lists of invitations, leaders in society cross out
the names of dissipated young men as promptly as they
do those of fast young women. Whereas thirty
years ago there was rather a mantle of sentimental
charity fitted on the shoulders of a disreputable young
fellow, to-day he is roughly talked of as a “drunkard”
or a “common fellow”; terms that no one
dreamed of applying to him then. There has been
nothing that public opinion, especially that section
of it that may be called social opinion, has changed
in more than in the standard it fixes for, and demands
from, all men, and particularly young men. The
result is that when a man wants to be superior to
vice now, he has the moral weight of a sounder public
opinion and finds the road easier than he would have
had thirty years ago.
I have said nothing to you about any higher inducement
to commence a better life every day, than those you
can find in the world. They are quite sufficient,
or ought to be. A healthy body, a clear mind,
success in the world—these are the rewards
which a good life offers here. There is just
one other word about what it offers elsewhere.
I am not a preacher, you need not be afraid of a sermon.
I am just one of yourselves; only I have come over
a longer road than you have, and have seen more of
its pitfalls as well as more of its sign-boards.
Nor do I pretend to know more than you of what it
offers elsewhere. But I just wish to say one
word to recall what you already know; what you must
know. There is nothing that we all know better—nothing
that is more surely planted in the human mind than
that this is only a part of our life; that when we
shall reach a future existence, we shall there find
a life awaiting us which will match with the piece
we carry from this one. It is a very grave thought—graver
than any which we shall consider on earth, if we are
intelligent men—which the match will be—whether
it will be found in one of infinite misery or one of
infinite betterment. Here we have the power to
say which it shall be. It is a priceless power.
Let us use it, not in fixing days for reformation,
not in lamenting over promises of reforms broken, and
fixing other days to come; but in living a newer life
every day—As we can make no bargain nor
compromise about the time and place where our life
shall end, let us take the matter into our own hands
and so live that it will matter little when or where
the end comes. So live that when the summons
come,
“Thou go not, like the
quarry slave at night
Scourged to his dungeon, but,
sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach
thy grave
Like one who wraps the drapery
of his couch
About him, and lies down to
pleasant dreams.”
