THE 
 
 VOYAGE OF LIFE; 
 
 SUGGESTED BY 
 
 COLE'S CELEBRATED ALLEGORICAL PAINTINGS. 
 
 J. B. WATEEBURY, D. D., 
 
 AUTHOR OP "ADVICE TO A YOCNO CHRISTIAN," "CONSIDERATIONS 
 FOR YOUNG MEN," ETC. 
 
 Written for the Mattachusetts Sabbath School Society, 
 and approved by the Commii^e of Publication, 
 
 BOSTO N.- 
 MASSACHUSETTS SABBATH SCHOOL SOCIETY. 
 Depository No. 13 Cornhtll.
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1862, by 
 
 CHRISTOPHER C. DEAN, 
 In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Massachusetts.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 AMONG the most beautiful specimens of allegorical 
 painting is the series of pictures by the late Mr. Cole, 
 entitled " The Voyage of Life." They are four in 
 number, and constitute together an impressive moral 
 lesson, which speaks through the eye to the heart. 
 Many have gazed upon them with delight. When 
 they were first opened by a number of artists in one 
 of our cities, the impression on their minds, it is 
 said, was so deep, that, for a while, not a word was 
 spoken. The effect was too great even for commend- 
 ation. 
 
 Mr. Cole had the faculty not only of copying 
 nature, an art in which he stood almost unrivalled, 
 but of combining with the finest touches of the 
 pencil high moral associations. His Voyage of Life 
 will probably stand as a permanent memorial of his 
 genius. 
 
 2051574
 
 IV PREFACE. 
 
 la this pictorial voyage, Mr. Cole has chosen a 
 fanciful combination, unlike anything by which nauti- 
 cal life is usually characterized. It is not a ship, but 
 a fairy shallop. It is not the ocean, but a river. He 
 has gone to the fountain-head, and there launched his 
 light craft, and carried her forward, with her precious 
 freight, until that river disembogues into the great 
 ocean of the future. 
 
 Upon this series of beautiful allegorical paintings 
 this little book founds its lessons of moral wisdom. It 
 is designed, as the title imports, to furnish the voyager 
 with the requisite outfit. It is hoped that all who 
 may give their attention to its pages especially those 
 who have recently embarked on this uncertain sea 
 will be the better prepared to encounter the vicissitudes 
 of the voyage, and be more likely in the end to arrive 
 at the haven of eternal rest.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PARS 
 
 THE EMBARCATION, 7 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 YOUTH, 2(5 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 PKH1LS OF YOL'TII, 50 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 MANHOOD 68 
 
 C II AP T E R V. 
 TUIALS HOW TO UK MET, 91 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 OLD AGE, 121 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 ITS ENJOYMENTS AND ITS END, 103
 
 THE VOYAGE OP LIFE. 
 
 CHAPT ER I. 
 
 THE EMBARCATIOX. 
 
 IN the first picture in the series, the eye is 
 at once arrested by the air of freshness and 
 beauty that pervades it. All is mild as the first 
 rays of morning light. Everything is appro- 
 priate to the dawn of existence, the embarcation 
 of human destiny. The spring-time of nature's 
 gladness and variety seems here pictured. The 
 skies are soft, the buds are opening, the leaflet 
 is shooting, the very atmosphere seems redolent 
 of sweets. From a grotto in the foreground 
 where light and shade are intermingled, where 
 hope and fancy might playfully conjecture a 
 thousand hidden images of beauty, there issues a 
 stream, taking its way amid overhanging shrub-
 
 8 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 bery, meandering and circling between its banks of 
 enamelled green, reminding us of one of the rivers 
 which took its rise in the original Paradise. On 
 the bosom of this placid stream, and not far 
 from the grotto, you see a curious and fanciful 
 boat, light and graceful as if constructed for 
 some fairy form, unlike any water-vehicle that 
 was ever built. It is neither the fleet-winged 
 yacht nor the gorgeous gondola. It seems to 
 be woven out of osiers and flowers, and moves like 
 a thing of life, without sail or oar, to its dark or 
 its glorious destination. 
 
 Here see the artist's power. How unique, 
 how frail, yet how beautiful ! It has no sail ; it 
 goes with the stream, and needs none. It has 
 no oars ; an invisible hand guides and moves it. 
 In this boat, surrounded by flowers, sits an 
 infant in the fulness of health, whose sweet 
 smile gives token of a pleasure which the play 
 of its new-born faculties has inspired. You see 
 'on its face not the slightest indication of fear. 
 Its little eyes are dazzled by the flowers in 
 which it sits imbedded, and its ear is soothed by
 
 THE EMBARCATIOX. 9 
 
 the melodies of the bird and the murmur of the 
 stream ; and you cannot help sympathizing in its 
 infantile joy. 
 
 But, as you gaze, you are ready to exclaim. 
 Who is this that has charge of the helpless 
 though delighted being ? The artist has antici- 
 pated your anxiety, and invites your attention to 
 a bright form that stands near the object of your 
 solicitude. It is the Guardian Angel. Its 
 shadowy outlhie of beauty agrees well with the 
 idea of spiritual beings. It watches, with an eye 
 of pure benevolence, over its lovely charge. It 
 starts with it in the beginning of its being. 
 Commissioned from above to attend upon the 
 young voyager, and true to its trust, it hovers 
 near, and observes, with a heaven-inspired solici- 
 tude, the events as they occur. Seeing this 
 angel in the boat, you feel relieved. Personified 
 in this angel is a benignant and ever-watchful 
 providence. 
 
 Such is an outline of the first picture in the 
 series, denominated Childhood. If in this paint- 
 ing there be room for criticism, I leave it to be
 
 10 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 occupied by those who have more artistical skill 
 than myself. My business is with the moral of 
 the painting. 
 
