserved in their order and harmony, 
 by one great central body around which the^ 
 move, — 
 
 Forever singing, as they sliine, 
 The hand that made us is divine. 
 
 Glorious and sublime conception! Oh the depth 
 and height of the wisdom and power of Chri^ the 
 Sun of righteousness! the great central luminary 
 of the spiritual universe ! who binds together in one 
 divine system by the one law of love, all his churches 
 and all his children on earth and in heaven in 
 time and throughout eternity, in the unity of the 
 faith, and of the knowledge and of the love of the 
 Son of God ! 
 
 The children of this world have been wiser in their 
 generation. They have employed this principle of 
 association in the cause of political reform, of scien- 
 tific discovery, of national regeneration, and of infidel 
 and atheistic revolution; and with what transcen- 
 dent, irresistible, and invariable results ! And why ? 
 Because they applied it to some end to be gained, 
 and not to some theory or doctrine to be expounded ; 
 to some work to be performed too vast for any 
 one man or for any single society among men to 
 achieve, but which, by a division of labour, and a 
 concentration and a perseverance by successive la- 
 bourers through successive years, might certainly 
 be accomplished 
 
28 YOUNG men's 
 
 So also must Christians act. Leaving every man 
 to associate himself with the church of his conscien- 
 tious preference, and as his primary and most import- 
 ant duty to consecrate his time, influence, and means 
 so as to make that church all that a church ought to 
 be, — this principleof association calls upon Christians 
 to combine together in Christian institutions, socie- 
 ties, and associations, not to take up the doctrines of 
 Christianity, but, on the already-established basis of 
 these doctrines, to take up and accomplish the work 
 of Christianity, the great practical work of Christian 
 charity, — the carrying of the gospel to every man and 
 to every man's home and business and bosom, and, 
 with the gospel, together with that peace and good- 
 will, that love and help and consolation, which are 
 its necessary manifestations, its life-giving fruits. 
 
 This, then, is the field opened up to Christian 
 young men, and to which these associations lead 
 them forth. The great idea has been conceived. 
 It has taken root. It has sprung up unheeded and 
 without observation. It has drunk in celestial air. 
 It has been nourished by the dews of prayer — 
 
 Unseen, unknown, shrouded with many a care. 
 And scarce discernible to fleshly eye. 
 
 But it has shot up a goodly tree. Its branches now 
 extend from sea to sea and from shore to shore. 
 Its leaves are already for the healing of many 
 nations } — • 
 
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. 20 
 
 And soon, released, its stature fills the sky 
 And soars the child of immortality. 
 
 In these associations we have the true Evangelical 
 Alliance, — an alliance which, leaving all doctrinal, 
 ecclesiastical, and political questions, consecrates 
 itself to the one blessed aim of combining, elevating, 
 and sanctifying young men ; — for the one great end 
 of gathering in the outcast, of being a friend to the 
 friendless, a home to the homeless, and a blessing 
 to all. 
 
 On this to fix the heart and eyes 
 
 Will heal the sores of controversial strife. 
 
 Strengthen our wills, our motives purify, 
 
 Humble our hearts, make single-eyed to see 
 
 And single-hearted to embrace the truth, 
 
 And to behold the pregnant thunder-cloud 
 
 Bound with the rainbow which surrounds the Judge, 
 
 Which bids God's children hasten 'neath the roof 
 
 Of God's own sheltering house, and there await 
 
 His coming on with tender offices, 
 
 Each emulous his brother to befriend. 
 
 Each to forget himself. Such have no eai 
 
 For controversial triflings and debate, — 
 
 Naught that responds within to party strife. 
 
 To Christ's loved church, by endless discord riven, 
 
 Such love alone her union can restore. 
 
 And gain the blessings to that union given. 
 
 THE GLORY OF MAN, AND OF YOUNG MEN 
 SPECIALLY. 
 
 As a Christian association, therefore, this 
 society presents to us the combination of wisdom, 
 
>0 YOUNG men's 
 
 power, syinpatliy, and stability, under the guidance 
 of heavenly truth, divine principle, and God-like 
 love, for the holiest ends. 
 
 But its claims to our grateful consideration, high 
 approval; hopeful expectation, and liberal assistance, 
 are enhanced by its remaining feature, — namely, a 
 Christian Association of Young Men. 
 
 ^'The glory of young men is their strength.'' 
 !Man, in every stage of his existence, is a glorious 
 being. He was made in the image of God. 
 
 God gave to him to live 'mong living men, 
 
 And set eternity around his birth, 
 
 E'en as the circling sky surrounds the earth. 
 
 He was created but a little lower than the angels. 
 He was exalted to the dignity of being God's re- 
 presentative, interpreter, and governor in the earth, 
 — to serve him, to honour him, to glorify and enjoy 
 him, here and in heaven, now, henceforth, and for- 
 ever. To this high calling man's nature was 
 adapted. In this man found his happiness. And to 
 this inward disposition and character, and this 
 outward activity and service, the gospel is designed 
 to restore man. 
 
 As MAN is therefore a glorious being, so every 
 capacity of man and every period of his life have 
 their peculiar glory. As compared with other ani- 
 mals, man cannot, it is time, glory in his inherent 
 physical strength, since in this he is far inferior. 
 
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. 88 
 
 But, in the comparison of man with man in the 
 different stages of life, youth is characterized by 
 the development of man's greatest strength, energy, 
 and activity. 
 
 The glory of childhood is that docility by which 
 it is trained and matured for future usefulness, and 
 that artless simplicity and conscious weakness which 
 lead it to seek in others its wisdom and its strength. 
 
 Within the arms of the great Lord of love, 
 
 As in the teacher's seat, thou gentle child 1 
 
 We see thee, all our wisdom to reprove, — 
 
 That we may learn of thee, thou wisest styled j 
 
 Learn virgin innocence, leai-n mercy mild, 
 
 Unlearn ambition, unlearn carefulness. 
 
 Oh life where state of angels is fulfiU'd, 
 
 And saints who little have and need still less! 
 
 A state which nothing hath, yet all things doth possess ! 
 
 The HOARY HEAD, ou the other hand, is a crown 
 of glory when it is found in the way of righteous- 
 ness, not weary in well-doing, but still bringing 
 forth fruit unto God, and, by its well-stored wisdom 
 and experience, bearing testimony for the truth and 
 comfort of a life of piety. 
 
 And who is yonder man ? 
 
 Himself a fleeting span. 
 His shadow lengthening as the sun goes down. 
 While growing sorrow marks him for her own ; 
 
 But o'er his head a golden crown 
 
 The parting sun hath thrown. 
 
50G YOUNG men's 
 
 His worldly wealth on earth forsaking, 
 Wing'd sides ho finds, and light-wing'd feet, 
 And on his way his comrades is o'crtaking, 
 While Mercy now descends, her pilgrim true to meet, 
 And lead him, hand in hand, to her enduring seat. 
 Man seems to climb a mountain's side, 
 And, ever as he mounts, to leave behind 
 Green spots and flowers. 
 And shade of verdant bowers. 
 
 Bidding adieu to golden prime. 
 
 He flings aside to envious time 
 The richer thoughts that were to hope allied. 
 From barren to more barren still to climb. 
 Then, as he upward mounts, upon the wind 
 No more he hears the streamlet's melodies. 
 And childhood's freshness on his spirit dies. 
 But, now that he hath gain'd the height. 
 He seems to walk upon the glorious skies. 
 The sun that sets upon the seas beyond 
 Elings back the radiance of his golden wand, 
 And clothes him with a new, celestial light. 
 Anon he seems more large than man's estate, — 
 An angel seen on heaven's bright bumish'd gate. 
 
 In like manner, YOUTH IS GLORIOUS when, in its 
 dewy freshness, its whole energy of body, soul, and 
 spirit is consecrated to God, sanctified by his truth, 
 devoted to his service, bearing the heat and burden 
 of the day, and thus growing up into the stature of 
 perfect men in Christ Jesus. 
 
 " Light are their steps who in life's earliest dawn 
 The mountain-tops of heavenly life ascend, 
 Brushing the dew-drops from the spangled lawn. 
 Nor over from the straighter path descend. 
 Fixing their eyes upon their journey's end. 
 
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. 33 
 
 Ere sin has wither'd up their morning bloom, 
 While streaks of purple morn their cheeks illume, 
 And on the head still sparkles heavenly dew, — 
 To see that dew like incense rise to heaven, 
 It is a precious sight, which angels view 
 In trembling joy and hope ; immortal love 
 Hangs o'er it, watching every opening hue. 
 Plant, then, in youth's soft heart, the immortal shoots 
 Of heaven-born virtue ; it shall bear thee fruit 
 And bind thy locks with amaranthine wreaths." 
 
 GREAT MEN HAVE PERFORMED THEIR GREAT 
 ACTIONS WHILE YOUNG. 
 
 The strengtli and energy of youtli have been 
 characteristic of the greatest warriors, statesmen, 
 orators, musicians, and poets of the world. Few 
 of these have seen old age. Genius almost invari- 
 ably covers itself with flowers and sheds around its 
 fragrance in the spring and summer of life, though 
 there have been a few instances in which it has 
 ripened its fruit in the golden harvest of a bright 
 autumnal sky. The same is true of the philan- 
 thropists, the benefactors, the self-sacrificing mis- 
 sionaries, the Christian merchants, and the holy and 
 devoted men and women who, in every age and in 
 every community, have wrought righteousness, been 
 zealously affected in every good cause, shed around 
 them the radiance of a holy example, scattered 
 abroad in every direction the seeds of piety, lived 
 in the affections of grateful hearts, and rested from 
 
34 YOUNG men's 
 
 their labours here to enjoy the recompense of great 
 
 rpwnrri in hpflvp.n. 
 
 reward in heaven 
 
 Lovers of souls, the children of our God ! 
 
 Ye are the generation whom the skies, 
 
 And they who heaven's immortal floor have trod. 
 
 Early admit into their sweet society. 
 
 Such share their ministries ; such angels prize; 
 
 With such God's children everywhere rejoice, 
 
 And join with them their prayers and charities, 
 
 Till heaven itself shall gladden at their voice.* 
 
 THE STRENGTH OF YOUTH A SOLEMN TRUST. 
 
 The strength and energy of youth are therefore 
 talents of inestimable worth, because they consti- 
 tute a power of such incalculable force. They are 
 gifts of God. They are a solemn trust, a holy pre- 
 rogative, the rule and measure of a future reckoning 
 and of an eternal retribution. 
 
 Neither is this a trust for life. As youth is the 
 flower of life, so strength is the bloom and fragrance 
 of the flower, soon, like it, to wither and decay. The 
 impassioned energy of youth ceases with it, and 
 leaves behind only the strength of habit, of will, and 
 of experience ; or, on the other hand, the weakness 
 of ignorance, the bondage of a depraved heart, a 
 defiled and polluted disposition, and a seared or 
 vindictive conscience. '' God giveth power to the 
 faint ; and to them that have no might he increaseth 
 
 * See note A. 
 
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. 35 
 
 strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weaiy^ 
 and the joung men shall utterly fall : but they that 
 wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength ; they 
 shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, 
 and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not 
 faint." " Rejoice, young man, in thy youth ; and 
 let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, 
 and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the 
 sight of thine eyes : but know thou, that for all these 
 things God will bring thee into judgment."* 
 
 The strength of youth may be prostituted to vice, 
 exhausted in selfish and sensual indulgence or in 
 lazy indolence and inactivity, and, by hurrying man 
 to an early grave or a premature old age, treasure 
 up wrath against the day of wrath and righteous 
 judgment of God, who will recompense every man 
 according to his deeds and according to his ability 
 and opportunity to know his duty, — tribulation and 
 anguish upon every soul of man that has done evil 
 and that has not done good when it was in the 
 power of his hand to do it. 
 
 " Oh, awful hour that endeth all our time ! 
 When we before our Judge shall trembling stand 
 Who shall disclose the heart's deep labyrinth, 
 When sins of night shall see the face of day, 
 When earth and heaven as witnesses stand by, 
 And faltering tongues to gather'd worlds confess ?" 
 
 * Isaiah xl. 29-31 ; Ecclesiastes xi. 9. 
 
56 YOUNG men's 
 
 .Oil, Iiow sad and melancholy, tlicn, it is to see 
 young men, in a world 
 
 " Whcro nothing seems unreal there 
 Save what workllings hope and fear. 
 While o'er a gulf they fleeting pass 
 On a bridge of brittle glass," — 
 
 how melancholy, in such a world and with such a 
 fleeting life, to see young men, under the full pres- 
 sure of all those energies which might be and 
 ought to be their glory, plunging headlong into the 
 very depths of ungodliness, worldliness, and vice, — 
 of drunkenness, surfeiting, and uncleanness, — 
 yielding every power of soul and body as in- 
 struments of unrighteousness unto sin, — and thus 
 laboriously serving that master whose wages is 
 death — the death of self-respect, of all pure and 
 high aspirations, of hope, of character, of strength 
 itself, and of all well-grounded expectation of salva- 
 tion from the wrath to come. 
 
 Dead to all sense of shame, breaking loose from 
 the innocence of their childhood, casting off the 
 comely habits and pious practices of a paternal 
 home, they plunge into excess of riot; and, borne 
 onward by the impetus they have acquired in the 
 descent, like one running down hill who cannot stop 
 although he would, when they reach the mouth of 
 the pit they are swept over it into perdition. Such 
 young men — very significantly called fast — make 
 
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 fearful progress, waxing, like "seducers," "worse 
 and worse." Their night grows darker and darker; 
 the edge of conscience duller and duller; the process 
 of petrifaction in their heart more and more rapid 
 till it acquires the hardness of stone ; when, wallowing 
 in the mire of the lowest sensuality, they can make 
 even a boast of sins from which, on the day when 
 they left their father's roof with his blessing on 
 their head and a mother's warm tears on their 
 cheek, they would have shrunk with feelings of indig- 
 nant abhorrence, exclaiming, "Am I a dog, that I 
 should do such things?" 
 
 youthful sins manhood' s sorrows and 
 death's pangs. 
 
 The remark is often made, when the spectacle of 
 such a young man is presented, that " he is sowing his 
 wild bats," that after a time he will come to himself 
 and reform, and that he may even yet be converted and 
 saved and become perhaps a burning and shining light 
 in the Christian church. Most dangerous and damn- 
 able delusion ! Be it far from thee, young man, 
 young Christian, Christian parent ! For while 
 it is true that the natural tendency of youth is to 
 the indulgence of unbridled passion, and this with 
 less care about concealment than is felt in after- 
 years, and while it is further true that, in some 
 instances in which passion has been thus indulged 
 4 
 
38 YOUNG men's 
 
 for a season, divine grace has been mighty enough 
 to subdue that passion, and convert the open and 
 hearty servant of sin into the open and hearty servant 
 of Christ, — yet to say that the indulgence in sin of 
 any kind either renders more probable the conver- 
 sion of the sinner, or in any way fits the sinner for 
 conversion or for usefulness after conversion, (if by 
 mighty grace he is ever converted,) — or to say that 
 sin of any kind can be indulged in at any period of 
 life, without imminent danger, — is not more at vari- 
 ance with the teachings of human experience than 
 it is with the lessons of the word of God. 
 
 During a ministry of nearly twenty years, says a 
 pastor, I have seen a great deal of '' wild oats" sown; 
 and I never yet have seen any thing but "wild oats'* 
 rea'ped from " wild oats" &own. I have seen many 
 a one in early manhood " throwing the reins upon 
 the neck of his lusts," who, ere the prime of man- 
 hood was passed, had become an outcast from 
 society and filled a dishonoured grave. And the more 
 warm-hearted and generous the natural disposition of 
 the young man was, the more rapidly has vice done its 
 fearful work, and the more terrible the wreck it has 
 made. I have seen others giving way for a time to 
 the indulgence of passion, who afterwards became the 
 hopeful subjects of divine gi'ace. And I have heard 
 them, as they have smarted under the consequences 
 of their youthful sins, lament their course in early 
 life, in language like that of Job — " Our bones aro 
 
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. 89 
 
 full of the sins of our youth, which shall lie down 
 with us in the dust.'' 
 
 A venerable old man, an elder in a Presbyterian 
 church, was once surveying a tract of land, as an 
 executor, in order to divide the estate. He and his 
 companions reached a certain cleared lot on the 
 mountain; and, turning to the gentleman with him, 
 he said, '' I never see this lot without a feeling of 
 shame." '' Why so?" asked his friend. " Because 
 as many as fifty years ago, when I was a boy, I 
 came with some other boys to this lot one night and 
 took some watermelons without asking the owner's 
 leave !" 
 
 This aged Christian would often dwell upon the 
 sins of his youth and mourn over them. 
 
