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 sen sual 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 previous talk bas very little significance. I have reasoned the thing to you ɔn 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 cease to direct my words particularly to you. What I have said to you, I have said heartily and conscientiously. I shall see you some time. 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 lour 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 of of gratification; and if you should happen to tell mɩ 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. |