 The object of the artist seems to be to portray 
 in colors the most beautiful the dawn of life, the 
 first embarcation on the perilous voyage of exist- 
 ence. Of course, he must begin with infancy, 
 He must take humanity in the bud ; for all begin 
 life here. The greatest intellects, the most 
 renowned statesmen and warriors, the most elo- 
 quent and the most gifted of mortals, those 
 whose names shine brightest on the scroll of fame, 
 all have had their beginning in the weakness 
 of infancy. The bad as well as the good, the 
 miscreant, the felon, the murderer, were once 
 prattling infants, and smiled as sweetly, and 
 played as innocently, as the most virtuous and 
 holy. They, too. may have been born in Pleas- 
 ure's grotto, and sported on the flowery banks 
 of her beautiful river. Their first embarcation 
 may have been auspicious, delightful, even full
 
 THE EMBARCATION. 11 
 
 of promise. But how different their career ! 
 How unlike their destiny ! Will not the reader 
 sympathize with these reflections ? 
 
 Who has not been struck with the fact that 
 the greatest minds were once shrouded in an 
 infantile body? Has it not seemed almost mirac- 
 ulous, that out of such frail materials Providence, 
 by the force of circumstances, should produce 
 such genius, such mental power, such all-com- 
 manding influence 1 What is this, but a proof 
 of man's immortality '} How can we resist the 
 conviction that a mind so kindred to higher 
 intelligences, passing so soon from infantile 
 weakness to great intellectual power, must have 
 in it the seeds of immortality) And how mel- 
 ancholy has been the reflection that, from a 
 childhood so apparently innocent, so susceptible 
 of good impressions, there should come the 
 dark-minded plotter of sin, the besotted drunk- 
 ard, the felon, the murderer ! How differently 
 is the voyage of life made by mortals ! with 
 what different results, ending in disgrace or in 
 glory !
 
 12 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 Why has the artist, in his beautifully pictured 
 allegory, sent a mere infant afloat on the treach- 
 erous stream, to be wafted whithersoever the 
 current may carry it ? The reason must have 
 been, as we conceive, to show its dependence on 
 an overruling providence. Each child, as it 
 starts on the voyage of life, is in the hands of 
 God. He ordained all the circumstances of its 
 first and feeble existence. His hand kept alive 
 the spark of vitality, which at the birth seemed 
 barely to glimmer, as if a cold breath of air 
 almost might have extinguished it. He it is 
 who makes every bright object of nature so 
 attractive to the young eye, and causes an exhil- 
 aration and playfulness to spring from the very 
 motion of its expanding muscles. But for his 
 guardian care, that frail creature, even under a 
 parent's watchful eye, could not reach the period 
 of youth. *How many, yea, what a large major- 
 ity of the human race, only enter upon the 
 voyage ; just launch, as it were, on the river, and 
 then sink into its cold bosom ! The fairy shallop 
 is stranded on the flowery bank of its head-
 
 THE EMBA11CATION. 18 
 
 waters. How many have I seen coffined at this 
 early age ! How many soft eyelids have been 
 closed forever over their once beautiful orbs; and 
 the marble brow, so still to the sight, so cold to 
 the touch, has told me that the voyage was 
 ended almost as soon as it began '. Around the 
 form and on the coffin-lid have been disposed 
 sweet buds and flowers, striking emblems of the 
 beauty and the frailty of that once animated but 
 now lifeless clay. 
 
 But who shall mourn for such voyagers? The 
 parental heart is allowed that privilege. Relig- 
 ion, in this concession, pays her tribute to nature, 
 and sanctifies the sorrow by making it the source 
 of good to the sufferer. But I might address 
 even the mother, and say, " Thy regret and sor- 
 row are reasonable only because natural. Thy 
 loved one has been wrecked in the neighborhood 
 of heaven. It had not got far from its origin, 
 the hand of God. The stream, set in motion by 
 its Maker, had not borne it out of sight of the 
 celestial shores. An eye that could penetrate 
 the future may have seen in the distance the 
 2
 
 14 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 dark form of the tempter ; or the sad images of 
 grief may have been seen waiting to haunt its 
 soul. The river might soon have darkened into 
 a stormy flood ; and its maturity have been 
 exposed to worse than adversity to vice and 
 endless ruin. From all these perils and trials 
 has God sheltered it ? Has ho cut short its 
 earthly career at the outset of existence, that it 
 may spread its pinions in the atmosphere of 
 . heaven ? Has he transferred it to the river of 
 life that proceedeth out of his throne, where no 
 temptations, no dark forms of sin, can ever invade 
 its bliss or its purity ? Is this so 1 Then dry 
 thy tears ; or, if they still must flow, let them 
 express thy gratitude as well as thy grief, thy 
 resignation as well as thy sorrow/' 
 
 But the allegory had in view the continuance 
 of life. It presents us with the child as seated 
 in the flowery-decked barge, and gliding on to 
 where the stream Avill increase and the dangers 
 will thicken. In this view, the interest is even 
 greater than where the voyage ends in infancy, 
 If God has taken our little ones, we have no fur-
 
 THE EMBARCATIOX. 15 
 
 ther care of them. We know they are safe. 
 What they are to be is no anxiety of ours. Faith 
 and hope have taught us that the celestial state 
 has no moral dangers ; and that, when claimed by 
 Heaven, the cares and responsibilities of the 
 earthly parent towards them are ended. 
 
 But the living, growing child, still under our 
 eye, in our arms, dependent upon us, looking 
 to us, living on our smile, forming its taste, its 
 moral character even, under every influence 
 which, consciously or unconsciously, we are 
 throwing around it, this child, so related, is a 
 trust too awful to be conceived. 
 