 It so happened one evening that Uncle H. (says 
 a narrator of the fact) sat by the old-fashioned open 
 fireplace, in which a cheerful fire was burning. He 
 sat as if lost in earnest meditation, and occasionally a 
 sigh escaped him. An individual present, noticing 
 this, said, abruptly, "Well, what is the matter now?" 
 Uncle H. seemed disinclined to answer the question; 
 but, on being urged, replied, " I would rather have 
 kept silent ; but, as you insist on knowing, I am 
 thinking about the sins of my youth ; and, I must 
 say, they trouble me !" 
 
 There was once boarding with him a religious 
 professor who took diiferent views of justification 
 from those entertained by '' Uncle H." This man 
 
40 YOUNG MEN S 
 
 seemed to consider justification as nearly synonymous 
 with forgetfulness of past sins. They often con- 
 versed on this point, the one asserting that when 
 Christ forgives our sins we ought to forget them 
 and have no more trouble about them, and that, if we 
 do not, it is evident that they are not forgiven; 
 the other replying that David, though forgiven, 
 said, ''My sin is ever before me,'^ and that Paul, 
 though forgiven, spoke with grief and shame about 
 his having '' persecuted the church of God." 
 
 This must be so. It is the law of nature. It is 
 the necessary result of our mental and moral being. 
 It is also the law of the kingdom of grace. As a man 
 sows, so shall he reap. As a man sows, and what a 
 man sows in the spring-time of life, he must reap in 
 a multiplied harvest in the summer of manhood and 
 the winter of old age. If he sows wind, he must then 
 reap whirlwind. If he sows to the flesh, he must 
 reap corruption. If he sows wild oats, he must, like 
 the prodigal, vainly try to fill himself with the 
 husks which the swine do eat. ''Lust, when it is 
 conceived, bringeth forth sin ; and sin, when it is 
 finished, bringeth forth death.'' "Thou fool, that 
 which thou sowest thou sowest not that which shall 
 be,'' but what shall bear multiplied products, and 
 " from every seed its own body and its own fruits." 
 
 "Who sows the serpent's teeth, let him not hope 
 To reap a joyous harvest." 
 
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. 41 
 
 "There can be little doubt that most persons settle 
 the question of their eternal destiny while young. 
 This is the time of roots and seeds, the time of foun- 
 dations, the time of fountains and of laws, the time 
 of principles and prophecies, that are to be de- 
 veloped and fulfilled in the man and in the angel, 
 good or bad. This is the time of quick and vivid 
 sensibility to impressions from abroad, whether good 
 or evil; the imitative time of our being; the repro- 
 ducing time of examples; the time of intense feel- 
 ing and of energy and impulse in following the 
 heart and in carrying out its pui-poses.'^ 
 
 The process of self-education, as Foster says, 
 is then going on, even though unobserved, and tend- 
 ins: fast towards the ultimate fixed form of character. 
 
 ^' One season cannot be changed for another, the 
 summer for the spring, nor the autumn for the 
 summer. We go on, indeed, sowing seed all the 
 way through life; and each successive period of 
 life is a most impressive reality, — a period of proba- 
 tion and of seeds for the next period, — ^because what 
 we were and what we did yesterday is continually 
 coming out in consequences to-day. But the one 
 grand seed-period of our being, the period of the 
 oaks that build the ships in which our fortunes are 
 embarked for eternity, the period of all the com- 
 manding fixtures and features of the character, is 
 never repeated, and is ordinarily early in life. The 
 
 roots of our earliest habits twine themselves all 
 4* 
 
42 YOUNG men's 
 
 about our immortality. The trunk of character, 
 strengthened by such roots, is immovable; and the 
 branches spread themselves out a mighty shade of 
 foliage. So prodigiously, intensely energetic is the 
 impressible period and growing power of our being. 
 And it depends therefore upon what we meet with 
 .and entertain at such a period, whether we shall 
 become apostles of good or of evil in our fallen 
 world, because it meets with the growing, germinat- 
 ing power, the enthusiastic, imaginative, impulsive 
 tendency, and carries the mind onward to results.''* 
 How awful, then. Christian young man, is the 
 infatuation of young men around you, growing up 
 in all the wildness and inflexibility of their evil and 
 corrupt natures, and filling the land with their rank 
 and baleful luxuriance, their poisonous exhalations, 
 and their soul-destroying fruits ! 
 
 " Oh, what a wilderness about us lies 
 Of spirits, each wrapp'd round in fleshly cell, 
 Could we but see beyond each other's eyes 
 This universe of souls 'rnong which we dwell, 
 Each in himself a world, — a heaven or hell 
 Therefore it is of life's short span 
 So often written in the sacred page, 
 Which, pointing immortality to man. 
 Holds up in mirror life's short pilgrimage, 
 In every form which may the soul engage. 
 And then each talent weighs in duty's scale. 
 Mysterious thought of never-ending age ! 
 
 * From Dr. Cheever's " Voices of Nature." 
 
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. 43 
 
 At sight of whicli the strongest heart should pall, 
 
 And dread, ere heav'n be won, lest life itself should fail. 
 
 Each hour is like an angel, which, with wings. 
 
 Conies from and goes to heaven ; yet empty ne'er 
 
 Comes or returns, but some occasion brings, 
 
 And hastens back to heaven, the tale to bear 
 
 Of evil, or fresh store to treasure there. 
 
 Pity looks down from heaven's o'erarching roof, 
 
 Awe-struck to see how swift our hour is sped, 
 
 To see while day and night weave the thin woof, 
 
 Eternity is hanging o'er the thread. 
 
 And then that hour that numbers 'mong the dead 
 
 Numbers us 'mong those that die no more : 
 
 Time marks not death with unperceived tread 
 
 Steal on behind ; but, while he numbers o'er 
 
 His many days to come, death shuts the eternal door." 
 
 THE GLORY OF YOUTHFUL PIETY AND YOUNG 
 MEN THE STRENGTH OF EVERY COMMUNITY. 
 
 On tlie other hand, how delightful is it to behold 
 young men, inspired with the divine idea of associa- 
 tion, united, together on the basis of love to Christ 
 and love to sinners, sustained by the principle of 
 faith in Christ, obedience to him, and recognition 
 of the common salvation and the common brother- 
 hood of humanity ! 
 
 " "Who can discern the beauty of that power, 
 When endless life within the soul is born ! 
 Dawns on the soul the everlasting morn ! 
 The aspiration of its lofty aim 
 Stilling the noise of passion and of mirth, 
 Set on her heritage of endless worth. 
 And her immortal birthright bent to claim?" 
 
44 YOUNG men's 
 
 The strengtli and power of any community is in 
 its young men. For weal or woe, they give it tone 
 and character, and life and energy. They will also 
 be its future leaders. Out of their ranks must 
 come forth the husbands, the fathers, the merchants, 
 the operatives, the municipal fathers and legislators, 
 the pillars both of the state and of the church. 
 The very being and, much more, the well-being, of 
 this as of every other community, rests, therefore, 
 upon the opinions, character, and habits of the young 
 men whose strength is now their glory or their 
 shame. 
 
 THE PECULIAR TEMPTATIONS OP YOUNG MEN. 
 
 And hence, of all other classes, our young men 
 most emphatically stand in need of the benefits and 
 blessings of Christian association. That energy, 
 strength, and boldness which constitute their glory is 
 at the same time the source of their greatest danger. 
 Their pride, passion, and love of independence, like 
 unbroken steeds, spurn the control of reason, laugh 
 at experience, and, dreaming of no sickness, disease, 
 or death, give the reins to passion, rush into the 
 very whirlwind of temptation, and sport merrily 
 while their hand is upon the lion's mane and their 
 feet upon the hole of the serpent. The general 
 arrangements of business, its ungodly "hasting 
 after" riches, its utter disregard of the health, 
 
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. 45 
 
 happiness, and morals of the young men who are 
 its instruments, and the whole nature of their sur- 
 rounding circumstances and conditions, expose our 
 young men to peculiar and almost irresistible temp- 
 tations. 
 
 The perverted spirit of our free institutions, the 
 want of consideration, intellectual pride, immoral- 
 ity, and the inevitable tendency of spiritual dark- 
 ness to shut out from itself the light, lead many 
 young men to skepticism in one or other of its 
 Protean forms. If too conscientious and enlight- 
 ened to fall a prey to this snare of the destroyer, 
 the same causes render young men unwilling to sub- 
 mit fully to the gospel, and induce them to take 
 shelter from the storm and tempest of conscience in 
 some refuge of lies, some man-constructed system 
 of doctrine or philosophy, by which — imagining 
 they must think for themselves, that is, hold opinions 
 different from those around them — they are easily 
 beguiled. "I have been,^^ said such a one, when 
 dying, "a, most wicked and incorrigible opponent 
 of the whole Christian system; and I know not why 
 I was so, but for the pride of opinion/' 
 
 In these ways, and by every device, Satan blinds 
 the eyes of young men, closes their ears, and locks 
 their hearts, so that they may permit their day of 
 grace to pass away. This is all he wants; and his 
 end is gained, whether this is accomplished by vice, 
 folly, frivolity, or vain philosophy, falsely so called. 
 
46 YOUNG men's 
 
 ^^The young Lord Littleton was in early life the 
 subject of deep impressions, under the influence of 
 which, he informs us, he retired at a particular time 
 to his chamber to pray, with the intention of com- 
 mitting his soul to God. As he was on the point 
 of kneeling to engage in prayer, he concluded to 
 turn aside and close his window-shutter. At the 
 window he saw a band of musicians parading the 
 streets. The splendour of their appearance caught 
 his eye -, their inspiring notes ravished his ear ; he 
 rushed from his apartment to the street, joined in 
 the crowd, banished his seriousness, and felt the 
 strivings of the Spirit 7io more." This was all that 
 Satan desired; since in gaining this he gained, and 
 Lord Littleton lost, all. If the fly can only be at- 
 tracted by its glare to circle round the flame until, 
 intoxicated, it falls into it, its wings are lost; and, if 
 not destroyed at once, it is destroyed inevitably. 
 ^'I am a candidate for a fortune,'' said a young man 
 recently in the flush of health and the ardour of 
 hopeful prospects, " and I am bound to die rich !" 
 Alas! within a year he was dead, and that too 
 before he was rich either in earthly or in heavenly 
 treasures. 
 
 Ah ! thus it is that, while Christ and his bride the 
 church stand in their very presence, beckoning them 
 to heaven and holding forth the crown of an immor- 
 tal heaven with its imperishable, eternal weight of 
 glory, — thoughtless, and blinded youth cast their all 
 
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. 47 
 
 upon a moment's die, — eternity, the prize of life, 
 salvation through the blood of the Lamb; — and, 
 Esau-like, barter every thing for baubles, '' and buy 
 only eternal pains V 
 
 Of all others, therefore, young men stand in need 
 of association, — of the power which is found in the 
 example, influence, advice, encouragement, sym- 
 pathy, companionship, and occupation which are so 
 powerfully brought to bear upon them by associa- 
 tion with those of their own age who have like pas- 
 sions, feelings, and temptations with themselves. 
 
 YOUTH THE CRISIS OF MAN's CHARACTER AND 
 DESTINY. 
 
 Youth is the crisis of a man's character, — the 
 tide of life which, taken at its height, leads on, ac- 
 cording to the power that moves it, to a life of glory 
 and of goodness, or to one of shame, hard impeni- 
 tence, and unbelief. Of the crimes of Great Bri- 
 tain, one-fourth are ascribed to parties under twenty- 
 one years of age. In three years, eight hundred and 
 thirty-three offenders under that age were committed 
 to the Glasgow prison. 
 
 The number of criminals under twenty years of 
 age, imprisoned in 1815, in Britain, was 6803, or 1 
 in 449 of the population between ten and twenty 
 years of age; while in 1844 they amounted to 
 11,348, or 1 in 304 of the population of the same 
 age. 
 
48 YOUNG men's 
 
 In London, between the years 1844 and 1848, 
 the proportion of criminals under twenty years of 
 age to the population of the metropolis under that 
 age increased from 1 in 56 to 1 in 47. 
 
 One leading question of the present age, there- 
 fore, is to know how to deal with juvenile delin- 
 quents. 
 
 THE NUMBER AND IMPORTANCE OF YOUNG MEN 
 IN ANY COMMUNITY. 
 
 Such are the temptations of young men, and such 
 the danger of their being lost to society, and of 
 their becoming a curse instead of a blessing. 
 
 Now, there are probably not fewer than between 
 two and three thousand young men in this city. 
 They are essential to its very existence. There is 
 not a store in this city which would not be closed 
 but for the needful services of its young men; not 
 a counting-house, not a workshop, not a printing- 
 press, which would not be broken up if deprived of 
 their vigorous and energetic young men. As prin- 
 cipals, as bookkeepers, as clerks, as hands and 
 operatives, men still endowed with the energy, en- 
 terprise, and strength of youth sustain and carry on 
 the various busy operations of this and of every 
 other mercantile community. 
 
 The character of any city, therefore, — of its busi- 
 ness, its manufactures and its arts, depends on the 
 character of the young men. 
 
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. 49 
 
 The permanence, prosperity, popularity, and pro- 
 fitable success of every mercantile concern depend 
 vitally and to a very great extent upon the honesty, 
 the address, the energy of the young men, upon 
 the hearty zeal with which they enter into the inte- 
 rests of their employers, and upon the intelligence 
 and pleasing and obliging manners with which they 
 conduct themselves. 
 
 And hence it follows that the future progress and 
 elevation of this and of any city, its prosperous 
 rivalry with other cities in their rapid increase and 
 development, depend more than any thing else — ex- 
 cept the blessing of God, which alone maketh rich 
 and buildeth up any community, — upon the wisdom, 
 spirit, enterprise, large-hearted liberality, far-reach- 
 ing sagacity, and therefore that fear of God which is 
 the source of these virtues and of all true greatness, 
 — which characterize its young men. 
 
 THE IMPORTANCE AND CLAIMS OF YOUNG MEN's 
 CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 Such, then, being the relation of young men to 
 every community, (not now to refer to our families, 
 to our social character, and to our churches,) — such 
 being their supreme importance to its prosperity, — 
 such being the peculiar circumstances which isolate 
 young men as a class from those around them, — 
 and such being the peculiar temptations by 
 
50 YOUNG men's 
 
 which their virtue and pious purposes are assailed, — 
 it is very evident that an association of young men 
 on Christian principles is of unspeakable importance. 
 The leaven which shall purify this mass must be 
 mingled with it. The light that shall enlighten it 
 must radiate from the centre outwards. And the 
 all-pervading and elevating power of Christian 
 principle must be brought to bear upon our young 
 men through the sympathy and love of young men 
 like themselves. 
 
 the advantages they secure to young men. 
 
 The Young Men's Christian Association 
 presents, therefore, very strong attractions to every 
 Christian young man in the community. Would 
 you, my dear young friend, strengthen and invigorate 
 your own Christian life; — would you enjoy the bless- 
 edness of doing good, — good to those most needful 
 of it, to whom you have peculiar access, over whom 
 you have peculiar power, and in benefiting whom 
 you most effectually advance the interests of society at 
 large; — would you increase your own happiness and 
 gather round you all the delight springing from sym- 
 pathy and fellowship with kindred spirits; — would 
 you secure to yourself friends, acquaintances, a home 
 where you can cultivate both the head and the 
 heart? — then become an active, zealous, and warm- 
 hearted member of some Young Men's Christian 
 Association. 
 
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. 51 
 
 ALL CHRISTIAN YOUNG MEN OF EVERY DENOMI- 
 NATION MAY UNITE. 
 
 No Christian man — who loves the gospel more 
 than he does any creed of human origin, and Christ 
 in his divine glory and grace and infinite all-suffi- 
 ciency more than he does any denomination upon 
 earth — need hesitate to unite in such association. It 
 is simply, sincerely, and purely evangelical. It is 
 not polemical nor aggressive in any sense except as 
 against sin. It is neither sectarian, doctrinal, nor 
 ecclesiastical. Its basis is Christ the power of God 
 and the wisdom of Grod unto salvation to every one 
 that believeth. Its power is the practical, expe- 
 rimental, saving, and sanctifying knowledge of Christ 
 formed in the heart the hope of glory. Its instru- 
 mentality is the gospel as the only regenerator of 
 man individually and of man socially. The recep- 
 tion of that gospel, and love and devotion to that 
 Saviour, are the only qualifications for union with 
 Kuch an Association. It knows no church in parti- 
 cular, except so far as membership in it gives evi- 
 dence of these qualifications being possessed by its 
 representatives. It looks beyond particular churches 
 to the church visible, — the holy catholic church 
 throughout the world; and it looks upward above all 
 rites and forms and peculiar tenets, as held and loved 
 and deemed vitally important upon earth, to member- 
 ship in the church spiritual and invisible, — cousti- 
 
52 YOUNG men's 
 
 tuted of all those wlio are born by a new celestial 
 birtb^ wbose names are written in heaven, whose 
 aims and hopes and joys are one, and to whom it is 
 a blessed privilege to labour together with Christ in 
 seeking and saving the lost. 
 
