O, it is beautiful to see a young man living a life
of purity, standing upright where thousands of other
young men fall. You will move in honorable circles
all your days; and some old friend of your father
will meet you and say: “My son, how glad
I am to see you look so well. Just like your
father, for all the world. I thought you would
turn out well when I used to hold you on my knee.
Do you ever hear from the old folks?”
After a while you yourself will be old, and lean quite
heavily on your cane, and take short steps, and hold
the book off to the other side of the light.
And men will take off their hats in your presence.
Your body, unharmed by early indulgences, will get
weaker, only as the sleepy child gets more and more
unable to hold up its head, and falls back into its
mother’s lap: so you shall lay yourself
down into the arms of the Christian’s tomb,
and on the slab that marks the place will be chiselled:
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall
see God.”
But here is a young man who takes the other route.
The voices of uncleanness charm him away. He
reads bad books. Lives in vicious circles.
Loses the glow from his cheek, the sparkle from his
eye, and the purity from his soul. The good shun
him. Down he goes, little by little. They
who knew him when he came to town, while yet lingering
on his head was a pure mother’s blessing, and
on his lip the dew of a pure sister’s kiss,
now pass him, and nay, “What an awful wreck!”
His eye bleared with frequent carousals. His cheek
bruised in the grog-shop fight. His lip swollen
with evil indulgences. Look out what you say
to him. For a trifle he will take your life.
Lower down and lower down, until, outcast of God and
man, he lies in the alms-house, a blotch of loathsomeness
and pain. Sometimes he calls out for God; and
then for more drink. Now he prays; now curses.
Now laughs as fiends laugh. Then bites his nails
to the quick. Then runs both hands through the
shock of hair that hangs about his head—like
the mane of a wild beast. Then shivers—until
the cot shakes—with unutterable terror.
Then, with uplifted fist, fights back the devils, or
clutches the serpents that seem winding him in their
coil. Then asks for water, which is instantly
consumed by his cracked lips. Going his round
some morning, the surgeon finds him dead.
Straighten the limbs. You need not try to comb
out or shove back the matted locks. Wrap him
in a sheet. Put him in a box. Two men will
carry it down to the wagon at the door. With chalk,
write on the top of the box the name of the exhausted
libertine.
Do you know who it is?
That is you, O man, if, yielding to the temptations
to an impure life, you go out, and perish.
There is a way that seemeth bright, and fair, and
beautiful; but the end thereof is BLACKNESS OF DARKNESS
FOREVER.