 See the mother bending over it in calm delight 
 
 O o 
 
 as it sleeps, and imprinting a soft kiss on its 
 brow ; or, as it wakes and smiles, giving it the 
 answering smile of love, pressing it to her bosom, 
 silently musing over it in a sort of dreamy 
 pleasure ; full of fears, if it betray uneasiness or 
 pain, and agitated if the pulse beat rapidly, or 
 the breath grow quick and hot ! Wonderful is 
 the love that beats in a mother's heart ! It is a 
 provision, a security for helpless infancy, which a
 
 16 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 gracious Providence has furnished; an instinct 
 the most effective, an antagonist the most power- 
 ful, against the natural selfishness of the human 
 heart. 
 
 It is the mother's hand that spreads flowers 
 around the young voyager, makes its couch so 
 soft, its moments run so cheerful, that puts 
 before its eye the brightest pictures to attract 
 and to please. In its life is her life. It is her 
 second self, more loved than herself. This is 
 nature. 
 
 But a reflecting parent will not rest in this 
 instinctive love ; nor suppose, because, under its 
 influence, the physical wants of the child are 
 attended to, that her duty and her enjoyment 
 there must end. The reflecting parent, espec- 
 ially the Christian mother, will think of what 
 is to be. She will rise above the mere instincts 
 into the higher region of duty. She will look 
 on her child, not as a part of her being only, 
 but as an individual existence, in whose destiny 
 for both worlds she is to feel an interest, and to 
 Wield an influence.
 
 THE EMBAttCATION. IT 
 
 Such a parent looks into the cradle, and says 
 to herself: " There is an immortal spirit in 
 embryo. It is a young voyager, just starting 
 on the stream of life, unconscious of its capabili- 
 ties, and unapprized of its destiny. Its animal 
 nature is now in full play ; and the exercise of its 
 functions in eating, sleeping, smiling, seeing, 
 hearing, moving, gives it delight. The mind 
 has yet scarcely dawned. The soul is in a 
 twilight existence. But how soon will the 
 thought begin to stir, the will to develop, and 
 the desire to be expressed ! ITow soon wll the 
 animal be in conflict with the spiritual nature ! 
 How soon will be heard the l wilV and the 
 l worftj the 'yes' and the 'no,' the 'must' 
 and the ' shall ' ! Ere long the passions will cry 
 out for indulgence, and the conscience will 
 whisper its rebukes, and the sense of right and 
 wrong engrave itself on the responsible soul ! " 
 
 What is this child to be ? what is the man to 
 
 be, who is born, as it were, out of this child ? In 
 
 a limited, though very important sense, ' : the 
 
 child is father to the man." Who does not see 
 
 2*
 
 18 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 a shadow of the future manhood in the child 1 
 And, retrospectively, who cannot trace in the 
 man the faint lineaments Avhich dawned in early 
 childhood? 
 
 Standing, then, at the head- waters of life's 
 eventful flow, at the placid streamlet that 
 glides between green and flowery hanks, the 
 parent is to survey the frail voyager at the out- 
 set ; and, to adopt a nautical phrase, to see that 
 it has a good " offing." Whatever can be done, 
 in that period of its existence, whatever can 
 contribute to make the passage safe and success- 
 ful, to guard against ultimate shipwreck, must, 
 under God, be faithfully done. 
 
 EDUCATION SHOULD BEGIN IN INFANCY. 
 
 Until the principle be more generally admitted 
 and acted upon that education should begin in 
 infancy, we shall have, I fear, many examples 
 of voyagers who reach an early or an inglorious 
 end. But, in so infantile a period, what can be 
 done, save to develop its bodily powers, and 
 secure to it a good share of health and vigor ?
 
 THE EMBARCATIOX. 19 
 
 What have we to do for it, but to satisfy its 
 cravings after food, to give it rest, and to amuse 
 it -with a variety of sights and sounds 1 And all 
 this can be done by proxy. This is the nurse's 
 vocation. Alas, when mothers so reason ! 
 With such views, it is to be feared that the 
 young adventurer will have but a poor outfit 'for 
 the voyage of life. If it were a mere animal, 
 a pet dog, the mother could scarcely do less. 
 If its soul came not with its body, but was in- 
 fused afterwards, there might be some reason for 
 such a course. But, even then, its physical 
 frame, so intimately associated with mind and 
 spirit, and exerting so much influence over them, 
 ought not to be committed to irresponsible hands. 
 The mother who bore it should ordinarily feed 
 it, through the channels which both nature and 
 affection have indicated ; and her hands should 
 have a large share in administering to its daily 
 wants. The earliest sympathies of the child 
 should be drawn around the mother. The 
 ligature which nature has supplied between them 
 should not be broken by the interposition of a
 
 20 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 third person ; who, though she be officially faith- 
 ful, can never supply the mother's place, and 
 towards whom every affection that flows from the 
 child is so much moral power taken from its 
 natural guardian. The rjch may have less care 
 in this respect ; but the poor mother has a higher 
 and' more lasting recompense. 
 