 No one, therefore, need keep back. There is here 
 no compromise of doctrine, order, or principle. To 
 associate Christian young men; to strengthen and 
 confirm their faith and hope and zeal ; to provide 
 comfortable rooms and reading, and perhaps physical 
 refreshment* for young men generally whether 
 they are professing Christians or not; to encourage 
 their friendship; to aid and assist them in every 
 way; to preserve and increase in them all good pur- 
 poses ; to deliver them from temptation ; to present 
 before them the example of living, loving, and 
 cheerful piety, and thus to lead them by the cords 
 of a man to the Saviour and salvation; to be 
 ready, on any occasion of public sickness and cala- 
 mity or of private and personal necessity, to lend 
 their services to the cause of suffering humanity; 
 and to devise and prosecute labours of Christian 
 love among the young, the poor, and the destitute : — 
 this is the sum and substance of the end contem- 
 plated by such an association. 
 
 Young Men's Christian Associations, therefore, 
 have powerful and undisputed claims to the appro- 
 
 * To the extent of tea, coCec, butter and bread, as in London. 
 
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. 53 
 
 bation^ encouragement, sympathy, and assistance of 
 every member of the community; of every one to 
 whom the character of our future husbands, fathers, 
 and rulers is dear; especially of every man of busi- 
 ness ; and more emphatically still of every one who 
 names the name of Christ.* 
 
 ■* In this connection I ■would give "svhat prominence and 
 permanence I may to the following suggestion relative to city 
 clerks and young men employed in similar ways. It is from 
 the Presbyterian : — 
 
 "Messrs, Editors: — A young gentleman, my relative, a 
 clerk in New York, lately paid me a visit, and, among other 
 matters, he informed me that he did not go statedly to church 
 on the Sabbath, because he had no pew or seat, and was wholly 
 unable from his little salary to rent one. He said, also, that 
 very many clerks spent the whole Sabbath at home, and not a 
 few of them in utter idleness and folly ; that they could not 
 afford to pay for seats, and, being very often * looked' out of 
 pews, and not rarely turned out by the sextons and others, 
 they had become bitter in their feelings against religious 
 people, and wholly infidel in their sentiments. 
 
 "I cannot now write any thing elaborate on this matter, but 
 would respectfully suggest whether our religious and moral 
 merchants cannot devise a plan of renting seats or pews, and 
 in pleasant parts of the churches, for their clerks and appren- 
 tices, requiring all such to attend worship on the Sabbath, and 
 refusing to employ any who will not agree to such an arrange- 
 ment." 
 
 "The foregoing is from a respected clerical brother, who 
 states no imaginary case ; nay, we^have reason to apprehend 
 it is but one of many similar cases. In our large cities there 
 are thousands of apprentices and clerks who, from straitened 
 
54 YOUNG men's 
 
 WHY THESE ASSOCIATIONS REQUIRE LIBERAL 
 ASSISTANCE AND LARGE RESOURCES. 
 
 It is therefore very evident that Young Men's 
 Christian Associations can only fully succeed by libe- 
 ral help, as well as by the general sympathy and 
 fervent prayers of the community at large. 
 
 Every Association ought to have a very com- 
 
 means and want of friendly encouragement, have no connec- 
 tion with our churches. They are not only unable, however 
 good their will might be, to purchase or to rent pews, but, 
 feeling that a constant attendance at any place of worship 
 would be regarded as an intrusion, they stay away, and be- 
 come utterly indifferent to religion, or positively hostile to it, 
 because its jirivileges can alone be purchased with money, 
 which they cannot command. It is well worthy of considera- 
 tion whether there is not a radical defect in the system which 
 is now pursued, which, to so great an extent, excludes the 
 worthy poor from our sanctuaries. Why should those who 
 happen to have money be a privileged class, driving back into 
 corners and galleries those in all moral and religious respects 
 their superiors? And if this distinction cannot well be over- 
 looked, why, at least, should not all our churches have inter- 
 spersed, in the various aisles, pews well furnished for strangers, 
 where they could feel as if they were not intruders? And 
 why, as our correspondent suggests, should not employers rent 
 pews for their clerks and apprentices, which would be amply 
 repaid by the improved morals of these subordinates? Some 
 remedy should be found for an evil which actually exists. 
 Many young men who will become a disgrace to society by 
 their vices might thus be rescued to be the future support^! 
 and ornaments of the church. — Eds. Pres." 
 
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. 55 
 
 fortable, spacious, well-aired and well-situated house, 
 — A HOME. This building should be so arranged as 
 to provide a convenient reading-room, well supplied 
 with papers and one or more periodicals ; — a sitting- 
 room commodiously furnished and suitably aired 
 and warmed; — a library supplied with fresh, attrac- 
 tive, and profitable books ; — and a hall for social 
 meetings, private lectures, essays and debates, Bible- 
 classes, and for whatever other exercises may bo 
 suggested by a wise experience. 
 
 Every Association should have the means also of 
 providing lectures from distinguished men in all parts 
 of our country, and of publishing and circulating 
 such lectures, addresses, or tracts as would be found 
 useful to young men. 
 
 There is thus a necessity for means far beyond 
 those hitherto provided, both for making such asso- 
 ciations what they have not yet been, and for open- 
 ing up to them ways of usefulness and sources of 
 attraction not yet contemplated. 
 
 AN APPEAL TO MERCHANTS AND CITIZENS. 
 
 I appeal, then, on behalf of the Young Men's 
 Christian Association among you, to every merchant 
 and man of business in the community. Here is a 
 way in which you may greatly benefit the young 
 men of your adopted and cherished city ; — at once 
 please and profit them; encourage them to be and 
 
5G YOUNG men's 
 
 to do good and to escliew evil ; preserve and purify 
 tliem ; endear them to you, to each other, to their 
 friends, families, and churches; stimulate them to 
 intellectual and moral excellence, and to energy, 
 perseverance, honesty, and honour; render them 
 better men, better clerks, better salesmen, better 
 cashiers, better agents, better creditors, and better 
 merchants, better every way, whether as friends 
 of your family, suitors to your daughters, husbands 
 to your loved and cherished ones, fathers of your 
 families, officers in your banks, directors in your 
 railroad-companies, aldermen in your Council, and 
 officers in your churches. 
 
 Would it then be too much to ask every merchant, 
 every house of business, every man to whom the 
 services and character of young men are important, 
 if not every family and every Christian, to make an 
 annual contribution to this association? In what 
 other way could you do so much to advance your 
 own interests as by encouraging young men to unite 
 together in zealous co-operation for their own im- 
 provement ; — by providing them with ample means 
 for attracting others to their rooms, their meetings, 
 their lectures, and their various churches; — by 
 banding together those who, with energy, should 
 also have the disposition to be zealously affected in 
 every good work by which the health, happiness, 
 and moral and spiritual improvement of the com- 
 munity may be promoted ; — by thus elevating the 
 
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. 57 
 
 standard of character attainable and maintainable by 
 young men ; — by providing an increasing body of 
 young nieu in whose honour, honesty, and energy, 
 if not also in their piety, the community might 
 repose confidence in any position of trustworthiness 
 and zeal, — by thus rendering vice more vicious, 
 immorality more degrading, gambling, drunkenness, 
 extravagance and dishonesty in every form more 
 disgraceful, — by demonstrating that true religion is 
 identified with all that is honourable, manly, and 
 noble in character, and that it is promotive of the high- 
 est interests and happiness of the life that now is as 
 well as of that which is to come, — and that, in the 
 language of an ancient proverb, there is a shame 
 (the shame of being religious) which is sin, and truly 
 shameful, whereas there is a shame (the shame of 
 being sinful, irreligious, and cowardly and inactive 
 in the cause of God) which is life and glory; — that 
 voluntarily to eschew evil and avoid it, to choose 
 good and pursue it, to make good our object and our 
 end, and to live for others at the sacrifice of self and 
 for the love of Christ, is the very essence of heroism ; 
 and that he who by shining acts marks out his as- 
 cending way is in the path of glory shining more 
 and more unto the perfect day, — 
 
 Still nearer heaven, still more and more divine 
 Her mansions, as he nears the eternal shore. 
 
 Were our leading men of business to set an ex- 
 
58 YOUNG men's 
 
 ample in this matter; allow to their young men 
 their evenings for bodily recreation, and for mental, 
 moral, and spiritual improvement; and encourage 
 their attendance at the rooms and meetings and 
 social unions of these Associations ; what glorious re- 
 sults might we not look for in the future character 
 and prosperity of our city, our families, and our 
 churches ! 
 
 WHY ALL CHRISTIANS, AND YOUNG MEN SPECIALLY, 
 REQUIRE ASSOCIATION. 
 
 But, whatever may be the course pursued by 
 others, let me encourage you, my young friends, — 
 and all you who have strength and energy and spirit 
 enough and love enough to Christ and to the souls 
 of young men to unite with them in doing good, — •* 
 to avail yourselves of the advantages of the Young 
 Men's Christian Association. 
 
 It is, as I have shown, in its nature, principle, 
 object, and instrumentality. Christian, — gene- 
 rated, inspirited, and sustained by the divine life of 
 Christianity. That life quickens in individuals the 
 sense of responsibility, gratitude, and love to God and 
 love to souls perishing around them. But it also 
 enlightens and enlivens man's social nature, and 
 leads him to seek encouragement, help, and strength 
 in those who, like himself, are quickened and made 
 new creatures in Christ Jesus. This is the instinct 
 
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. 59 
 
 and security of tlie ChristiaCj wliose life is now 
 a warfare against sin within and temptation 
 without. 
 
 And in the very woods around us may we not behold 
 a lesson on the necessity of this union and co-opera- 
 tion ? ' The branch cannot but wither that is cut from 
 the parent vine.' The leaf depends for life upon its 
 protecting stem. The young and tender and even 
 the hardy trees find protection from the stormy blast 
 and the biting frost in their congregated union. 
 And the elements that are needed to cherish life lu 
 one tree are provided by another, so that they minis- 
 ter to each other's comfort, sustenance, and life. 
 And wouldst thou, Christian, be a dweller in the 
 woods of human life, — whether you stand in the 
 ^crowded mart of commerce, in the shady grove of 
 domestic and social life, or among the cedars of Le- 
 banon, the garden of the Lord where trees of right- 
 eousness are planted by the rivers of living water, — 
 and yet think to dwell alone in selfish independence? 
 '^Behold, the beasts shall hurt thee, weak, naked, 
 houseless outcast. Disease and death shall track thee 
 out as bloodhounds in the wilderness." Or, if thou 
 standest, thou shalt be found a poor, weak, and broken 
 reed, shaken by every wind and bared by every 
 rude blast. Thou hast a social spirit, 0, man. 
 Alone, thou dreadest and wantest all things. Thy 
 strength and comfort are laid up for thee in the 
 deep well of humanity. Bless God, therefore, who 
 
60 YOUNG men's 
 
 has ordained for you the ties of family, of kindred, 
 of country, and, above all, of Christian fellowship; 
 and who has thus multiplied your resources, out of 
 weakness has made you strong, and supplied all 
 your need from the storehouse of sympathy and 
 friendship and the sweet communion of saints. 
 
 Christian fellowship is therefore absolutely neces- 
 sary to Christian life, comfort, and growth. We are 
 indeed dependent creatures. We cannot exist alone. 
 We live in each other's life, and are moulded by each 
 other's character, opinions, habits, and disposition. 
 Sympathy creates a moral atmosphere through which 
 we are assimilated and fashioned by those associated 
 with us. So God has made us. So experience 
 teaches us, for a man is known by his company. 
 And so Grod instructs us, for ^'evil communicatior^ 
 corrupts good manners, while he that walketh with 
 the wise shall be wise.'' 
 
 The reason is very obvious. We are dependent 
 on the good will and good opinion of those asso- 
 ciated with us. How — asks the divine philosophy 
 — can two ♦ or more persons walk together in the 
 bonds of intimate and familiar acquaintance unless 
 they are agreed? There will of necessity be con- 
 stant differences, jarring, and ill feeling. To avoid 
 this, to be at peace, to walk and work and will and 
 enjoy together, we feel constrained to conform our- 
 selves to those with whom we wish to associate as 
 intimate companions. There is a mutual and grow- 
 
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. 61 
 
 ing assimilation, first by the avoiding, and then 
 by the abandoning, of all points of difference. 
 
 Example, too, is all-powerful. It exhibits the 
 thing done. It makes manifest its reality and its 
 practicability. If evil, example seems to guarantee 
 safety, satisfaction, the good-will of those who assume 
 to be manly, independent, and above the dictation 
 of God or man. If good, examj^le on the other hand 
 commands our homage, condemns our low, sensual, 
 and irrational life, and gives us a living proof that 
 true piety is the only source of true dignity, honour, 
 happiness, and peace. And whereas an evil example 
 is congenial to our naturally-evil heart of unbelief, 
 and is commended to us by all the witchery and 
 devices of the Evil One, on the other hand conscience, 
 experience, observation, the Bible, and the providence 
 of Grod, — God himself, good angels, good men, and 
 good women in an eminent degree, — conspire with 
 good example in making it powerful to good im- 
 pressions and to holy and happy results. 
 
 ASSOCIATION ONLY POWERFUL WHEN VOLUNTARY. 
 
 It is, however, very important for me to observe, 
 and for you to remember, that the power of associa- 
 tion lies chiefly in its being voluntarily sought and 
 willingly reciprocated. The association even of the 
 wicked, the profane, the drunken, the irreligious, 
 and the scoffer, when it is only endured because of 
 che necessity of circumstances, — as, for instance, in 
 
62 YOUNG men's 
 
 tlie prosecution of business, in the case of impenitent 
 parents, husband, wife, family, or school-fellows, — 
 may even serve to awaken disgust; to unveil the 
 heinousness, the meanness, and the vulgarity of sin; 
 to create aversion and loathing; to arouse our spirit 
 of independence; and to generate principles of virtue 
 and habits of piety : — 
 
 Gathering strength and beauty from the storm, 
 The unyielding oak grows to majestic form, 
 Strengthening its root deep hidden from the view, 
 Feeding on air, and di-inking heavenly dew. 
 Thus habits mould the soul to be a place 
 Wherein may dwell forms of immortal grace. 
 While thoughts and tempers in the spirit's shrine 
 Grow into shape and take the form divine, 
 Fed'by the life of the celestial tree, 
 And drinking heaven, — elastic, stainless, free. 
 
 Thus were Moses and Daniel prepared by God 
 for the bravest services in his cause far from the 
 pious homes of Israel. They grew in saintship amid 
 the impurities and effeminacy of a heathen palace. 
 Josiah also took root and blossomed into an early 
 and fragrant piety amid all the blood and filth and 
 pollution of the house of his father Ammon and his 
 grandfather Manasseh. ^^I have never doubted," 
 said Newton, '^that God could convert the heathen, 
 since he converted me.'' 
 
 It is only, therefore, when we choose the sinner's 
 company, walk willingly in the counsel of the un- 
 godly, stand in the way of sinners, and sit in the seat 
 
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. 63 
 
 of the scornfulj that their character and curse become 
 inevitably ours. 
 
 But this is equally true of the example and asso- 
 ciation of the pious and the good. We may enjoy 
 this inestimable blessing in the person of our 
 parents, family, and friends, — ima husband, or a wife, 
 or a child, or an employer, or a business-companion. 
 But if we do not appreciate it, — if it is not really and 
 voluntarily and lovingly improved, — it not only does 
 us no good, but oftentimes is perverted into a curse. 
 Our pride and vanity and self-will and contrary dis- 
 positions and desires are offended; and so sin, taking 
 advantage of us, works in us hatred and enmity and 
 unbelief and hardness and impenitency of heart. 
 
 The power of association lies, therefore, in its 
 being voluntarily sought, and in our thus putting 
 into the hands of others the key to our hearts and 
 submitting them to the plastic power of example 
 and companionship. And when therefore young 
 persons voluntarily turn away from any willing inti- 
 macy and heart-communion with the vile and un- 
 godly, and associate themselves with those ta whom* 
 Christianity is truth ; Christ the perfection of glory 
 as a model of character ; piety the highest style of 
 man ; the service of Cod perfect freedom ; and god- 
 liness the chiefest joy; — when, I say, young men or 
 women thus voluntarily join themselves together, 
 they give to association all its mighty power to 
 mould and fashion the character and life into 
 
64 YOUNG men's 
 
 conformity with the true^ the beautiful, and the 
 good. 
 
 How pleasant, therefore, and how good a thing, it 
 is to see the young men of our different churches, 
 and young men not yet members of any church, as- 
 sociated together in* these societies ! May you dwell 
 together in unity amid the green pastures and the 
 living waters of the common salvation, no root of 
 bitterness springing up to trouble you ; — the herds- 
 men of Lot having no contention with those of 
 Abraham; Ephraim not vexing Judah nor Judah 
 Ephraim ; and the only strife being to provoke one 
 another to love and to zeal in every good word and 
 work ! 
 
