BEGINNING LIFE. I. IMPORTANCE OF RELIGION. HE most important subject to a young THE man, or to any man, is religion. What is my position in the world? Whence have I come, and whither am I going? What is the meaning of life and of death? What is above and before me? These are questions from the burden of which no one escapes. The most idle, the most selfish, the most self-confident do not evade them. Those who care least for religion, in any ordinary sense, are found inventing their own solution of them. All experience proves) that men can not shut out the thought of the unseen and the Supreme, although they may banish from their minds the faith of their childhood, and despise what they deem the supersti-/ tion of their neighbors. The void thus created fills up with new materials of faith, often far less interesting and unspeakably less worthy than those which they superseded. Our age has been rife in examples of this; and men have wondered-if, indeed, any aberration of human intellect can well excite wonder-at the spectacle of those who have professed that they could not conceive of any notion of a Supreme Being without emotions of ridicule, exhibiting a faith in the supernatural, in comparison with which the superstitions of a past age are probable and dignified. So strangely does violated human 1 nature take its revenges, and bring in at the door what has been unhappily expelled at the window. The thought of the supernatural abides with man, do what he will. It visits the most callous; it interests the most skeptical. For a timeeven for a long time--it may lie asleep in the breast, either amidst the sordid despairs, or the proud, rich, and young enjoyments of life; but it wakens up in curious inquiry, or dreadful anxiety. In any case, it is a thought of which no man can be reasonably independent. In so far as he retains his reasonable being, and preserves the consciousness of moral susceptibilities and relations, in so far will this thought of a higher world-of a Life inclosing and influencing his present life-be a powerful and practical thought with him. It becomes clearly, therefore, a subject of urgent importance to every man how he thinks of a higher world. What is it to him? What are its objects-their relation to him, and his relation to them? Suppose the case of a young man entering upon life, with the sense of duty beginning to form on him, or at least working itself clear and firm in his mind, how directly must all his views of the near and the present be affected by his thought of the Supreme and the future? It may not be that he has any distinct consciousness of molding his views of the one by the other. But not the less surely, will the "life that now is" to him be molded by the character of the life that he believes to be above him and before him. The lower will take its color from the higher-the "near" from the "heavenly horizon." There will be a light or a darkness shed around his present path in proportion as his faith opens a steady or a hesitating a comprehensive or a partial-gaze' into the future and unseen. It may seem, on a mere superficial view, that this is an overstatement. The young grow up and go into the world, and take their places there often with little feeling of another world, and how they stand in relation to it. Their characters are formed as it might seem by chance, and the tastes and opinions of the accidental society into which they are thrown. And no doubt such influences are very potent. They are the enveloping atmosphere of character, silently feeding and rounding the outlines of its growth. But withal, its true springs are deeper "Out of the heart are the issues of life." The soul within is the germ of the unfolding man, no less than the seed is that of the plant, fashioned and fed as it may be by the outer air. And the essential form of character will be found in every case to depend upon the nature of the inner life from which it springs. Whether this be dull and torpid, or quick and powerful, will very soon show itself in the outward fashion of the man. The mere surface of many lives may look equally fair, but there will be found to be a great difference, according as some hold to a higher life, and draw their most central and enduring qualities thence; and as others are found to have no higher attachment-no living spring of Divine righteousness and strength. What is deepest in every man, and most influential, however little at times it may seem so, is, after all, his relation to God and the unseen. The genuine root of character is here, as trial soon proves. How a man believes concerning God and the higher world-how his soul iswill show itself in his whole life. From this inner source, its essential and determining qual |