 But the child, even at its birth, has a soul. 
 It is a spark of immortality, at least ; a spark 
 that must grow to a flame, and burst forth in the 
 responsible doings of after-life. From the first, it 
 should be treated under this impression: " I am 
 dealing with a young immortal. I am educating 
 passions which are to influence the intellect and the 
 moral powers. My smile, my frown, my yes ' 
 and my 'no,' are acting directly on the senses, 
 but indirectly on the soul. If I yield to its im- 
 portunate and angry cries, fearing that such 
 violent ebullitions may injure its health, what 
 am I doing, but augmenting a power of selfish- 
 ness, a tyranny of the will, that, in after- 
 life, may set my ^commands at defiance ? If its 
 capricious appetite refuse wholesome food, and
 
 THE EMBARCATIOX. 21 
 
 hanker after dainties, and I yield to its clamors, 
 supplying it to its heart's content, what is this, 
 but training a young sensualist, who, by and by, 
 may be an habitual inmate of the drinking-saloon 
 or the tavern? If I accustom it to endless 
 variety in its toys and its amusements, allowing 
 it to destroy the old and to call for new ones 
 which, after a little satiety, it devotes to a simi- 
 lar destruction, how certainly am I laying the 
 foundation for spendthrift habits, and a restless, 
 dissatisfied temper ! ' ' 
 
 " Keep the child still, at any rate," is the 
 motto with some. Please it, even if you have to 
 surrender your wardrobe to rending, your 
 furniture to scathing, and your fancy-work to 
 demolition. 
 
 Some parents would rather hear, one would 
 think, the crash of a looking-glass, than the 
 uneasy moan of a child. " Keep it still ; please 
 it, at any rate," is their maxim. How cruel is 
 such kindness ! How selfishly cruel such 
 policy ! That child has a mind, a soul, which, 
 by these means, you are training to a desperate
 
 22 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 encounter with its conscience, its duty and its 
 God. You are nursing the scorpion self-will, 
 which, after it has flung its poison into others, 
 yea, not seldom into the very veins that nursed 
 it, will turn upon itself, and become, in the 
 end, its own destroyer. 
 
 But it is thought that the child is too young 
 to know the right from the wrong. It is taken 
 for granted that the babe is, as yet, ignorant of 
 its victories ; and that what is done, in the way 
 of indulgence, at so early a period, can have no 
 influence on its subsequent life. Fatal mistake ! 
 The mother has been heard to declare, with a 
 sorrowing tone, that she knew not why it was 
 that her children were so selfish, so hard to 
 control, so stubborn ! She had done everything 
 possible for their good, had denied herself to 
 gratify them. And it was all true. But she 
 had miscalculated in her estimation of human 
 nature. The children may have required a 
 somewhat different treatment. They may have 
 needed more control, more authority, even 
 when authority could be felt only in the restraint
 
 THE EMBARCATION. 23 
 
 of muscle and in the limitation of sensual desire. 
 Their will should have been bowed so early as 
 any will, in opposition to the parent, was mani- 
 fested. Alas ! the whole training of some is to 
 give force to the natural selfishness of the heart ! 
 In after-life, further on in the voyage. such 
 training gives us the mean character, as the 
 miser ; the reckless character, as the spendthrift ; 
 the cruel character, as the extortioner ; the 
 ambitious character, who sacrifices everything to 
 his own dominion, and the sensualist, who 
 degrades his nature to the level of the brute. 
 
 Infant training is a subject on which the 
 physician and the moralist should unite their 
 influence, to convince negligent parents of their 
 duty and responsibility. To have obedient 
 children, moral children, healthy children, 
 those who " shall praise us in the gates," 
 especially to have children who shall fear God 
 and keep his commandments, we must begin to 
 train them, by the divine help, from their very 
 infancy. Be it ours to watch the opening mind, 
 the developing dispositions, the first buddings of
 
 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 selfishness, the earliest opposition of the will; and 
 to plant our authority and influence always 
 kindly put forth at the fountain-head of ex- 
 istence. 
 
 Our children have natures that need a correct- 
 ive more prompt, more constant, more persever- 
 ing, than we are apt to imagine. Yet, with all our 
 efforts, even where such efforts are well directed 
 and faithfully applied, we are to depend on a 
 higher power to give success. He who gave us 
 these little ones, who launched them on the 
 stream of life by our side, who has them entirely 
 in his control, He alone can give them the dis- 
 positions and tendencies which shall reward our 
 toils, and realize our parental longings. Recog- 
 nizing this dependence, let us consecrate our 
 children to God, imploring his aid in their edu- 
 cation, and seeking his grace to shape their 
 character to piety and virtue ! 
 
 The Christian will say, " These children are 
 not mine ; they are God's. I am but their 
 earthly and responsible guardian; and now, 0, 
 for some angel to be sent to my child, like that
 
 THE EMBARCATION. 25 
 
 beauteous form which I see in yonder frail bark, 
 to keep an eye of solicitude fixed on that young, 
 unconscious voyager ! 0, for such an one, to be 
 his constant guide through the dangers and perils 
 which await him, to allure him ever towards 
 that light in yonder heavens, dimly shining over 
 the great estuary which opens from time to 
 immortality ! ' ' 
 3
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 YOUTH. 
 
 THE panorama shifts, and we behold the 
 second phase of human life. There is but a step, 
 and that a very short one, between childhood 
 and youth. How quickly is it taken ! The 
 mother is changing its garments every month, 
 and yet nature almost outstrips her ingenuity. 
 The infant habiliments are soon shredded off, and 
 the youth asks for something more manly to 
 cover his expanding form. But yesterday his 
 little limbs were tottering in their first efforts at 
 locomotion ; now he is bounding like the roe. 
 He is out of the lap and out of the arms ; and his 
 eye is growing bright, almost wild, with the stir- 
 ring impulses of youthful ambition. 
 
 The mother begins to mingle somewhat of 
 anxiety in her look of affection. The father lays 
 his hand on the head of his boy, and says,
 
 27 
 
 " Beware, my son, of the dangers -which beset 
 thy path." 
 
 Look now at the picture before us ! The 
 whole scene has expanded into broader propor- 
 tions. The river is wider, swifter, yet how 
 beautiful ! The trees are loftier ; and from the 
 cultivated hills. cultivated even to the river's 
 brink, rise in the back-ground stupendous 
 mountains, burying their summits in the richly- 
 tinted clouds. There is a warmth and animation 
 in the atmosphere partaking of the glow of the 
 tropics and the bracing vigor of the colder 
 regions. Every feature of the landscape is alive 
 and bright ; as if nature, in her prime, or rather 
 in her youth, were accommodating herself to the 
 passionate ardor of the voyager, who, having 
 seized the helm, is steering his own way amid a 
 wilderness of sweets. 
 