 CHRISTIAN YOUNG MEN URGED BY GRATITUDE TO 
 PIETY, ZEAL, AND DEVOTION. 
 
 And as Christ's love alone can unite his children, 
 — as Christ's Spirit alone can " pour into our hearts 
 that most excellent gift of charity, the very bond of 
 peace and of all virtues, without which we are 
 nothing worth, and without which whosoever liveth 
 is counted dead before God,'' — let a sense of your 
 own infinite indebtedness to Christ's mercy keep 
 you ever near to his throne of grace, that he may 
 ever keep you near to himself, and shed abroad his 
 own love and the love of the Spirit, and all the 
 fruits of the Spirit, in your heart. 
 
 When you look back to the hole of the pit from 
 
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. 65 
 
 wliich you were liewecl out, and consider how after 
 being made a living stone you were built by tlie 
 finger of Grod into that noiseless temple which is not 
 made with hands, eternal in the heavens; — when 
 you call to mind how,* amid the fretful circumstance 
 of passing time, weary and heavy-laden and tossed 
 about by every vain distracting care, Christ called 
 you by his still small voice into a mountain apart, 
 and there amid the unearthly calm of his own 
 blessed presence spake peace and rest to your 
 troubled soul; — when you remember how, while you 
 lay in your blood, polluted, an outcast foundling, 
 abandoned by all earthly pity, — 
 
 He bathed thee erst in life's eternal fount, 
 And took thee through the gate of his own grave 
 
 Unto the haunts of the celestial mount, 
 With dews of life thy dying soul to lave ; — 
 
 when, I say, you think upon these things, you will 
 be ready to exclaim — 
 
 Ye shining ones that walk on heaven's high wall. 
 Look down ; behold me from your heights around ; 
 Come, see and hear, bear witness to my call ! 
 What miracle of mercy have ye found 
 Equal to mine ? — With sins encompass'd round, 
 A lonely exile in the vale of tears, 
 One struggling 'mid the rocks, his comrades drowned, 
 An unarm'd one travelling 'mid hostile spears. 
 With such an one to walk the Almighty Lord appears. 
 Me hath he called to love him; me hath he deign'd 
 To call his child ; for me his life-blood pour'd ; 
 And when I turn from him, then he is pain'd. 
 6* 
 
66 YOUNG men's 
 
 To all things else his all-constraining word 
 
 Sets bounds, and o'er them throws his holding cord 
 
 But to our love : He asks our being whole. 
 
 And who unto the soul can bounds afford ? 
 
 He who can all the infinite control 
 
 Alone can meet her love, alone can fill the soul. 
 
 I ask not wealth ; I ask not length of days, 
 
 Nor joys which home and rural sights bestow, 
 
 Nor honour among men, nor poets' praise, 
 
 Nor friendship, nor the light of love to know, 
 
 Which with its own warm sun bathes all below ; 
 
 Nor that the seed I sow should harvest prove ; 
 
 I ask not health, nor spirit's gladdening flow, 
 
 But an assured pledge of rest above, — 
 
 A heart to feel and recompense Thy love 
 
 By loving Thee all earthly things above. 
 
 THE POWER OF ASSOCIATION EXERCISED BY BOOKS, 
 ETC. AS MUCH AS BY PERSONS. 
 
 Let me, before passing from this point, remind 
 you, my young friends, that the power of association 
 is, to a very great extent, exercised by the dead 
 as well as by the living; by the absent as well as 
 by the present; by those you have never seen as 
 well as by those in whose society you live and 
 move; by books, by pictures, by music, and 
 by all our in-door and out-door amusements and 
 occupations. 
 
 Much, if not the greater part, of man's association 
 in this day of general knowledge and cultivation is 
 found in the silent companionship of the books and 
 newspapers with which he daily communes, and in all 
 
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. 67 
 
 tlie otlier emploj^ments of his daily life. These con- 
 stitute much more truly his associates, and exercise 
 over him a much more powerful influence, than his 
 living companions. This is the atmosphere in 
 which he really lives and moves and has his being, 
 and which, all the more powerfully because all the 
 more unconsciously, creates and sustains his pecu- 
 liar taste, temperament, opinions, and habits. 
 
 This is a point of unspeakable importance to the 
 young, and yet but little considered. Young men, 
 it has been said, are like the chameleon. They take 
 their colour from the objects with which they are 
 brought in contact, be they personal or material. 
 They have as yet no character of their own, fixed and 
 immovable; and being, like sheep, gregarious, they 
 readily yield to the impulse of any leader and follow 
 a multitude to do evil. Now, it is in books that this 
 communion of soul is most intimate, unreserved, 
 absolute. Continents and centuries present no 
 obstacle to such intercourse. Time and space are 
 annihilated by this mental and moral association. 
 Man walks continually in the presence and under 
 the influence of those who have drawn him to 
 their silent society and by the irresistible attraction 
 of their powerfully-entrancing witchery of style 
 and tragic ^toiy. Thoughts that would kindle a 
 blush of shame if uttered, scenes which would shock 
 by their abominable shamelessness if witnessed, 
 actions which he would condemn as equally dis- 
 
QS YOUNG ]^EN'S 
 
 honourable and degrading, and principles wliicli lie 
 has been taught to regard as impious and profane, a 
 man may allow to pass before the eye of his mind, to 
 enter the ear of the soul, and to awaken spijritual im- 
 pressions, perceptions, and feelings. And thus, in the 
 confidence of his Own personal morality and upright- 
 ness, a man may permit visions of hell to be daguerreo- 
 typed upon his heart, and leaven of corruption to 
 mingle with the very elements of his being : — 
 
 Youth, confident in self, tampereth with dangerous dalliance. 
 Till the vice his heart once hated has lock'd him iu her foul 
 embrace. 
 
 The power of God's moral government over such a 
 man is by this silent and unobserved process de- 
 stroyed, and the soul-inspiring ideas of God, eternity, 
 heaven, and hell, being eclipsed, the heart becomes 
 insensible to every pure and holy motive, because 
 the light aud love and power of the gospel are 
 effectually shut out from the darkened soul. The 
 citadel is undermined before alarm is given. While 
 the man sleeps, tares are sown and soon spring up to 
 choke the better seed. And while he lies slumbering 
 in dreamy self-indulgence on the lap of this Delilah, 
 his hair is shorn, his strength is gone from him, and 
 he walks forth as at other times into the midst of 
 temptation, not knowing that God has departed from 
 him. Satan having entered into his heart, finds 
 that instead of resisting he becomes an easy prey, a 
 
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. 69 
 
 willing captive, a degraded bondsman, submitting, 
 by a self-entailed compulsion, the whole man to low, 
 sensual, and grovelling pleasures and pursuits. 
 
 THE EXPLANATION OF A MYSTERY. t 
 
 This is the secret of that mystery which often 
 meets us in the world, when there is some sudden and 
 unlooked-for development of vice, crime, or ungod- 
 liness in the life of some man or woman whose out- 
 ward conduct, associations, and professions were all 
 hitherto irreproachable; and why also it is that so 
 many live in impenitency and unbelief against all 
 the likelihoods from parental piety and instruction, 
 of their early conversion and consecration to God. 
 
 Their secret associations have been with books, 
 pictures, and papers which feed the ungodliness and 
 sinful carnality of their natural hearts. Their in- 
 door, inward life has been one of vanity and fictitious 
 demoralizing worldliness. They have thus been living 
 in an atmosphere of sin, and generating the streams 
 of a growing sensuality, carnal-mindedness, and 
 practical atheism, until the pent-up waters at length 
 burst forth in some open development of the 
 iniquity which had long been accumulating in the 
 heart. The poisonous malaria which had so long been 
 secretly inhaled has vitiated the very life-blood of 
 their moral constitution, so that, set on fire of hell, 
 raging with the fever of sensuality or of vice in 
 
'0 YOUNG men's 
 
 same other form, and burning with the insatiable thirst 
 of impetuous desire, they rush like a frenzied patient 
 from the restraints of home, and plunge headlong 
 into crime, dissipation, or dishonourable courses. 
 The fire-damp long and secretly generated has per- 
 meated the recesses of the soul, and only needed the 
 spark of temptation to develop it in an explosion 
 of terrible, consuming flames, — 
 
 Must it be so because 
 I did not scowl temptation from my presence, 
 Dallied with thoughts of possible fulfilment, 
 And only kept the road, the access open ? 
 I but amused myself with thinking of it. 
 The free will tempted me, — the power to do 
 Or not to do it. Was it criminal 
 To make the fancy minister to hope? 
 Where am I? Whither have I been transported? 
 No road, no track behind me, but a wall 
 Impenetrable, insurmountable, 
 Rises obedient to the thoughts I muttcr'd 
 But meant not! Mine own doings tower behind me! 
 A punishable man I seem : the guilt, 
 Try what I will, I cannot roll from off me. 
 
 Thus is it that without going into the open ways 
 of sin, the course of this world, or into the haunts of 
 vice; without seeking in the theatre a provocation 
 to lust and intemperance ; and without going hand- 
 in-hand with the openly ungodly and profane; young 
 men — ay, and young women too — are often led by 
 secret passages down to the pit of destruction, 
 
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. 71 
 
 become assimilated in feelings tbouglit, and cha- 
 racter with those from whose contamination they 
 once shrank; and are thus prepared to riot with 
 greediness in that nncleanness^ the very thought of 
 which would once have been repelled as disgusting 
 and diabolical. 
 
 CHRISTIAN YOUNG MEN EARNESTLY IMPLORED TO 
 SEEK THE SALVATION OF OTHERS. 
 
 Christian young man, whosoever thou art that 
 readest this appeal, when you remember that you 
 
 From that dark prison-house 
 Once pass'd, and, from Egyptian bondage freed, 
 Wast led between the walls of hanging seas j — 
 
 that you too have wandered on the edge of death, — 
 
 Of death that dieth not, — of endless death, — 
 And drunk the intoxications of the cup 
 Which fiU'd your fancy with unreal joys; — 
 
 and when you consider that these, your companions 
 in age, in nature, and in destiny, are on every side 
 and in every way surrounded by temptations and 
 snares and "damnable delusions,^' while yet, in 
 awful infatuation and cased in self-confidence, they 
 are treading on the verge of never-ending woe and 
 abusing to their greater condemnation their brief life 
 "big with the fate of all eternity;" — oh, will you not 
 run to their relief? 
 
 A few years since, says a writer in the Ame- 
 
72 YOUNG men's 
 
 rican Messenger, — a very powerful auxiliaiy to 
 those who would do good, — as with others I was 
 detained for some hours on the shore of one of 
 our inland lakes by an accident upon a railroad, I 
 witnessed an incident which deeply affected me. 
 Near where we lingered, impatient of delay, there 
 was a deep, wide, and very rapid stream, whose 
 waters roared and foamed and plunged over the rocks 
 into the lake. In this perilous current there was 
 suddenly discovered, as we sat listlessly gazing, a 
 human form^ apparently lifeless, and rapidly moving 
 along with the flood just at its entrance into the 
 lake. Quick as thought the party were astir; but 
 before the older men could adopt a plan for a rescue, 
 one of our number, a young man of slender form 
 but of a large heart, plunged into the hurrying 
 waters and struck out in pursuit of their victim. 
 It was a desperate struggle. Those who watched it 
 from the shore were almost paralyzed as they gazed. 
 But at length the struggle terminated in the triumph 
 of the daring young man. Like one determined to 
 do his best, he laid hold on the object of his exer- 
 tions, and slowly made his way with his burden to 
 the shore, where, amid the shouts of the spectators, 
 he at length laid it down. The drowned man, to 
 all appearance dead, after long and persevering 
 effort to restore him, proved to be alive, and, before 
 we left the place, spoke, stood up, and walked 
 about in our presence. 
 
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. 73'. 
 
 Ttis incident suggested to my mind, says the 
 writer, sucli thoughts as these : — 
 
 That noble-spirited young man saved a hody from 
 death. But there are wuh exposed to an infinitely 
 more dreadful death, rapidly passing down the 
 perilous current of time, and every moment nearing 
 the awful ocean of eternity. Who shall go to the 
 rescue ? Old men will counsel and do what they 
 can ) but many of them lack the strength and energy 
 for quick and enterprising exertion. Who then 
 are so suitable as our strong young men to plunge 
 into the stream and bufi'et the waves and lay hold 
 upon the perishing ? 
 
 Again : if our young men will but make the 
 eflFort to save the lost, and are successful even in a 
 single instance, they will enjoy not only the appro- 
 bation of their own consciences and the gratitude 
 of the rescued one, but those shouts of joy over one 
 sinner that repenteth which echo from the heavenly 
 shores. Let such a young man know that he " who 
 converteth a sinner from the error of his way shall 
 save a ^oul from death and shall hide a multitude 
 of sins.'' 
 
 Nor this alone. In saving one soul, you save many ; 
 for one sinner destroyeth many good. A drowning 
 man will drag down, if he can, others with him. 
 A wicked man cannot live alone. He must have 
 company. He must join hand with hand and take 
 7 
 
74 YOUNG men's 
 
 counsel together witli those willing to be seduced or 
 who are more hardened than himself : — 
 
 With mimic joy and fiendish guile 
 
 They on their victim smile : 
 One blindly tears life's charter'd scroll, 
 
 And tramples on the sword ; 
 Another bears the inebriating bowl, 
 
 Or whate'er price they need who sell their Lord; 
 While folly laughs, to gain the heart and head 
 
 Of those who dream of life while they embrace the dead. 
 
 In the expressive language of Scripture, sinners 
 " hatch cockatrice's eggs, and weave the spider's web : 
 he that eateth of their eggs dieth, and that which 
 is crushed breaketh out into a viper ; and he that 
 departeth from evil maketh himself a prey." The 
 sinner thus hopes to hide himself in a crowd, to divide 
 the risk, to parcel out the criminality," and to bribe 
 and blind conscience to be silent. And hence it 
 is not ouiy true that a companion of fools shall be 
 destroyed, but also that fools will destroy their com- 
 panions. In saving one sinner, therefore, you with- 
 draw one partner from the conspiracy. His influ- 
 ence and power for evil are destroyed. The crowd 
 is diminished, and fear and shame act with redoubled 
 power on his startled comrades. Sinners are afraid. 
 Fearfulness hath surprised them. 
 
 And, further still, every soul rescued is a friend, 
 a co-worker gained. He is added to your ranks. 
 He is enlisted in your company. He fights under 
 
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. 7o 
 
 your banner, and is now ready and zealous for every 
 good work. 
 
 In him, too, you have your mightiest argument, 
 your most overwhelming proof; an irresistible ap- 
 peal ; a living exemplification of the possibility and 
 the blessedness of salvation ; an epistle which all can 
 see and read; one whom all knew as blind and lame 
 and dumb, now restored to sight, leaping, and prais- 
 ing Grod who hath done such wonderful things 
 for him ; a silent but persuasive demonstration of 
 the reality and glory of piety — 
 
 That, could it meet the thoughtful gaze of men, 
 Would fill the eyes with tears, the breath with sighs. 
 Like rain and winds upon the stagnant lake. 
 And so amend the heart. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE POWER OF CHRISTIAN 
 yOUNG MEN. 
 
 And this Grod can make your efforts accomplish. 
 Let Christian young men bethink them of their 
 mission and their power. ''I write unto you, 
 young men, because ye are strong, and the word 
 of God abideth in you, and ye have overcome the 
 wicked one.'' In you ^' God has ordained strength, 
 that he may still the enemy and avenger." 
 
