The sort of belief which takes a man to church on Sunday
who would be ashamed to look as if he were really praying, or
confessing real sins when he gets there, is small help to him when the
will balances between right and wrong. It is truly, as a matter of
mere common sense, a poor bargain, a wretched speculation, to be half
religious; to get a few checks and scruples out of it, and no real
strength and peace; and, it may be, to lose a man's soul, and not even
gain the world. For who dare promise himself that Christ our Judge,
who spent a self-denying human youth as our example, and so loved us
as to die for us, will accept a youth of indifference, and a
dissatisfied death-bed on our part? And if it be all true, and if
gratitude and common sense, and self-preservation, and the example and
advice of great men, demand that we shall serve GOD with all our
powers, don't you think the devil must, so to speak, laugh in his
sleeve to see us really conceited of being too large-minded to attend
too closely, or to begin to attend too early, to our own best
interests?"
"Ah!" he added after a while, "my dear boy--dearer to me than you can
tell--the truth is, I covet for you the unutterable blessing of a
youth given to GOD.
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