 The angel, it would seem, has left the beauti- 
 ful boy alone in the boat ; but she is standing 
 near, and watching him with apparent solicitude, 
 as, reckless of danger, he ploughs his course 
 onward, with his eye fixed on those cloud-capped
 
 28 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 towers which fire his ambition. The shallop's 
 prow is towards the point of danger, but has 
 not actually reached it. There is a curve in the 
 stream not far hence, where the current runs 
 more impetuously, and seems to descend in 
 foaming rapids; but, as yet, all this is prospect- 
 ive and hidden. The young aspirant stands up 
 in all the glow of youthful anticipation, glancing 
 his eye towards that air-built and cloudy dome, 
 which appears like a dim vision of grandeur high 
 up in the heavens. 
 
 SELF-COXFIDENCE. 
 
 The first thought that suggests itself is, the 
 apparent self-reliance of the young voyager. 
 The angel has left the boat ; and on that youth- 
 ful brow there sits an air of proud independence, 
 as if confident that he can steer the frail vessel 
 without the help of others. 
 
 How true a picture of human nature ! One 
 of the first efforts of boyhood is to stand alone, 
 to cut loose from the moorings of authority and 
 dependence, and to set up for himself. He
 
 YOUTH. 29 
 
 wants not the parental eye to watch over him, 
 nor the parental hand to steady his footsteps. 
 "Let me go alone ; let me do the thing myself. 
 "Why cannot I take care of myself? Must I 
 always be a child, a baby? " 
 
 Timidly and slowly does the parent yield to 
 this reasoning, and to these importunities. His 
 experience of life leads him to fear for his beloved 
 child, when out of the reach of his eye and his 
 admonition. The father knows well the rough 
 and turbid character of the stream ; the rocks 
 and snags that underlie it, upon which the in- 
 experienced voyager is in danger of making ship- 
 wreck ; and he lets go the young hand reluct- 
 antly, and with many an anxious foreboding. 
 
 Self-reliance is a fine trait of character, when 
 under due control ; when modified by a proper 
 sense of dependence upon divine aid, and by a 
 proper appreciation of the difficulties and dangers 
 to be encountered. 
 
 No parent no judicious parent certainly 
 would wish to keep his son in leading-strings, 
 when the time for self-government and energetic 
 3*
 
 30 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 action had arrived. Every boy must, sooner or 
 later, be put upon his own resources. In the 
 great struggle of life, he must take his chance, 
 so to speak, with the rest. He should be made 
 to feel that he has got to cut his own way 
 through the world ; and that personal energy 
 the resolution to do, the indomitable purpose to 
 succeed has no small influence in insuring 
 success, and in placing an individual in a position 
 of respectability. 
 
 But the tendency is to get rid prematurely of 
 parental authority and supervision ; to stand 
 alone, and to move alone ; to set up for himself 
 at too early a period, at a -period when, more 
 than at any other during life, the youth needs, 
 for his safe guidance, the counsels of a parent or 
 guardian. The misfortune, however, is that, in 
 his self-confidence, hQ entertains no fears and 
 perceives no dangers. He wants no angel in the 
 boat with him. He had rather be guided by his 
 own eye than turn for aid to the ever-watchful 
 guardian that hovers near him. Presumptuous 
 youth ! Thou knowest not thy weakness, nor
 
 YOUTH. 31 
 
 the perils that surround thee. Alas ! it may be 
 thou wilt know them both too late for effectual 
 succor ! 
 
 How astonishing it is, and what a proof it is 
 of the perversity of our nature, that a youth in 
 his teens should deem his judgment equal, if 
 not superior, to that of his parent; that he 
 should wish to seize the helm, and direct his own 
 course, when he has so little experience of the 
 ways of life, and so little knowledge of human 
 nature ! Let him reflect a moment. Who is 
 most likely to know the direction and the dangers 
 of a certain voyage, to understand the needful 
 outfit. he who has made that voyage, who has 
 actually passed over the given course, or he 
 who is just about to launch upon the treacherous 
 flood 1 The parent has himself been young ; has 
 stood in the very position where his child now 
 stands; has experienced the impulses and the 
 aspirations, the hopes and the disappointments, of 
 youth. He has, too, in sad remembrance, his 
 own follies, the results of his own self-confidence; 
 and he is prepared to point out the breakers
 
 32 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 on which his inexperience had well-nigh driven 
 him. 
 
 Besides, what motive, what possible motive, 
 can the parent have for opposing his child's 
 wishes, save that of disinterested love ? It is in 
 his heart to gratify his child in every reasonable 
 desire ; and it is only when, in the light of his 
 own past experience, he sees him likely to make 
 a wrong choice, to steer in a wrong direction, 
 that he can bring himself to take a stand in 
 opposition to his wishes. Think of this, dear 
 youth, and defer to parental experience, rather 
 than insist upon having thy own way, or to 
 plunge forward merely to gratify thy own too 
 obstinate will ! 
 
 DOMESTIC TRAINING. 
 
 In the domestic training of children and youth, 
 there has been a gradual but very perceptible 
 change from the system which was in vogue fifty 
 years ago. There is more lenity, more liberty, 
 and more indulgence, on the part of the parent ;
 
 YOUTH. 66 
 
 more insubordination, more self-confidence and 
 more restlessness, on the part of the child. 
 