 In the recent terrible calamity occasioned by the 
 burning of the steamer John Jay, on Lake George, 
 when in one half hour she was burned to the 
 water's ed2;e and all on board were driven into the 
 
'6 YOUNG men's 
 
 Tvater, among the most active in rescuing passen- 
 gers was a lad of seventeen, named William Burnet, 
 belonging to Ticonderoga. He dived down six times 
 and saved a number of passengers. He was at last 
 80 overcome by liis indefatigable exertions as to be 
 delirious during the night. Three young gentlemen 
 of Philadelphia, — Messrs. Hutchinson, — who very 
 early stripped themselves to their underclothes, 
 after saving their father and three sisters, were, by 
 their energy and advice, instrumental in saving 
 many others. They behaved with great coolness 
 and confidence. Such, also, is your power, your 
 trust, your solemn charge. Christian young men. 
 For amid the daily scenes and intercourse of life, 
 as you go out and come in, as you travel and when 
 you rest, at home and abroad, in the counting- 
 house and the family circle, in the street and alley, 
 and in the rolling car or the winged steamer, you 
 may find opportunities of doing good. And thus also, 
 amid the too frequent storms and wrecks of life, may 
 you become the deliverer of the perishing, the praise 
 of the living, and yourself doubly blessed as you see 
 some mother clasping and kissing over and over again 
 her rescued boy plucked from her arms by the de- 
 stroying waves of temptation, and gone, she feared, 
 hopelessly and forever ; or, while you cKeer some almost 
 lifeless and self-ruined youth with hopes of mercy, 
 and clinging to him with the grasp of a love stronger 
 than death, bear him safely to the shore. Cling to 
 
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. ii 
 
 him J yes, grasp him with a yet holier, more agoniz- 
 ing hope and prayer and confidence. Imitate that 
 heroic woman on board the Northern Indiana, which 
 was also recently destroyed by fire, — Mrs. Fowler. 
 Having made her husband put on the only remaining 
 life-preserv'^er, and tearing away her bonnet already in 
 flames, she plunged with him into the lake. When 
 they rose to the surface she wiped the water from his 
 mouth and eyes and encouraged him to retain his 
 hope of being saved. He continued to struggle with 
 the waves. Half an hour elapsed, and there were no 
 signs of assistance. His strength was rapidly failing. 
 His wife, observing it, tried all the more to cheer him. 
 He said he could not stand it any longer ; it seemed 
 as though he must give up. At that moment she 
 heard a steamer coming rapidly through the water. 
 ^'My dear husband," she said, ^'a few moments more 
 and we are safe. Don't you hear a boat coming ?"' 
 He said he did, and, immediately reviving, made all 
 the efibrt in his power, and struggled for himself 
 and his heroic wife until the '^Mississippi" came 
 up and took them, with scores of others, on her 
 commodious decks. Thus, also, my young Christian 
 friend, throw around your perishing brother the life- 
 preserving promises of the gospel ; thus convince him 
 that your heart's desire and prayer is that he may 
 be saved ; thus wipe from his eyes the tears of de- 
 spondency ; thus smile away the gloom of hopeless 
 despair; and, as the sound of mercy comes from the 
 
78 YOUNG men's 
 
 blessed gospel, point him to the life-boat of salvation 
 hasting to his deliverance, and urge him with one 
 last desperate effort to lay hold of the rope thrown 
 out for his salvation, and to cast himself into the 
 arms of Him who stands ready to receive and to save 
 him in his uttermost extremity. 
 
 In the "Messenger" for February was an account 
 of the happy death of a young man who was brought 
 to Christ through the divine blessing upon a faith- 
 ful pencil-note handed him by a youthful stranger 
 in the cars between Princeton and New York. The 
 request of bereaved friends to hear from the writer 
 of the note has been answered. 
 
 On the evening of the first day of February, a 
 young merchant of New York, being in New Orleans 
 on business, dropped into the rooms of the Young 
 Men's Christian Association of that city, after 
 having addressed the boys of the city workhouse. 
 Taking up the " Messenger" for February, he was 
 looking over it, when two strangers entered, whom 
 he approached as he would in the rooms of the Society 
 in New York, of which he is an active member. He 
 entered into conversation with one of them, whom 
 he was on the point of asking whether he was a 
 Christian, and if not if he did not expect to be, 
 when his eye fell on iJie very icords in the article, 
 " Railroad Letter." 
 
 " I had not," he wrote to a friend, "read over five 
 lines when I dropped the paper : — Is it possible that 
 
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. 79 
 
 my query to that strange youtli I sat with in the 
 cars has got into the paper? I read on, and im- 
 mediately felt that I had been the instrument, in 
 God's hand, of converting a soul. Oh, what joy ! 
 I never knew till then what pleasure it would be to 
 be conscious of being the means of saving an im- 
 mortal soul. I retired to my room to thank Grod 
 for his goodness in showing me some result to feeble 
 efforts in his cause. I have prayed often that I 
 might have this privilege here on earth; and now 
 God has in his own good time, and by such ways 
 as to him seemed best, revealed to me for my en- 
 couragement that we do not — yea, cannot — sow in 
 vain.'' 
 
 What a blessed reward has this young Christian 
 experienced from his labours for Christ, in the joy 
 of that happy hour ! May not every Christian in 
 whose heart there is an earnest love for souls hope 
 for like sources of joy either in this or in the better 
 world ? Would that the inquiry in his letter might 
 lead many to the action it suggests! "If a few 
 words may do so much good, by the blessing of God, 
 oh, why do we not oftener speak them in humble 
 faith V 
 
 Lagging hours, that seem to linger, 
 
 Yet may thus each have a finger, 
 
 Pointing wandering souls to heaven. 
 
 And thus, while lengthening shades of even 
 
 On life's dial fall, and now 
 
 Darker shadows round thee go, 
 
80 YOUNG men' 
 
 Yet thy works may pass before, 
 Waiting thee, — a blessed store ! — 
 In their number, weight, and measure, 
 Laid up in enduring treasure. 
 
 CHRISTIAN YOUNG MEN MUST EXEMPLIFY CHRIS- 
 TIAN CHARITY. 
 
 To sucli labours of love and faith and prayer you 
 are summoned by tbe common feelings of humanity 
 which prompt to pity and compassion for all who 
 are in danger and distress, and this all the more 
 powerfully if they are in such circumstances as we 
 ourselves have known by bitter experience to be 
 imminently hazardous. But Christianity, — embo- 
 dying the example of Christ, his love, his mercy, 
 his blood and righteousness, his humility and infinite 
 condescension, his sufferings and death, his example 
 of self-denying sacrifice for lost, guilty, ungrateful 
 men, — this demands from you not only pity, but also 
 mercy. If you only pity the suffering, if you only 
 weep with those that weep tears of agony, and 
 mourn with those who mourn the loss of all that 
 was dear to them, what do ye more than others? 
 Do not even the Gentiles, the ungodly, men 
 everywhere, the same ? This is humanity. It is 
 natural affection. It proves that you are a man. 
 But to be a Christian — to have the Spirit of Christ, 
 to do as Christ did, to feel as Christ felt, to love as 
 Christ loved, and to do good as Christ did good — ^you 
 must exhibit more than this. You must not only 
 
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. 81 
 
 exercise compassion, but mercy. You must con- 
 sider men as sinners, guilty, undone, depraved, pol- 
 luted, untbankful, selfish, sensual, enemies of Grod 
 and therefore of God's children, loving darkness 
 rather than light, proud, scornful, and not only 
 neglecters but rejecters of the gospel. You must 
 be prepared to receive evil for good, railing for 
 entreaty, cursing for blessing, coldness for conde- 
 scension, hatred for love, threatening for forbearance, 
 and all manner of evil ungenerously and without 
 cause heaped upon you. This is what you are to 
 expect from sinners. Such is the sad working of 
 sin. Such were you and I. Such are all men in 
 their conduct towards Grod whom they contemn, to- 
 wards Christ whom they will not have to reign over 
 them, and towards the ever-blessed Spirit whom 
 they ^* resist'^ and ''grieve'^ and ''quench" and even 
 " blaspheme. '^ Such was the treatment given to our 
 Lord, who came to his own but they received him 
 not, who was maligned, traduced, betrayed, falsely 
 accused, tried, and condemned, and by wicked hands 
 crucified and slain. And yet his life was a life of 
 mercy. His death was a sacrifice of mercy. His 
 resurrection was an ascension to the throne of mercy, 
 that as a Prince and a Saviour he might there ever 
 live to give repentance and remission of sins, to 
 dispense grace and mercy, and to reconcile, rege- 
 nerate, restore, and glorify even his enemies and 
 persecutors. 
 
YOUNG men's 
 
 This world, this life, this gospel, every thing 
 around us, are full of Christ's mercies. They meet us 
 at every turn. They are in the air we breathe, the 
 water we drink, the health we enjoy, the capacities 
 we exercise, the opportunities of business we pos- 
 sess, and in the means of living and of supplying our 
 rational desires and delights of which through grace 
 we are possessed. Yea, it is owing to this mercy we 
 are permitted to live and move and have our being, 
 so that the very strength with which sinners sin and 
 rebel and crucify him afresh and put him to an open 
 shame is from the mercy of Christ. Mercy is 
 everywhere. Here she runs to meet the returning 
 prodigal, and opens her arms to fold him to her bosom. 
 Here she pleads with sinners and pronounces pardon 
 over the chief of them. Here she weeps with guilty 
 sufferers and dries the tear upon sorrow's cheek. 
 *'And here, eyeing the storm, she launches her life- 
 boat through the foaming breakers, and pulls for the 
 wreck where souls are perishing. It is her blessed 
 hand which rings the Sabbath bell, and her voice 
 which on savage shores or from Christian pulpits 
 proclaims the Saviour for the lost. None she despises. 
 She despairs of none. And, not to be scared away 
 by the foulest sin, she stands by its guilty bed, and, 
 bending down to death's cold ear, — when the twelfth 
 hour is just about to strike, — she looks into the 
 glassy eye and cries, ^Believe, oh, believe I only 
 believe! for whosoever believeth in the Lord 
 
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. 83 
 
 Jesus Christ shall not perish, but have everlasting 
 life/ " 
 
 Such is Christ, and such should every Christian be. 
 Such is mercy, — that divine quality which charac- 
 terizes Christians as " a peculiar people.^' And let 
 it be remembered that Christ fulfilled and finished 
 his incarnate mission of mercy while still a young 
 man according to the flesh, and that Christ associated 
 with himself — in his labours of love, and in his self- 
 denials and self-sacrifices, his patience, perseverance, 
 and well-doing — young men. To such he gave his 
 commission and intrusted the interests of his cause. 
 And to them are we indebted for the establishment, 
 progress, and perpetuity of the church. From their 
 ranks came forth the army of martyrs, the innume- 
 rable multitude of confessors, and the great cloud 
 of witnesses in every age. Such, then, as Christ 
 was, such as his apostles and martyrs were, such 
 ought every young man to be. Such, dear reader^ 
 ought you to be. Let no man then despise thy 
 youth. Despise and neglect it not yourself. Make 
 Christ your model. Press toward the mark for the 
 prize of your high calling in Christ Jesus. Gro thou 
 and do likewise. ^' Let the same mind be in you 
 that was also in Christ Jesus. For, if any man have 
 not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his," since 
 the love of Christ constraineth all that are Christ's 
 to live not unto themselves, but unto him, and to 
 follow him in seeking to save the lost. 
 
84 YOUNG men's 
 
 If indeed you would be either known or felt in 
 the world, live not unto yourself. Live for others, 
 or you will be passed by the crowd, as they hurry 
 on, unnoticed and unfelt. You will be left upon the 
 drifting waters, like the useless weed, the rotten 
 branch, or the leaky, dismantled, and abandoned 
 hulk. The world has no use for you unless you 
 are of use to it. It knows you not, cares not for 
 you, unless it is to growl at you because you are in 
 its way, or rail at you because you are an idle drone 
 in the busy hive. The world feels the power of 
 none, heeds none, praises none, honours none, and 
 rewards none, but those who live and labour and 
 do profitable service for it. Slumber and take your 
 ease, and you will be left to do so, while the cars 
 roll on and all opportunity and occasion for doing 
 good in your day and generation has been passed by 
 forever. And, as it is in the world, so also is it in 
 the kingdom of heaven; for here also no man liveth to 
 himself, and no man dieth to himself; for it is only to 
 him whose life is Christ — that is, devotion to Christ's 
 service in the salvation of souls — is " death gain." 
 The true Christian, therefore, whether he lives, lives 
 unto the Lord, or whether he dies, dies unto the 
 Lord; whether he lives, therefore, or dies, he is the 
 Lord's. 
 
 But continued as well as energetic exertion is 
 necessary in order to be useful to others and healthy 
 and happy yourself. To loiter is to be passed and 
 
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. 85 
 
 left behind in the race. To relax is to enfeeble 
 And to make your impressions and produce notice- 
 able effect, and then leave them, is to write characters 
 on the sand, which the next wave that rolls by will 
 forever obliterate. Enter, then, on your life of holy 
 devotion and your work of Christian zeal, with all 
 the strength of youth and with all the determination 
 of will to persevere ; that is, as the converted Hot- 
 tentot said, take right hold : — hold on : and never 
 let go. And to whatever age and stage of life and 
 of Christian life you may arrive, let this still be your 
 motto. Persevere. Be not weary in well-doing. 
 You will never be too old to do good, nor have ac- 
 complished so much as not to be stimulated, for your 
 own good and your Saviour's glory, to be " fruitful 
 even unto old age.'^ Washington was ready even 
 in advanced age to buckle on his armour and meet 
 the call and the enemies of his country; and the 
 hero of Lundy's Lane is also the hero of Chapul- 
 tepec. 
 
 "Wear out, then; don't rust out. * Why don't 
 you give up business?' said a millionaire's friend, one 
 day. ' You are getting old, and have made enough 
 to retire on.' 'I'd rather wear out than rust out,' 
 was the answer; 'and I must do one of the two. 
 If I give up business now, after having been habitu- 
 ated to it for forty years, I shall die in a twelve- 
 month or two from sheer inaction. I shall rust out. 
 I cannot do worse by keeping on. No ! let me die, 
 
86 YOUNG men's 
 
 as the stout knights of old used to say, with the 
 harness on my hack.' 
 
 ^'And he was right. Merely as a question of 
 health, the retiring from business of active men, 
 who have been all their lives accustomed to it, is a 
 serious blunder. More have died in consequence 
 of it, as sagacious physicians know, than have in- 
 creased their happiness, — unless, indeed, they have 
 substituted the work of man-making for the work 
 of money-making, and labour for love of souls and 
 of Christ instead of labouring for filthy lucre's sake. 
 Nature, in fact, wars on idleness. There is not an 
 atom in creation that is long at rest. The rain of 
 to-day was vapour of yesterday, and that, a week 
 ago, was water in the Pacific. The winds maintain 
 forever a circulation of fresh air, without which 
 vegetables and animals alike would die. No man, 
 however wealthy, has a right to rust out. He 
 violates the laws of his being if he attempts it. To 
 feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to comfort the 
 widow and orphan in their afiliction, is part of the 
 heaven-appointed duty of those who have equally 
 money and leisure at their disposal. Wealth and 
 retirement are not bestowed for riotous living or 
 slothful indulgence. He who sits down, after having 
 acquired a fortune, to spend his days in selfish gra- 
 tification, literally rusts out soul as well as body. 
 True manhood spurns such a cowardly retreat from 
 the great battle of life as much as the hero would 
 
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. 87 
 
 scorn to be found engaged in dalliance wlien victory 
 was turning against his country. It is only cravens 
 who wish to die on silken beds. The brave prefer 
 to fall with their armour on and their faces to the 
 foe. Wear out ! don't rust out 1'' 
 
 " He that overcometh and keepeth my works unto 
 the end, to him, saith the First and the Last, will I 
 give to eat of the hidden manna, and I will give 
 him a white stone, and on that stone a new name 
 written, which no man knoweth saving he that re- 
 ceiveth it. And I will give him the morning star. 
 The same shall be clothed in white raiment; and I 
 will confess his name before my Father and the holy 
 angels. And I will make him a pillar in the temple 
 of my God, and he shall go no more out. And I 
 will grant him to sit with me in my throne, even as 
 I also overcame, and am sat down with my Father 
 in his throne." 
 
 Wouldst thou the life of souls discern ? 
 
 Love is life's only sign. 
 The spring of the regenerate heart, 
 The pulse, the glow of every part. 
 Is the true love of Christ our Lord, 
 In works and not in words adored. 
 ThCTi we begin to love indeed; 
 When, from our sin and bondage freed 
 
 By this all-powerful Friend, 
 We follow him from day to day. 
 Assured of grace through all the way, 
 
 And glory at the end. 
 
8.8 YOUNG men's 
 
 YOUTH IS FRUITFUL OF EXPEDIENTS. 
 
 In thus following Christ you will be aided by 
 your youth, not only because it is strong, but also 
 because it is fruitful of inventions and plans. It 
 will suggest a thousand ways for the better accom- 
 plishment of the work of the Lord than perhaps any 
 method of doing good now employed; or, at least, for 
 securing the same results by novel, striking, and 
 attractive agencies. It will be instant in season and 
 out of season. It will not weary in well-doing. It 
 will sow the good seed in the morning and in the 
 evening not withhold its hand, and this, too, beside 
 all waters and along every wayside, not knowing 
 which shall prosper, — this or that. It will spend and 
 be spent, and gather strength from toil, being fer- 
 vent in spirit serving the Lord, and counting it 
 meat* and drink to do his will. 
 
 YOUTH IS ALSO BOLD AND ENERGETIC. 
 
 Youth also is dauntless, bold as a lion, not fear- 
 ing the face of man, ready to give to every man 
 a reason of the hope that is in him, aud to contend 
 earnestly for the faith, — if needs be, even unto blood. 
 Only let this courage be tempered with discretion, 
 so that you may be wise as serpents and harmless 
 as doves, becoming all things to all men, hoping all 
 things and bearing all things, if by any means you 
 
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 may save some, — catching them with a heavenly 
 guile, drawing them by the cords of a man or pluck- 
 ing them as brands from the burning. ^'Seeing 
 therefore ye have this ministry, ye faint not." 
 
