hold the devil has upon you. It shows how degraded you are; how the beast that is in you domineers over the soul that is in you.

Young man, your personal value depends entirely upon your possession of religion. You are worth to yourself what you are capable of enjoying; you are worth to society the happiness you are capable of imparting. To yourself, without religion, you are worth very little. A man whose aims are low, whose motives are selfish, who has in his heart no adoration for the great God, and no love for his Christ, whose will is not subordinate to the Supreme will gladly and gratefully-who has no faith, no tenable hope of a happy immortality, no strong-armed trust that with his soul it shall be well in all the future, cannot be worth very much to himself. Neither can such a man be worth very much to society, because he has not that to bestow which society most needs for its prosperity and its happiness. A locomotive off the track is worth nóthing to its owner or the public so long as it is off the track. The conditions of its legitimate and highest value are not complied with. It cannot be operated satisfactorily to the owner, or usefully to the public, because it is not where it was intended to run by the man who made it.

Just look at the real object of religion, and see how rational it is. It is the placing of your souls in harmony with God and his laws. God is the perfect, supreme soul, and your souls are the natural offspring of that soul. Your souls are made in

the image of his, and, like all created things, are subject to certain immutable laws. The transgres

sion of these laws damages your souls, warps them, stunts their growth, outrages them. Do you not see that you can only be manly and attain a manly growth, by preserving your true relations and likeness to the father soul, and a strict obedience to the laws of your being? God has given you appetites, and he meant you should indulge them, and that they should be sources of happiness to you; but always in a way which shall not interfere with your spiritual growth and development He gave you passions, and they are just as sacred as any part of you, but they are to be under the strict control of your reason and your conscience. He gave you desires for earthly happiness. He planted in you the love of human praise, delight in society, the faculty to enjoy all his works. He gave you his works to enjoy, but you can only enjoy them truly when you regard them as blessings from the great Giver, to feed and not starve your higher natures. There is not a true joy in life which you are required to deprive yourself of, in being faithful to him and his laws. Without obedience to law, your souls cannot be healthful, and it is only to a healthful soul that pleasure comes with its natural-its divine aroma. Is a nose stuffed with drugs capable of perceiving the delicate fragrance of the rose? Is the soul that intensifies its pleasures as an object of life capable of a healthful appreciation of even

purely sensual pleasures? The idea of a man's enjoying life without religion is absurd.

I have been thus particular upon this point, because I love you, and because I know that without it, or independent of it, all my precious talk has very little significance. I have reasoned the thing to you on its merits, and I urge it upon your immediate attention, as a matter of duty and policy. The matter of duty you understand. I do not need to talk to you about that. Now about the policy. It will not be five years, probably, before every one of you will be involved, head and ears, in business. Some of you are thus involved already. You grow hard as you grow older. You get habits of thought and life which incrust you. You become surrounded with associations which hold you, so that the longer you live without religion the worse it will be for you, and the less probable will be your adoption of a religious life. If you expect to be a man, you must begin now. It is so easy, comparatively, to do it now!

With this paragraph I ce se to direct my words particularly to you. What I have said to you, I have said heartily and conscientiously. I shall see you sometime. We are none of us to live very long, but if we all act the manly part we were sent here to act, and are true to God and ourselves, we shall be gathered into a great kingdom, whose throne will be occupied by the founder of our religion. During some golden hour of that cloudless day, sitting or straying upon some heavenly

hill, watching upon the far-stretching plains the tented hosts of God's redeemed, or marking the shadow of an angel's flight across the bright mirror of the river of life, I shall say something about these letters to you. I shall look you in the face as I say it, to see if you are moved to an emotion of gratitude or gratification; and if you should happen to tell me that they made you better, that they led you to a higher development, that they directed you to a manly and a godly life, I should press your hand, and if I should keep from weeping it would be more than I can do now.