 Children are brought forward earlier now, 
 they get into clothes sooner. The swaddling- 
 bands are off sooner : and the mimic boy tottles 
 in pants, or struts in a tight jacket, at an age 
 when, according to former usage, he would have 
 worn a smock and been rocked in a cradle. We 
 see little mimic men and women about our streets, 
 led by nurses, who display them in their ambi- 
 tious finery, for the admiration of some, and the 
 disgust of others. If, in putting the young 
 limbs under this constraint,, there be any demur- 
 ring on the part of the child, he is coaxed into 
 compliance by the declaration, " Charley must be 
 a little man now." And this Charley is trained 
 to think himself a man, when as yet he has 
 scarcely attained the stature of boyhood ! What 
 wonder, then, if the little pet should take it into 
 his head that, being dressed like a man, and 
 urged to emulate manhood, he should assume 
 the characteristics and enjoy the privileges of 
 that enviable state ! "Why should I not," says
 
 34 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 he, " do as men do, and go where I see men 
 go?" 
 
 A child's reasoning is not worth much, I admit; 
 but, if the proud or capricious or indulgent parent 
 furnishes him the premises, the upstart boy can- 
 not be very much blamed for reaching so natural 
 a conclusion. Children are not only put earlier 
 into fashionable gear, but they are more petted 
 and indulged, than formerly. They sit at the 
 table, whereas it was once the custom to stand. 
 They talk, when once it would have been ex- 
 pected they should keep silence. They are not 
 only admitted to the company of older persons, 
 but their opinions are given, and their voices 
 heard, sometimes even above their seniors. The 
 old adage, that " a child should be seen and not 
 heard," has long since become obsolete. 
 
 Much more deference is paid to a child's 
 wishes than formerly. Many a reader will recol- 
 lect that, less than fifty years ago, it was not a 
 very common thing to hear a parent consult the 
 child as to what he would like best. The parent,
 
 YOUTH. 85 
 
 knowing what he ought to like best, decided the 
 matter for him. 
 
 It was not, "James, would you like such or 
 such a garment ?" but the garment a suitable 
 one, of course was made for him, and James 
 was glad to put it on and wear it. It was not 
 said, " My dear, if this kind of food is not agree- 
 able, you shall have something that you do like; " 
 but the food was set before the child, and, if he 
 were at all dainty, he might wait until his appe- 
 tite returned. James was not consulted as to 
 what school he would like to attend. One was 
 selected, and the boy was told to go and do his 
 best. 
 
 How different, in general, is the case now ! 
 The writer, inquiring of a friend what he 
 intended to do with his son, was answered by 
 the father as follows : " Augustus has a mind to 
 mercantile life ; and, as I hold that a boy's taste 
 and preferences should be consulted in such mat- 
 ters, I think I shall put him in a store. I 
 should like very much to give him a liberal edu- 
 cation ; but he dislikes the idea of going to col-
 
 36 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 lege ; so I suppose I shall have to make a mer- 
 chant of him. Is it not so, Gussey? ; ' Gus- 
 sey smiled assent, of course : and so Gussey had 
 the ordering of his own destiny. Is it surpris- 
 ing that he turned out a vagabond 1 
 
 Another father, whom I could name, said to 
 John and William, even when they scarcely 
 knew what a college meant, " My sons, you are 
 to study hard, and get ready for college." This 
 was understood, and no other thought entered 
 the brain of John or William. They were ac- 
 customed to respect their father's opinion, and to 
 bow to his authority. Cheerfully, therefore, did 
 they go to work to fulfil his wishes. As might 
 have been expected, they became useful charac- 
 ters, and bore down to posterity the name of 
 their honored father, who chose so well for them 
 when they were incapable of choosing for them- 
 selves. 
 
 Whether the change in domestic training 
 which has gradually come about so different 
 from what used to be, so much more lenient, 
 deferring so much more to the child's opinions
 
 YOUTH. 37 
 
 and wishes is, on the whole, preferable to the 
 more rigid discipline of a past age. is a question 
 not, perhaps, easy to be answered. Undoubtedly 
 the extremes are to be dreaded and avoided. 
 But, if the writer were to express an opinion on 
 the subject, it would be that we are more in 
 danger, at the present time, from indulgence and 
 premature culture, than we are from a too stern 
 and rigid discipline. 
 
 Everything in the institutions of our country, 
 in the progress of society, in the open field of 
 adventure, tends to foster a daring and self- 
 reliant course. If the writer may be excused for 
 quoting from himself, he would say, in this con- 
 nection, "Independence is a word which exerts 
 a magical influence on every class of our citizens. 
 It is interwoven with our national history, and is 
 the watch-word under all circumstances of public 
 peril. Is it to be wondered at, then, that the 
 youth of our country should early imbibe a dis- 
 like to all kinds of restraint, even to that which 
 both God and nature have imposed ? And is it 
 not true, that in this country, more than in any 
 4
 
 38 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 other of equal standing, the young are prema- 
 turely released from the watchful care and 
 wholesome authority of the parent? If these 
 suggestions are well founded, then is there need 
 of great vigilance on the part of parents, in order 
 to counteract a tendency in our social and civil 
 condition unfavorable to domestic government. 
 The child, too, should remember that he may 
 gain his liberty too soon for his own good. 
 The price of this premature independence may 
 be, not simply the sighs and sorrows of a pa- 
 rent's heart, but the disappointment of his own 
 expectations, and even the ultimate ruin of his 
 own soul. He may have the satisfaction of 
 anticipating, by a few years, his release from 
 parental restraint ; but, like the unfledged bird, 
 which has ventured too soon from the warm 
 nest, and, finding its wings incompetent for a 
 self-sustained flight, sinks neglected to the 
 earth, or dies beneath the peltings of the storm, 
 so, ere long, may he bitterly repent his pre- 
 sumption, and sigh for a return to privileges
 
 YOUTH. 39 
 
 which, through his own folly, ho has forever 
 forfeited."* 
 
 The truth is that now-a-days our youth are 
 impatient of boyhood. They long to be men as 
 soon as possible. They would dress like men ; 
 and not unfrequently are they found copying the 
 vices and vulgarities of men. 
 