 Thus, nor the hills and vales that breathe of heaven, 
 And vines, and setting suns, and rays of even, 
 Alone speak God's blest language ; but the walls 
 Of crowded cities echo back his calls, 
 Heard sweetly amid rude suburban cells, 
 And thickly-peopled towns, where Penury dwells. 
 There, haply, some fond parent's aching breast 
 Looks for a long-lost child in sad unrest, 
 Watching the distance in his lone abode, 
 "Where opes the window to the mountain road. 
 Oh, haste to meet the wanderer on the wild. 
 Till Justice yields to Mercy reconciled. 
 With yearning heart oh breathe celestial love, 
 Melting with mercy such as dwells above. 
 That, while sad Memory racks with guilty fears, 
 Thy heart-appealing love may move his tears, 
 And urge to rise and seek that Father's face 
 Who hastes to grasp him in his fond embrace. 
 
 WHAT YOUNG MEN's CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS 
 HAVE ALREADY DONE. 
 
 Already these associations have done much, and 
 have devised many unpractised, if not unthought-of, 
 ways and walks of usefulness. They are now found 
 in the lanes and streets and thoroughfares of our 
 cities, gathering the outcast ragged children into 
 schools, visiting the sick and the dying, the father- 
 
90 YouNa men's 
 
 less and the widow, and, by tracts and books and 
 lectures, carrying tlie gospel to every house and 
 hovel and garret and chamber. " Like a sunbeam 
 passing undefiled through the foulest atmosphere/' 
 they are seen labouring in Christian purity and love 
 where the basest of the race are perishing, not 
 shrinking from their loathsome guilt, but, with 
 Jesus' pity and Jesus' tears, offering to the very 
 chief of sinners the cup of salvation, the bread of 
 life, the manna of heaven, the living water, and the 
 healing balm. 
 
 Under their auspices we find out-door preaching 
 in the streets or parks or commons of some of our 
 large cities.* They have given rise also to many valu- 
 
 *■ Preaching on Boston Common. — Yesterday afternoon, says 
 the " Traveller" of Monday, the 21st instant, at six o'clock. Rev. 
 Dr. Kirk, of this city, preached to an audience of about three 
 thousand people, in Yale's mammoth tent, which was spread 
 for the purpose on the Common, near the pond. The services 
 were the same as those usually practised in our churches; and 
 the discourse which the reverend preacher delivered, from the 
 text furnished in the parable of the Prodigal Son, was well con- 
 ceived for such an audience, and was most attentively and re- 
 spectfully hearkened to. Out-door preaching having thus proved 
 a success, Ave learn that the Young Men's Christian Association, 
 under whose auspices this was conceived, will have further ser- 
 vices conducted on next Sunday afternoon, at which the Right 
 Rev. Bishop Eastburn will officiate. 
 
 The " Christian Witness and Church Advocate" (Episcopal) 
 says of this movement : — " We are glad to learn that a success- 
 ful commencement of out-door preaching was made in this 
 city last Sunday under the auspices of the Young Men's Chris- 
 
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. 91 
 
 able series of public lectures to young men. And 
 by their annual conferences they are now converg- 
 ing into one centre the light and heat, the enterprise 
 and experience, of all affiliated societies, and giving 
 the best opportunity for awakening and diffusing 
 the spirit of ever-widening charity. 
 
 This may, and we trust will, lead to the publication 
 of a weekly paper or monthly magazine, specially 
 devoted to the wants of young men, and opening up 
 a channel by which sanctified talent and holy zeal 
 may communicate the inspirations of their heaven- 
 taught souls to their brethren, and provoke them to 
 still greater love and zeal and devotion.* 
 
 On a recent journey to the mountains of Vir- 
 ginia, I heard everywhere, as I passed along, com- 
 plaints of long-continued and destructive drought; 
 and parched fields, clouds of dust, and thin-eared, 
 withering crops, gave melancholy proof of the sad 
 
 tian Association. Rev. Mr. Kirk preached, at six o'clock in the 
 afternoon, to an audience of about three thousand people, in 
 Yale's mammoth tent, -which was spread for the purpose on the 
 Common, near the pond. On next Sunday afternoon we are 
 informed that there will be service at the same hour. "We do 
 not know who will officiate. This is a good movement; and we 
 hope it will bring multitudes to hear the gospel who are 
 now living as if its glad tidings had never sounded upon 
 our earth." 
 
 * This, we find, is already initiated in the Quarterly Re- 
 porter, under the direction of the Central Committee, at Cin- 
 cinnati, Ohio. 
 
92 YOUNG men's 
 
 truth. But scarcely had I reached the mountains 
 before the clouds began to gather from all quarters 
 and to accumulate their combined vapours in one 
 general mass, so thick and heavy as to darken the 
 mid-day sun and encompass our very dwellings like 
 the curtains of night. The winds soon rallied their 
 forces. The lightnings commenced their brilliant 
 and glorious display of terrific power and grandeur. 
 And, as the artillery of heaven, like salvos of can- 
 non in honor of some great victory, announced the 
 approach of Him who thundereth marvellously with 
 his voice and directeth his lightning unto the ends 
 of the earth, the heavens poured down, far and wide, 
 a copious and fertilizing rain. 
 
 And just such for years had been the condition 
 and complaint of the Christian world. Fields dry 
 and barren, and " nigh unto cursing,'^ lay every- 
 where, in waste sterility, beneath a heaven impene- 
 trable as brass, and fast becoming hard as iron. 
 Faithful and believing hearts everywhere bewailed 
 in secret places the gloomy and insensible condition 
 of the church, and earnestly besought the Lord of 
 the harvest to gend forth the wind of his Spirit, and 
 the dew and rain of his life-giving presence. 
 Soon a small cloud was seen in the western horizon. 
 Other clouds were attracted by it, and united with it, 
 until they spread themselves over the eastern horizon 
 also. To drop the figure. Christian young men in 
 the heart of London were awakened to the claims of 
 
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. 93 
 
 perishing young men around tliem, and, unnoticed 
 and unknown, united themselves for prayer and 
 mutual encouragement. Others were attracted and 
 interested in their movement. Associations multi- 
 plied in England, Scotland, on the Continent, and 
 in the United States. Union in prayer and labour, 
 in self-denial and self-sacrifice, for the salvation of 
 souls, was followed by its promised blessing from 
 above. God heard and answered. God looked 
 down well pleased, and was with them to bless and 
 do them good. His ear was opened. His hand 
 was outstretched. The windows of heaven were 
 unbarred. Showers of divine grace were poured 
 down in copious measure on many a barren field, 
 — here a little and there a little. The voice of joy 
 and gladness was heard in every land. Praise and 
 thanksgiving arose from many a new-born soul, 
 from rejoicing friends, and from sympathizing angels. 
 The hearts of young men buried in the pursuits of 
 earth were again turned to their Saviour and his 
 cause, and were led to ask, "Lord, what wouldst thou 
 have me to do ?" Our theological seminaries began 
 to multiply their diminished numbers, and, as the 
 fields after the genial rain put on their green and 
 flourishing attire, and gave promise of an abundant 
 harvest, so also has God given the cheering prospect 
 of labourers more adequate to his spiritual harvest. 
 And if such has been the beginning of this good 
 work and such the first-fruits of these associations, 
 
94 YOUNG men's 
 
 what may we expect in their maturity, tLrough the 
 mercy of that gracioiis Redeemer to whom the hearts 
 of the young are so dear, and who has chosen by 
 their instrumentality to perfect praise, and to do 
 many and even greater works than eye hath yet seen, 
 or ear heard, or have entered into the heart of man 
 to conceive ? 
 
 WHAT THESE ASSOCIATIONS MAY YET ACCOMPLISH. 
 
 The field is large, the door is open. There is 
 yet room — oh, how much room ! — for all that have 
 a heart and a hand to work in the vineyard. The 
 harvest is white, yea, perishing for lack of labourers, 
 and of labourers beyond and supplementary to those 
 who ''are burdened" and broken down with the 
 exhausting, overwhelming duties of the ministry. 
 The canvassing of our cities for children to fill mis- 
 sion schools in their convenient neighbourhood and 
 adapted to their social position,* — the distribution 
 
 * Sunday-school Canvass op London. — The Sunday- 
 school canvass of the metropolis has commenced with every 
 prospect of a successful result. Mr. Hartley, the Secretary of 
 the Canvass Committee, says, ''As far as can be ascertaine'd 
 the number of canvassers engaged in this important work is 
 not less than eight or ten thousand. About one thousand 
 copies of the 'Appeal to the Christians of London,' four hun- 
 dred thousand copies of the 'Address to Parents,' seven thou- 
 sand canvassers' books, and the same number of recommenda- 
 tion-books, have been prepared and put in circulation, and nu- 
 merous meetings have been held to instruct and interest the 
 
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. 95 
 
 of Bibles, tracts, and books, — tbe establishment of 
 local prayer and fellowship meetings and lectures, — 
 co-operation with benevolent and charitable institu- 
 tions for the relief of want and suffering, — the 
 establishment of saving-banks for the poor, or such 
 direction and advice concerning them as is necessary 
 to make them available, — these, and whatever else 
 will tend to elevate, reform,5and render temperate, 
 thrifty, prudent, and economical, the humblei^ classes 
 of society, are " opportunities of doing good to all," 
 which are not to be overlooked when it is in the 
 power of their hand to use them : — 
 
 Free-handed bounty ! where her footsteps stray, 
 Spring verdant trees around, and flowers that move 
 Their thankful heads. Her treasure is above ; 
 And therefore doth she shrink from earthly praise, — 
 Friend of the poor ! 
 
 THE NUiMBER OF CHRISTIAN YOUNG MEN IN THE 
 UNITED STATES. 
 
 There cannot be less than one million of young 
 men among the four million of professors in the 
 
 canvassers in the several districts of the metropolis." Such an 
 army of Christian labourers, simultaneously perambulating the 
 streets of Loudon, penetrating every court and alley, visiting 
 every house, and seeking to bring under religious instruction 
 the entire youthful population, is probably an event unprece- 
 dented in the history of the Church, and richly deserves the 
 hearty sympathy and earnest prayers of every Christian patriot 
 and philanthropist. 
 
93 YOUNG men's 
 
 thirty thousand evangelical cliurclies of the United 
 States, and not less than four million young men 
 among the families connected with and under the 
 influence of the sixteen million persons who are 
 affiliated with those churches. AVhat a host of work- 
 men ! What a field in which to work! What 
 work may not such materials, wrought upon by such 
 artificers, under the direction and wisdom and all- 
 powerful grace of the Master-Workman — the divine 
 Sculptor and the all-powerful Regenerator — accom- 
 plish ! What new life may they not infuse into 
 these churches ! How may the sound of their voice, 
 saying *'come," swell the voice of the preached 
 gospel, saying "come," until throughout all the 
 earth there shall be no speech nor language where 
 their voice is not heard, — none left to say unto his 
 brother, " Know thou the Lord, because all shall 
 know him from the least unto the greatest V What 
 a noble testimony may not such a host, marshalled 
 under the banners of the Crucified, bear to the 
 glorious gospel of the blessed Grod ! What an in- 
 vincible protest may they not offer against atheism, 
 scepticism, false philosophy, and error of every name 
 and school ; against bigotry, sectarianism, and every 
 high thing that exalteth itself in opposition to the 
 truth and power and love and glory of God, and to 
 that peace and good-will which should prevail among 
 men ! What a shout may go up from such a multi- 
 tude, — loud as the noise of many waters, or of a vie- 
 
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. 9' 
 
 torioTis army when witli acclamations of triumph it 
 drives before it the retreating foe like chaif before the 
 whirlwind, or as the sound of blest voices uttering joy 
 whicli ascend to the throne of God and the Lamb from 
 that innumerable company, whom no man can num- 
 ber, around the throne, — as they ''lift up their voice 
 with strength, as they lift it up, and are not afraid, 
 and say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God." 
 
 THE GLORIOUS CONFEDERATION OF ALL CHRISTIAN 
 YOUNG MEN. 
 
 What a magnificent embodiment of Christian love 
 would the association of these millions of young men 
 present, drawn together and united and held to- 
 gether by " Him to whom shall be the gathering 
 of the nations."* Having Christ in their heart the 
 hope of glory, they find in Christ's church a home 
 where '* the social instincts of humanity, attracted 
 by brotherly love, experience all that gratifies, glad- 
 dens, and purifies." And in the divine principle 
 of association they have "a bond of perfectness;" a 
 law of attraction; an atmosphere of light; an element 
 of active, out-going, diffusive, and all-embracing 
 charity, by which the divided are made one and the 
 
 * May not the power of these associations be vastly enhanced 
 by associating with them Christian young women in affiliated 
 union, and by co-operating with and superintending Young 
 Women's Christian Associations for doing for young women 
 what these do for young men ? 
 
98 YOUNG men's 
 
 sin-separated united by holy principles; an instinct 
 stronger than any earth-born affection penetrating 
 through a!ll social, civil, political, and ecclesiastical 
 distinctions, and drawing together into one heart- 
 yearning, heart-satisfying affection the children of 
 God, the partakers of one blood, brethren in Christ 
 and heirs together through him to the same inherit- 
 ance of glory. 
 
 This feeling of brotherhood, binding Christians 
 together here as children not only of the same 
 Father but also of the same mother, (for Jerusalem, 
 or Zion, is the mother of us all,) would be a bond 
 elastic enough and strong enough to encircle our land 
 and the globe itself, and to unite together in one 
 bundle of life — irresistible by its united strength as 
 an aggressive weapon and secure against all assaults 
 in its self-protecting combination — all who call upon 
 the name of the Lord, both theirs and ours. 
 
 And it will yet do so. God will gather his children 
 from the east, and gather them from the west. 
 He will say to the north. Give up ; and to the south, 
 Keep not back. Bring my sons from far and my 
 daughters from the ends of the earth, even every 
 one that is called by my name, for I have created 
 him for my glory. One shall say, I am the Lord's; 
 and another shall call himself by the name of Jacob; 
 and another shall subscribe with his hand unto the 
 Lord, and shall surname himself by the name of 
 Israel. How blissful the contemplation of that 
 
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. 99 
 
 general assembly, that covenanted union of the 
 children of God ! Born by a new celestial birth, 
 Jesus himself presiding over and blessing them ; the 
 representatives of all sects and parties shall meet to 
 sing the jubilee of universal peace and celebrate the 
 funeral of all their differences! Over that grave 
 no tears shall be shed. Beside it no pale mourners 
 shall stand. All quarrels and controversies and all 
 weapons of war shall then be forever buried, — buried 
 without hope or fear of a resurrection, while above, 
 shining brightly and gloriously, heaven shall rise as 
 the temple dedicated to eternal concord. 
 
 Glorious prophecy ! Hasten it in our time, 
 Lord. Why tarry thy chariot-wheels? Tarry 
 not. Defer not. Hearken and bless. Speak thou 
 the word, and great shall be the multitude. Re- 
 member thy covenant which thou hast made, which 
 thou hast spoken, which thou hast renewed and 
 sealed by two immutable things, — thy promise and 
 thy oath. Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly. And 
 let it come to pass in these days that thou wilt pour 
 out thy Spirit upon all flesh. Then shall our sons 
 and our daughters prophesy, and our young men 
 see visions, and our old men dream dreams; and then 
 shall it come to pass that whosoever shall call upon 
 the name of the Lord shall be saved. Even so, 
 Lord Jesus ; come quickly. For Zion's sake I will 
 not hold my peace, and for Jerusalem's sake I will 
 not rest, until the righteousness thereof go forth as 
 
100 YOUNG men's 
 
 briglitness, and tlie salvation thereof as a lamp that 
 burnetii. ye watchmen upon the walls of Je- 
 rusalem, hold not your peace day nor night. Make 
 mention of the Lord, keep not silence, and give 
 him no rest till he establish and till he make Jeru- 
 salem a praise in the earth. For as a young man 
 marrieth a virgin, so shall thy sons marry thee, 
 Zion; and as the bridegroom rejoiceth over the 
 bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee. 
 
 CHRISTIAN YOUNG MEN THE BOND OF NATIONAL 
 UNION. 
 
 Before concluding, let me remark that there never 
 was a time in this country when it was so important 
 that Christians of all denominations should see eye to 
 eye and be of one heart and one mind. The union 
 of these States is the greatest miracle of God's poli- 
 tical wisdom, power, and goodness, ever performed 
 since the exodus of Israel and the establishment 
 of the divine theocratic republic. Not the ark upon 
 the whelming waters of a deluged world, with its 
 living freight and its divine principles, was more 
 important to the interests of humanity, or more 
 significant of divine benignity, than is this ark 
 bearing within its consecrated walls the life and 
 power of a world whelmed in the flood of civil and 
 religious despotism. And yet there are machinations 
 of evil working with superhuman energy to under- 
 
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. 101 
 
 mine the foundations of that union, and to o\erturu 
 and overturn, until all our hallowed institutions, civil, 
 political, and religious, — the praise and envy of the 
 whole earth, — are buried in one mass of ruins! 
 And yet against that very ark Satan has let loose 
 all the winds of heaven, and upheaved the ocean 
 from its inmost depths to bury it in its fathomless 
 abyss, and once more defeat, if he may, the merciful 
 purposes of God towards man ! 
 
 But the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. 
 Its builder and maker is God. The Lord in the 
 midst of it is mighty. It is founded upon the Rock 
 of ages. That ark is of divine construction, and 
 was launched upon her billowy deep by the divine 
 power. And he who guides her course can make 
 even the winds to be still and the waves to cease, 
 can encircle her with the bow of promise, make her 
 framework durable as the everlasting mountains, and 
 again send forth from her, to a world groaning un- 
 der the corruption and abuses of superstition and 
 despotic tyranny, the dove of loving peace, the olive- 
 branch of hope, the pledges of liberty and of a 
 .renovated earth. 
 
 Thou too sail on, ship of State, 
 Sail on, Union strong and great ! 
 Humanity — Tvith all its fears. 
 With all the hopes of future years — 
 Is hnnjing breathless on thy fate! 
 We know what master laid thy keel ; 
 What workman wrought thy ribs of steel; 
 9* 
 
102 YOUNG men's 
 
 Who made each mast and sail and rope; 
 
 What anvils rang, what hammers beat, 
 
 In what a forge and what a heat 
 
 Were shaped the anchors of thy hope ! 
 
 Fear not each sudden sound and shock : 
 
 'Tis of the wave, and not the rock; 
 
 'Tis but the flapping of the sail, 
 
 And not a rent made by the gale ! 
 
 In spite of rock and tempest-roar, 
 
 In siiite of false lights on the shore, 
 
 Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea ! 
 
 Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears, 
 
 Our faith, triumphant o'er our fears, 
 
 Ai-e all with thee, — are all with thee ! 
 
 For the realization^ however, of this glorious pro- 
 phecy, to what other agency can we look with greater 
 confidence than to the union of our Christian young 
 men throughout the land? These can "keep the 
 unity of the Spirit in the bonds of peace." By 
 these DISUNION can be averted and the union pre- 
 served. These can do more by their Christian fel- 
 lowship and prayers and influence, than all the poli- 
 ticians in the land can do either for good or ill. 
 " They have power with God to prevail." 
 
 And as at their recent conference these associations 
 were invoked to employ this influence for the de- 
 liverance of our country and Britain our fatherland 
 from war, so would I now invoke it for averting the 
 still more dreadful calamity of civil war and political 
 disunion. 
 
 I allude to this subject not as a politician, — for 1 
 
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. 103 
 
 kave never been identified with any one political 
 party, — but as a Christian citizen who has been led 
 to cherish these sentiments towards the land of his 
 early adoption and matured affection, — and I do it 
 because the most frightful peculiarity in the present 
 conflict of opinion is the abandonment of the Bible 
 as a standard of duty and of morals even by many 
 professing Christians, their association with those 
 who reject its authority altogether, and the conse- 
 quent promulgation of principles which, once esta- 
 blished, could lead only to agrarianism, anarchy, and 
 bloodshed. 
 
 To you, my young friends, I would therefore ad- 
 dress the truly eloquent, Christian, and patriotic 
 words of the venerable Dr. Nott, — the American 
 Nestor, — and thus blend the voice of the North 
 with that of the South, in an appeal to your heart 
 of hearts on behalf of our bleeding, lacerated 
 country.* 
 
 * You enter,' says that venerable and patriotic 
 Christian, < upon life at a critical conjuncture. Your 
 country stands in need of all the talents and all 
 the influence you can carry with you to her as- 
 sistance. May I not hope that, as you are numbered 
 among her patriots and statesmen, your prudence 
 will be as exemplary as your zeal? Though you 
 
 * Given in a Baccalaureate address to the students of Union 
 College. 
 
lOi YOUNG men's 
 
 should differ iu political opiuions, be one in affection, 
 one iu the pursuit of glory, and one in the love of 
 your country. Do nothing, say nothing, to produce 
 unnecessary rigour on the one part or lawless resist- 
 ance on the other. Beware how you contribute to 
 awaken the whirlwind of passion, or to invite to this 
 sacred land the reign of anarchy. 
 
 ' Whatever irritations may be felt, whatever 
 questions may be agitated, and however you your- 
 selves may be divided, be it your part to calm, to 
 soothe, to allay, to check the deed of violence, to 
 charm down the spirit of party, to strengthen the 
 bonds of social intercourse, and to prove by your 
 own amiable deportment, by your own affectionate 
 intercourse, that it is possible for brethren to differ 
 and be brethren still. Differ indeed you may, 
 and avow that difference. Freedom of speech is 
 your birthright. The deed which conveys it was 
 written iu the blood of your fathers ; it was sealed 
 beside their sepulchres : and let no man take it from 
 you. But remember that the deed which conveys 
 defines also, and limits, this freedom. And re- 
 member, too, that the line which divides between 
 liberty and licentiousness is hut a line, and that it 
 is easily transgressed. The assassin's dagger is not 
 more fatal to the peace of the community than the 
 liar's tongue and the maligner's fang. Nor does the 
 sacred charter of the freeman's privileges furnish to 
 the one, any more than to the other, an asylum. 
 
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. 105 
 
 * It is your happiness to live under a government 
 of laws. Nor, were it demonstrated that these were 
 impolitic, or even oppressive, would it justify re- 
 sistance. There is a redeeming principle in the 
 Constitution itself. That instrument provides a 
 legitimate remedy for grievances, and, unless on 
 great emergencies, the only rightful one. Under 
 a compact like ours, the majority must govern : the 
 minority must submit, and they ought to submit. 
 Not by constraint merely, but for conscience' sake. 
 The powers that he are ordained of God; and, while 
 they execute the purpose for which they were or- 
 dained, to resist them is to resist the ordinance of 
 God. 
 
 ' You remember that Jesus Christ paid tribute 
 even unto Cassar, than whom there has not lived a 
 more execrable tyrant. You remember, too, that 
 his immediate foHowei'S, as became the disciples of 
 such a master, everywhere bowed to the supremacy 
 of the Roman laws. It is a fact that will ever re- 
 dound to the honour of the Christian church and 
 of its divine Founder, that its members, though 
 everywhere oppressed and persecuted for three suc- 
 cessive centuries, were nowhere implicated in those 
 commotions which agitated the provinces, nor were 
 they ever accessory to those treasons which, during 
 that period, so often stained the capital with blood. 
 , ^ In the worst of times, therefore, and however you 
 may differ with respect to men and measures, still cling 
 
106 YOUNG men's 
 
 to the Constitution; clinq to the integrity op 
 THE Union ; cling to the institutions of your coun- 
 try. These, under God, are your political ark of 
 safety; the ark that contains the cradle of liberty 
 in which you were rocked, that preserves the vase 
 of Christianity in which you were baptized, and 
 that defends the sacred urn where the ashes of your 
 patriot fathers moulder. Cling, therefore, to this 
 ark, and defend it while a drop of blood is propelled 
 from your heart or a shred of muscle quivers on 
 your bones. Triumph as the friends of liberty, of 
 order, of religion, or fall as martyrs/ 
 
 A thrill of anxious foreboding runs through 
 every bosom in this broad land. The national life 
 is awake. It throbs with powerful emotion. It is 
 alarmed for its own safety. False and treacherous 
 physicians wait around, but only that by their bane- 
 ful drugs they may hasten a catastrophe; while 
 hungry heirs, from whom our country has long with- 
 held the full measure both of the pre-eminence and 
 profit they desire, are ready to rejoice over her as 
 fallen, — sunk behind the dark clouds of desolation 
 while her sun was yet shining more and more towards 
 her promised day of glorious, unrivalled splendour. 
 
 Haste, then, to her relief. The United States of 
 America expects that every man will do his duty. 
 Only secure to her free air, prevent these poisonous 
 dosings, and let her alone, and, with Grod's blessing 
 sought and obtained by prayer, there is vitality 
 
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. 107 
 
 enough to outgrow all her distempers and to live to 
 an enduring age amid the joyful acclamations of her 
 own numerous posterity. May she thus live the 
 
 MOTHER OF US ALL ! 
 
 May she thus abide with us, " not merely as a 
 vast instrumentality for the protection of our com- 
 merce and navigation, and for achieving power 
 and eminence among the sovereigns of the earth, 
 but as a means of improving the material lot, of 
 elevating the moral and mental nature, and of in- 
 suring the personal happiness, of the millions of 
 many distant generations.^' 
 
 Or, to change our figure : the ship of the state 
 is in the midst of breakers on a dangerous coast. 
 She has deranged her compass, and has unshipped 
 her rudder. She has no certain reckoning to guide 
 her, for the sun has not been visible at its zenith 
 for many days, and her brave and noble pilots one 
 after another have been washed overboard at their 
 dangerous post. What are we to do? Lower the 
 boat, and let every man that can escape with his 
 plunder do so ? Not at all. We are as Paul was. 
 We must do as Paul did. Every man must remain at 
 his post of duty. Not a soul must give up the ship 
 or give up hope. Only abide with her. Only rec- 
 tify the compass and replace the rudder. Only cast 
 overboard every weight, every false reliance, every 
 carnal policy, every self-seeking, selfish, and merely- 
 sectional cargo ; and only let those who represent Paul 
 
108 YOUNG men's 
 
 plead, as Paul did, witli Paul's divine Master, and 
 not a soul on board shall perish. He, the Lord of 
 all, omnipotent to save, will come to our relief. He 
 will command the winds and the waves, and they 
 must obey him. They shall be at peace. The storm- 
 clouds shall roll away before the favouring breeze. 
 The sun shall again shine forth and the stars appear 
 in their brightness. We shall all come safe to land. 
 Not one shall perish ; and there, safely moored, all 
 perils over, we shall all together swell one prayer of 
 praise and one song of thanksgiving to Him that 
 hath done such great things for us. United in 
 Christ, the Union is safe. * 
 
 . * ** When my eyes," said Webster, "shall be turned to behold 
 for the last time the sun in the heavens, may I not see him 
 shining on the broken and dishonoured fragments of a onco 
 glorious Union, — on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent, 
 — on a land rent with feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal 
 blood. Let their last feeble and lingering glance rather behold 
 the gorgeous ensign of the Republic, now known and honoured 
 throughout the earth, still full-high advanced, its arras and 
 trophies streaming in their original lustre, — not a stripe erased 
 or polluted, not a single star obscured, — bearing for its motto 
 no such miserable interrogatory as, 'What is all this worth?' 
 — nor those other words of disunion and folly, 'Liberty first, 
 and Union afterward;' but everywhere — spread all over in 
 characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they 
 float over the sea and over the land and in every wind under 
 the whole heavens — that other sentiment, dear to every true 
 American heart : — ' Liberty and Union, now aud forever, one 
 and inseparable.' " 
 
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. 109 
 
 While the language free and bold 
 
 Which the bard of Avon sung, — 
 In which our Milton told 
 
 How the vaults of heaven rung, 
 When Satan, blasted, fell with all his host. 
 
 While these, with reverence meet, 
 
 Ten thousand echoes greet. 
 
 And from rock to rock repeat 
 Round our coast ! ! 
 While the manners, while the arts, 
 
 That mould a nation's soul. 
 Still cling around our hearts. 
 
 Between let rivers roll. 
 Our joint communion breaking with the sun; 
 
 Yet still from either side 
 
 The bands of love stretched wide, 
 
 With voice of blood shall reach, 
 
 More audible than speech. 
 And loud proclaim to all that we are one. 
 
 "I have been abroad," says President Buchanan, "in other 
 lands ; I have witnessed arbitrary power ; I have contemplated 
 the people of other countries : but there is no country under 
 God's heavens where a man feels for his fellow-man, except in 
 the United States. And if you could feel how despotism looks 
 on, how jealous despotic powers of the world are of our glorious 
 institutions, you would cherish the Constitution and Union in 
 your hearts, — next to your belief in the Christian religion: — the 
 Bible for heaven, and the Constitution of your country for earth." 
 
 That is a beautiful figure of Winthrop's, in reference to our 
 Constitution, where he says, "Like one of those wondrous 
 rocking-stones raised by the Druids, which the finger of a child 
 might vibrate to the centre yet the might of an army could 
 not move from its place, our Constitution is so nicely poised 
 that it seems to sway with the very breath of passion, yet so 
 firmly based in the hearts and affections of the people, that the 
 10 
 
110 YOUNG men's 
 
 THE COMMUNION OF CITIZENSHIP AND THE COM- 
 MUNION OF SAINTS. 
 
 Let us then, — for I am one of your fraternity, — 
 let us clierisli the communion of citizenship, and, 
 above all, the communion of saints, the brotherhood 
 of Christianity. The motto of our national union is 
 the motto also of our Christian union : — e pluribus 
 UNUM, — one from many, — many united into one, — 
 every one having his own peculiar and independent 
 institutions, rights, interests, and policy, all having a 
 
 wildest storms of treason and fanaticism break over it in vain." 
 We trust that this may be verified. 
 
 "our native land. 
 
 " Home of our birth ! our dear-loved land, 
 
 Thy glories stretch from sea to sea : 
 
 From ocean-lake to tropic strand; 
 
 Land of the fearless and the free ! 
 
 " From Avhere the western Grolden Gate 
 Gleams ruddy in the sunset ray, 
 To where the stern Atlantic chain 
 Looks proudly on the rising day, — 
 
 " From far Niagara's deluge wild 
 To Florida's perennial flowers : 
 Ne'er hath the sun of heaven smiled 
 On such a heritage as ours. 
 
 "* God and the Union !' This our creed, — 
 Our motto this forever be : 
 So shall our starry banner float 
 Forever o'er the brave and free !" 
 
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. Ill 
 
 common constitution, common dangers, and common 
 glory or shame, prosperity or progress. And thus 
 also, while there is one Lord and one Spirit, there 
 are various gifts and diversities of administration in 
 every church and in every individual Christian. 
 The working of the Spirit in the one universal 
 church, made up of all its separate members, is like 
 'Hhe breathings of the wind upon the ocean, no two 
 waves shaping themselves to exact uniformity, and 
 yet all curving and rippling into expressions of one 
 great law, all answering to each other in perfect 
 harmony as developments of one great principle. 
 Every Christian has his own differentia, his own 
 peculiar catalogue of hopes and aspirations and im- 
 pulses ; and yet he has also so much in common with 
 all his brethren in Christ as to be able to make 
 their language his own." Hence arise, like a forest 
 of beautiful peaks soaring heavenward from a single 
 mountain, the innumerable blessings not only of the 
 communion of saints, but, above all, of holy fellow- 
 ship, holy co-operation and striving together for 
 the furtherance of the gospel. 
 
 Let us then, as fellow-workmen and fellow-pil- 
 grims, walk hand in hand, bearing one another's bur- 
 dens, helping each other's infirmities, forbearing one 
 another in love, seeking the things that make for 
 peace, each minding his own business and fulfilling 
 his own task, and all looking for and hasting unto the 
 coming of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ. 
 
112 YOUNG men's 
 
 Come, brothers ! let us onward ; 
 
 Night comes without delay, 
 And in this howling desert 
 
 It is not good to stay. 
 Take courage and be strong ; 
 
 We are hasting on to heaven ; 
 
 Strength for warfare will be given, 
 And glory won ere long. 
 
 The pilgrims' path of trial 
 
 "We do not fear to view ; 
 We know his voice who calls us, — 
 
 We know him to be true. 
 Then let who will contemn. 
 
 Come strong in his Almighty grace, 
 
 Come, every one with steadfast face ! 
 On to Jerusalem ! 
 
 brothers, soon is ended 
 
 The journey we've begun; 
 Endure a little longer, — 
 
 The race will soon be run. 
 And in the land of rest — 
 
 In yonder bright eternal home 
 
 Where all the Father's loved ones come— 
 We shall be safe and blest. 
 
 Then, boldly let us venture ! 
 
 This, this is worth the cost : 
 Though dangers we encounter, 
 
 Though every thing is lost, 
 world ! how vain thy call ! 
 
 Wo follow him who Avent before, 
 
 We follow, to th' eternal shore, 
 Jesus, our all-in-all. 
 
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. 113 
 
 THE APPEAL. 
 
 God, my brothers, will not leave us; 
 
 Still his heaven is o'er us bent; 
 His commandments are not grievous i 
 
 Do his will, and be content. 
 Only truth and love shall flourish 
 
 In the end, beloved mates ; 
 Only charity can nourish 
 
 Those whom charity creates. 
 Believe in God. 
 