 Such being the tendencies of things, it cannot 
 be doubted that more should be done to repress" 
 such preposterous yearnings, and, if possible, con- 
 vince the young aspirant that boys should be 
 boys, knowing their place, and cheerfully sub- 
 mitting to parental guidance. 
 
 It is. moreover, for their happiness, as well as 
 their usefulness, that they should abide their 
 time. In what period of life is there crowded 
 more real enjoyment ? Never do I look upon 
 the fine, healthy glow of youth, but I feel that I 
 am contemplating the rarest specimen of physi- 
 cal happiness that God has presented to my 
 view. I cannot but feel a conscious regret, that 
 I knew not, when passing that halcyon period, 
 
 * Sermon, in the National Preacher, on Filial Duty.
 
 40 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 as now I feel I ought to have known, the day. 
 BO to speak, of my visitation. Everything then 
 that met the eye was beautiful. The choristers 
 of the wood sang as never they have sung since. 
 The air never went with such vital impulse to 
 the lungs. The blood coursed gently or rushed 
 wildly along its channels ; and the nerves, as they 
 were visited by the soothing influences of nature, 
 made JEolian music for the soul. Food was 
 relished, for the appetite was keen ; it nourished, 
 for the digestion was unimpaired. Sleep was a 
 sweet oblivion, rarely broken in upon but by 
 images of earthly beauty. Can the youth 
 afford to forego this happy, buoyant period of 
 existence ? Should he wish it at an end 1 
 But how absurd, by warring against nature, to 
 think of cheating time ! How absurd for a 
 youth to think that he is fit for the occupations 
 and the strife of mature life, whilst yet his 
 muscle has not hardened, nor the beard grown 
 upon his chin ! When the proper time comes, 
 who will object to his putting out upon the tide, 
 and taking his chance with others ?
 
 YOUTH. 41 
 
 But self-reliance comes too soon, when a mere 
 l>oy asks to be cut loose from the obligations of 
 fJiai obedience arid deference to the parent's 
 judgment, that he may set up for himself on 
 nothing but an imaginary capital ; or, like the 
 prodigal in Scripture, to go out laden with a 
 portion which his inexperience and his vices are 
 sure, ere long, to dissipate and extinguish. 
 
 In these remarks, let not the writer be under- 
 stood as laying down rules for all cases, and all 
 temperaments. Some of the young, naturally 
 diffident, with too little self-reliance, leaning, 
 perhaps, too much on parental support, may 
 need an exactly reverse treatment. It may be 
 necessary to lead them out of that shy back- 
 ground into which they are disposed to retreat, 
 to encourage them to take the helm and steer the 
 boat themselves. The views which have been 
 presented bear, we apprehend, upon the age 
 generally, and apply to a majority of those who 
 may be termed " the RISING generation." 
 4*
 
 42 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 AMBITIOX. 
 
 To return to the picture. What is meant by 
 that cloud-capped tower that seems to be hung 
 on some airy nothing ? The youth fixes his eye 
 upon it, regardless of the dangers that intervene. 
 His soul is full of lofty aspirations. He has 
 heard of those who have steered for this temple, 
 and reached it ; and he dimly descries their 
 names in golden letters on its massive columns. 
 "Why may not my name be there also?" he 
 exclaims. " Why may / not be associated 
 with the great ones who have preceded me ? ; ' 
 
 Impelled by such feelings, he pushes forward 
 on the stream, where a thousand equally anxious 
 and ardent spirits are struggling in the same 
 direction. 
 
 There is, indeed, something apparently noble, 
 something that compels our admiration, in thia 
 struggle after fame ; especially where it fires 
 the youthful bosom, and nerves him to efforts and 
 sacrifices which an ordinary or feebler impulse 
 could not have called forth. A young Napoleon, 
 for example, dreaming of greatness even in his
 
 YOUTH. 43 
 
 boyhood, shaping all his studies with a view to 
 its acquirement, mounting every step that seemed 
 to lead to it, rushing into every perilous position 
 that looked in the direction of it, how can we 
 fail to be interested in such an one, or to sym- 
 pathize in the daring flights of such a mind 1 
 
 What he thus early coveted, he at length 
 obtained. The shadow which he pursued, he at 
 a very early period in life overtook. And did 
 he not find it a shadow 1 On the highest pin- 
 nacle of the aerial temple he sat, and, looking 
 down from this lofty, almost inapproachable 
 height, he discovered the emptiness of this 
 world's honors, and the uncertainty of all its 
 hopes and promises. 
 
 Well, then, has the artist placed, the temple of 
 fame in the clouds, and given it a sort of 
 shadowy outline, operating strongly on the 
 imagination by its half-concealed though majes- 
 tic proportions. 
 
 Fame is a powerful but bewildering incentive ; 
 ambition, a deep-seated but thoroughly selfish 
 impulse. He who struggles in this race thinks
 
 44 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 only, or principally, of himself. Tlie glory of 
 God is out of sight. The good of his fellow-men, 
 if it do not fall in with his own aims, espec- 
 ially if it stand in the way of their accomplish- 
 ment, will be disregarded, or coldly sacrificed. 
 
 Yet oftentimes, mingling with ambition and 
 the desire for fame, will be traits of character 
 which go far to make us think ambition a venial 
 principle, and to extort, if not justify, the wish 
 that he who is so deserving of elevation may 
 succeed in the object of his desires. 
 