 You have wrongs by forge and furnace, 
 
 You have darkness, you have dread; 
 But you work in radiant harness, 
 
 And your God is overhead. 
 Does not night bring forth the morning? 
 
 Does not darkness father light? 
 Even now we have forewarning, 
 
 Brothers, of the close of night. 
 Believe in God. 
 
 Many, many are the shadows 
 
 That the dawn of truth reveals 
 Beautiful on life's broad meadows 
 
 Is the light the Christian feels. 
 Evil shall give place to goodness, 
 
 Wrong be dispossessed by right; 
 Out of old chaotic rudeness 
 
 God evokes a world of light. 
 Believe in God. 
 
114 CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION. 
 
 Do ye toil ? Oh, freer, firmer 
 
 Ye shall grow beneath your toil ; 
 Only craven spirits murmur, 
 
 Lightly rooted in the soil. 
 Through the gloom, and through the darkness, 
 
 Through the danger and the dole, 
 Through the mist and through the murkness, 
 
 Travels the great human soul. 
 Believe in God. 
 
 I through doubt and darkness travel 
 
 Through the agony and gloom, 
 Hoping that I shall unravel 
 
 This strange web beyond the tomb. 
 my brothers ! men heroic ! 
 
 Workers both with hand and brain! 
 'Tis the Christian — not the Stoic — 
 
 That best triumphs over pain. 
 Believe in God. 
 
 my brothers ! love and labour! 
 
 Conquer wrong by doing right ; 
 Truth alone must be your sabre. 
 
 Love alone your shield in fight. 
 Virtue yet shall cancel vices; 
 
 Look above, beloved mates ! 
 Only God himself sufiices 
 
 Those whom God alone creates. 
 Believe in God. 
 
APPENDIX, 
 
 SKETCHES OF YOUNG MEN. 
 
 Alexander of Macedox extended his power over 
 Greece, conquered Egypt, rebuilt Alexandria, overran 
 all Asia, and died at thirty-eight years of age. 
 
 Hannibal was but twenty-five when, after the fall of 
 his father Harailcar, and Asdrubal his successor, he 
 was chosen commander-in-chief of the Carthaginian 
 arm J. At twenty-seven, he captured Saguntum from 
 the Romans. Before he was thirty-four, he carried 
 his arms from Africa into Italy, conquered Publius 
 Scipio on the banks of the Ticinus, routed Sempronius 
 near the Trebia, defeated Flaminius on his approach 
 to the Apennines, laid waste the Avhole country, de- 
 feated Fabius Maximus and Yarro, marched into 
 Capua, and at the age of thirty-five was thundering 
 at the gates of Rome. 
 
 Scipio Africanus Avas scarcely sixteen when he took 
 an active part in the battle of Cannas and saved the 
 life of his fjither. The wreck of the Roman cavalry 
 chose him then for their leader, and he conducted them 
 back to the capital. After he was twenty, he was ap- 
 pointed proconsul of Spain, where he took New Car- 
 
 115 
 
116 APPENDIX. 
 
 thage by storm. Soon after he defeated successively 
 Asdrubal, (Hannibal's brother,) Mago, and Hann, 
 crossed over into Africa, negotiating vyith Syphax, the 
 Massasylian king, returned to Spain, quelled the in- 
 surrection there, drove the Carthaginians wholly from 
 the peninsula, returned to Rome, devised the diversion 
 against the Carthaginians by carrying the war into 
 Africa, crossed thither, destroyed the army of Syphax, 
 compelled the return of Hannibal, and defeated Asdru- 
 bal a second time. 
 
 Charlemagne was crowned King of the Franks before 
 he was twenty-six. At the age of twenty-eight, he had 
 conquered Aquitania ; at the age of thirty, he made 
 himself master of the whole German and French 
 Empires. 
 
 Charles XII., of Sweden, was declared of age by the 
 States, and succeeded his father, at the age of fifteen. 
 At eighteen, he headed the expedition against the 
 Danes, whom he checked ; and, with a fourth of their 
 numbers, he cut to pieces the Russian army, com- 
 manded by the Czar Peter, at Narva, crossed the 
 Dwina, gained a victory over the Saxons, and carried 
 his arms into Poland. At twenty-one, he had con- 
 quered Poland and dictated to them a new sovereign. 
 At twenty-four he had subdued Saxony, and at twenty- 
 seven he was conducting his victorious troops into the 
 heart of Russia, when a severe wound prevented his 
 taking command in person, and resulted in his over- 
 throw and subsequent treacherous captivity in Turkey. 
 
 Lafayette was major-general in the American army 
 at the age of eighteen ; was but twenty when he was 
 wounded at the battle of Brandywine ; but twenty-two 
 
SKETCHES OF YOUNG MEN. 117 
 
 ^'hen he raised supplies for his army, on his own 
 credit, at Baltimore ; and but twenty-three when raised 
 to the office of commander-in-chief of the National 
 Guards of France. 
 
 Napoleon Bonaparte commenced his military career 
 as an officer of artillery at the siege of Toulon. His *■ 
 splendid campaign in Italy was performed at the age 
 of twenty-seven. During the next year, when he was 
 about twenty-eight, he gained battle after battle over 
 the Austrians in Italy, conquered Mantua, carried the 
 war into Austria, ravaged the Tyrol, concluded an 
 advantageous peace, took possession of Milan and the 
 Venetian Republic, revolutionized Genoa, and formed 
 the Cisalpine Republic. At the age of twenty-nine, he 
 received the command of the army against Egypt, 
 scattered the clouds of Mameluke cavalry, mastered 
 Alexandria, Aboukir, and Cairo, and wrested the land 
 of the Pharaohs and Ptolemies from the proud de- 
 scendants of the prophet. At the age of thirty he fell 
 among the Parisians like a thunderbolt, overthrew the 
 directorial government, dispersed the Council of Five 
 Hundred, and was proclaimed first consul. At the 
 age of thirty-one he crossed the Alps with an army, 
 and destroyed the Austrians by a blow at Marengo, 
 At the age of thirty-two he established the Code of 
 Napoleon ; in the same year he was elected consul for 
 life by the people, and at the age of thirty-three he 
 was declared Emperor of the French nation. 
 
 William Pitt, the first Earl of Chatham, was but 
 twenty-seven years of age when, as a member of Par- 
 liament, he waged the war of a giant against the cor- 
 ruptions of Sir Robert Walpole. 
 
118 APPENDIX. 
 
 The younger Pitt was scarcely twenty years of age 
 when, with masterly power, he grappled with the 
 veterans in Parliament in favour of America. At 
 twenty-two he was called to the high and responsible 
 trust of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. It was his 
 age when he came forth in his might on the affairs of 
 the East Indies. At twenty-nine, during the first in- 
 sanity of George III., he rallied around the Prince of 
 Wales. 
 
 Edmund Burke, at the age of nineteen, planned a 
 refutation of the metaphysical theories of Berkeley and 
 Hume. At twenty he was in the Temple, the admira- 
 tion of its inmates for the brilliancy of his genius and 
 the variety of his acquisitions. At twenty-six he pub- 
 lished his celebrated satire entitled "A Vindication of 
 Natural Society.'' The same year he published his 
 "Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful," — so much ad- 
 mired for its spirit of philosophical investigation and 
 the elegance of its language. At twenty-five he was 
 First Lord of the Treasury. 
 
 George Washington was only twenty-seven years of 
 age when he covered the retreat of the British troops 
 at Braddock's defeat, and the same year was appointed 
 commander-in-chief of all the Virginia forces. 
 
 General Joseph Warren was only twenty-nine years 
 of age when, in defiance of the British soldiers stationed 
 at the door of the church, he pronounced the celebrated 
 oration which aroused the spirit of liberty and patriot- 
 ism that terminated in the achievement of independ- 
 ence. At thirty-four he gloriously fell, gallantly 
 fighting for the cause of freedom, on Bunker Hill. 
 
 Alexander Hamilton was a lieutenant-colonel in the 
 
SKETCHES OF YOUNG MEN. 119 
 
 army of the American Revolution and aide-de-camp to 
 Washington at the age of twenty. At the age of 
 twenty-jfive he was a member of Congress from New 
 York ; at thirty he was one of the ablest members of 
 the Convention that formed the Constitution of the 
 United States. At thirty-one he was a member of the 
 New York Convention, and joint author of the great 
 work entitled the '* Federalist." At thirty-two he was 
 Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, and 
 arranged the financial branch of the government upon 
 so perfect a plan that no great improvement has ever 
 been made upon it by his successors. 
 
 Thomas Haywood, of North Carolina, was but thirty 
 years of age when he signed the glorious record of a 
 nation's birth, — the Declaration of Independence. El- 
 bridge Gerry, of Massachusetts, Benjamin Rush and 
 James Wilson, of Pennsylvania, were but thirty-one 
 years of age; Matthew Thornton, of New Hampshire, 
 thirty-one; Thomas Jefferson, of Virginia, Arthur 
 Middleton, of South Carolina, and Thomas Stone, of 
 Maryland, thirty-three ; and William Hooper, of North 
 Carolina, thirty-four. 
 
 John Jay, at twenty-nine years of age, was a member 
 of the Revolutionary Congress, and, being associated 
 with Lee and Livingston on the committee for draft- 
 ing an address to the people of Great Britain, drew up 
 that paper himself, which was considered one of the 
 most eloquent productions of the time. At thirty-two 
 he penned the Constitution of New York, and in the 
 same year was appointed chief-justice of the State. 
 At thirty-four he was appointed minister to Spain. 
 
 At the age of twenty-six, Thomas Jefferson was a 
 
120 APPENDIX. 
 
 ginia. At thirty he was a member of the Virginia 
 Convention ; at thirty-two a member of Congress ; at 
 thirty -three he drafted the Declaration of Independence. 
 
 Milton, at the age of twenty-three, had written his 
 finest miscellaneous poems, including his "L' Allegro/' 
 *' Penseroso," " Comus/' and the most beautiful of his 
 monodies. 
 
 Lord Byron, at the age of twenty, published his 
 celebrated satire upon the "English Bards and Scotcii 
 Eeviewers;" at twenty-three, the first two cantos of 
 " Childe Harold's Pilgrimage." Indeed, all the poetic 
 treasures of his genius were poured forth in their 
 richest profusion before he was thirty-four years old ; 
 and he died at thirty-seven. 
 
 Mozart, the great German musician, completed all 
 his noblest compositions before he was thirty-foui' 
 years old ; and he died at thirty-six. 
 
 Pope wrote his published poems by the time he was 
 nineteen years old ; at twenty his " Essay on Criticism ;" 
 at twenty-one the "Ptape of the Lock /' and at twenty- 
 five his great work, — the translation of the Iliad. 
 
 Br. D wight's "Conquest of Canaan" was commenced 
 at the age of sixteen and finished at twenty-two. At the 
 latter age he composed hi* celebrated Dissertation on 
 the history, eloquence, and poetry of the Bible, which 
 was immediately published, and republished in Europe. 
 
 This list might be indefinitely multiplied by a re- 
 ference to poets, reformers, divines, and missionaries, 
 most of whom began early to develop and work out 
 their mission for humanity, and, having done so, 
 passed to their rest and recompense. 
 
THE PLACE FOR YOUNG MEN. 121 
 
 II. 
 
 We append the following article, which has just ap- 
 peared in the Richmond Central Presbyterian, both as- 
 a very just delineation of these Associations and as 
 presenting in the one at Richmond a good model to 
 others. 
 
 THE PLACE FOR YOUNa MEN. 
 
 One of the noblest Institutions in this city is the- 
 Young Men's Christian Association. The pious in- 
 genuity of the good has never devised an organization 
 better fitted to accomplish two great and important 
 ends, viz.: the social, intellectual, and moral improve- 
 ment of its own members, and the temporal and 
 spiritual welfare of those not connected with it, yet 
 in whose behalf this organization exerts its influence. 
 
 There is such variety in its plans and in its means 
 of usefulness that it is practically the ally of nearly 
 every good enterprise known to society and to the 
 church. 
 
 There is so much symmetry in its constitution, and. 
 such is the practical working of its different depart- 
 ments of labour, that it is capable of becoming the 
 auxiliary to more objects of philanthropy and religion 
 than any other society of which we have any know- 
 ledge. It has its committees for seeking out and re- 
 lieving the destitute, for visiting the inmates of poor- 
 houses and hospitals, for making the acquaintance of 
 young men on their first arrival in the city, for the 
 11 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 purpose of aiding them in finding employment and for 
 the purpose of surrounding them with moral and reli- 
 gious influences; it furnishes teachers to Sabbath- 
 schools, it conducts strangers to the house of God: in a 
 word, responsive to every call of benevolence and Chris- 
 tian zeal, this Society comes forward in all the alacrity 
 and ardour of its youthful vigour, with the offer of its 
 warm heart and strong arm, feeling honoured in having 
 its services accepted, and delighting to render its effi- 
 cient aid. Such are its relations to society at large ; 
 such its external work. 
 
 As to its inner life, we feel assured that, had the 
 Young Men's Christian Association no other object 
 than the improvement of its own members, this alone 
 would render it worthy of the sympathy and support 
 of every youth of generous feelings and honourable 
 principles ; for such is the nature of its organization 
 that it calls into play and develops the finest social 
 qualities of our nature ; it throws young men to- 
 gether in such a way as to excite the kindest interest 
 in each other, to soften and break down prejudices, 
 and to awaken sentiments of mutual esteem and 
 friendship. 
 
 Unlike other associations among young men which 
 sometimes lead to rivalries^ and discord, — to the en- 
 couragement of coarse and vulgar manners, to the in- 
 dulgence of a taste for low and degrading pleasures, 
 and to the formation perhaps of dissipated habits, — 
 the intercourse which results from tliis association is 
 all elevating, pure, and refining. It tends to repress 
 whatever is rude, selfish, and sensual, and to give de- 
 velopment to all that is disinterested, generous, and 
 
THE PLACE FOR YOUNG MEN. 123 
 
 manly ; for around all of its meetings, even those 
 which are merely literary and most unreservedly social. 
 there is thrown the gentle and sweetly-constraining 
 influence of our common Christianity ; and in all the 
 genial flow of youthful spirits, in all the collision of 
 mind with mind, while there is every thing in the 
 ardour and spirit and glow of the intercourse to make 
 it plain that it is a young men's association, still, it is 
 never forgotten that it is a young men's CJiristian 
 association. 
 
 For the entertainment and profit of its members it 
 has established a library and reading-room ; it has its 
 meetings for friendly intercourse, its rhetorical society 
 for literary exercises and forensic discussions, its 
 meetings for business and its meetings for prayer : 
 and, in addition to these means of mental and spiritual 
 improvement, it has formed another circle for the 
 study of the Holy Scriptures. On every Thursday 
 night the Hall of the Association is thrown open to all 
 who are willing to attend informal lectures and exa- 
 minations on portions of Scripture selected for the 
 occasion. This class is under the direction of one of 
 the pastors of the city ; and any young man who de- 
 sires to become a member of it is at liberty to do so, 
 whether he is a member of any church or not, and 
 whether he is a member of the Association or not. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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 CONTAININO 
 
 THE PRINCIPLES OF MECHANICS APPLIED TO MACHINERY 
 
 Of American Models, Steam-Engines, Water-Works, Navigation, Bridgt*' 
 
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 BY FREDERICK OVERMAN, 
 
 AUTHOR OP " THE MAXUFACTURE OF IRON," AND OTHER SCIENTIFIC TEKATIgia. 
 
 Illustrated by 150 Engravings. 
 
 In one large r2mo. volume. 
 
 CALIFORNIA AND OREGON: 
 
 Or, Sights in the Gold Region, and Scenes by the Way. 
 
 BY THEODORE T. JOHNSON. 
 WITH A MAP AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 Containing Full Insti-uctions to Emigrants by the Overland Route to 
 
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 BY HON. SAMUEL R. THURSTON, 
 
 Deleg-ate to Congress from that Territory. 
 
 WILD WESTERN SCENES: 
 
 A NARRATIVE OF ADVENTURES IN THE WESTERN WILDERNESS. 
 Wherein the Exploits of Daniel Boone, the Great American Pioneer, er 
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 BY LUKE SHORTFIELD, 
 
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20 J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 
 
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 THE PLEASURES OF IMAGINATIOM, by Akenside; THE PLEASURES 
 
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 iflli] Soriukm. 
 
 A TALE OF F O R T Y YEA R SAGO. 
 
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 ARTHUR'S LIBRARY FOR THE HOUSEHOLD. 
 
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 complete in itscUl 
 
 1. WOMEN'S TRIALS; OR, TALES AND SKETCHES FROM THE LIFE 
 
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 2. MARRIED LIFE; ITS SHADOWS AND SUNSHINE. 
 
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