 There is, indeed, a fame that comes unsought, 
 which follows rather than allures, where the in- 
 dividual aimed higher even than the cloud-capped 
 temple, and found himself quite unexpectedly 
 in the possession of honors of which he had never 
 dreamed, and to which he had never aspired. 
 The highest earthly immortality, we know, has 
 been reached by many who never sought it. but 
 who aimed only to serve God and their fellow- 
 men. 
 
 But fame, as ordinarily understood, leads its
 
 YOUTII. 45 
 
 votaries into a rough, vexatious, and often fatal 
 path. 
 
 " HENRY KIEKE WHITE." 
 
 That youthful poet and eminent scholar., 
 Henry Kirkc White, toiled hard for fame. His 
 ambition was, that his name might not be for- 
 gotten ; that among the claimants for earthly 
 honors he might be recognized, and his genius 
 acknowledged. It was this that made him 
 mournfully inquire, 
 
 " Fifty years hence, and who will hear of Henry ? " 
 
 Under this impulse, he sacrificed health, and 
 even life. He trimmed the midnight lamp 
 with a hand tremulous and bony, and scanned 
 the classic page with an eye almost drowsy in 
 death. Having received, according to his aims, 
 the highest honors of the university, he ex- 
 claimed, respecting these laurels, which he had so 
 hardly won, and which, as the sequel proved, he 
 was so soon to relinquish, 
 
 " What are ye now, 
 But thorns about my bleeding brow ? *'
 
 46 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 In sacrificing health to fame, however, Henry 
 Kirke White saw his error in time to reach that 
 higher, purer motive, which combines Avith feel- 
 ings of regret and sorrow the hopes and aspira- 
 tions of the Christian. 
 
 "HENRY MARTYN." 
 
 Another Henry toiled in the same path of 
 greatness, but with an eye more steadily fixed on 
 a higher prize. Martyn, the sainted missionary, 
 stood relatively in the grade of university honors 
 where Kirke White had stood. But a higher 
 impulse than earthly ambition had taken pos- 
 session of him. " I hear," said he, " the voice 
 of suffering humanity calling from the dark 
 places of the earth for relief. What but the 
 gospel can afford it? I hear, at the same time, 
 the voice of my risen Saviour, saying, ' Go ye 
 into all the world, and preach the gospel to every 
 creature ! ' Shall I stay at home, and enjoy the 
 learned leisure of a fellowship 1 Shall I com- 
 pose eloquent sermons, and preach them in 
 crowded cathedrals 1 Or, shall I lay my honors
 
 YOUTH. 47 
 
 at the feet of Jesus, and consecrate my being to 
 the enlightenment of pagan nations ? " 
 
 The question was soon settled : and Martyn's 
 name and memory are embalmed in the hearts of 
 thousands, turned " from darkness to light " by 
 the force of his example, and the labors of his 
 short but consecrated life. 
 
 THE CONTRAST. 
 
 Napoleon and Henry Martyn ! Behold in 
 one the soldier of ambition, and in the other the 
 soldier of the cross ! The one sacrifices myriads 
 to obtain imperial honors ; the other sacrifices his 
 own life to place the crown -immortal upon ran- 
 somed pagans. Napoleon lives in the praises of 
 his countrymen, in the glory of France, in the 
 pleasing consciousness of his own power. These 
 are his aliment, as they were his impulse. "When 
 these are gone, all is gone. But Martyn's life 
 is found in God, and in the service of God; 
 sources which never can fail, a fountain of felicity 
 which never can run dry. 
 
 Who would not prefer to follow the footsteps
 
 48 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 of the youthful missionary over burning plains, 
 and through benighted cities, with the lamp of 
 life and salvation in his hand, than to mingle in 
 the stormy career of the conqueror, with the 
 wheels of his chariot dripping in gore, and his 
 ears saluted alternately with the praises and the 
 maledictions of mankind ? 
 
 THE TRUE AMBITION*. 
 
 There is a loftier structure, let me say to the 
 youthful aspirant embarking on the rough 
 waters of strife, than the one faintly imaged in 
 yonder clouds. There is a temple of God, 
 adorned with moral beauty and grandeur, such 
 as pearls and gems and rainbow tints can but 
 faintly symbolize. Let thy ambition fix on this 
 bright abode ! Be all thy energies enlisted in 
 reaching it ! There is a field of enterprise, too, 
 here below, where the highest intellect may find 
 scope, and the purest benevolence be exercised. 
 It is found in turning men to righteousness. 
 They who labor successfully in this field shall 
 not only have a calm satisfaction in the work,
 
 YOUTH. 49 
 
 but shall shine at last " as the stars for ever and 
 ever." 
 
 Withdraw thy eye, then, from that cloud- 
 capped tower ; or, rather, lift it far higher, to the 
 New Jerusalem, clothed in the sunlight of heaven, 
 with its white-robed inhabitants, its scenery of 
 undying loveliness ; rise to this altitude of 
 glory, and say, 
 
 " The golden palace of my God 
 Towering above the clouds I see ; 
 Beyond, the cherubs' bright abode, 
 Higher than angels' thoughts can be. 
 How can I in those courts appear 
 Without a wedding garment on ? 
 Conduct me, thou Life-giver, there ; 
 Conduct me to thy glorious throne, 
 And clothe me with thy robes of light, 
 And lead me through sin's darksome night, 
 My Saviour and my God ' " 
 
 5
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 PERILS OF YOUTH. 
 
 ONE thing strikes the beholder, as he gazes on 
 the principal figure, with eye intent on the 
 shadowy dome, namely, an apparent disregard 
 of the perils to which he is exposed in so frail 
 a bark, and on a stream, so rough and rock- 
 indented. The light shallop rushes on with ever- 
 accelerating speed, the waters growing more 
 dark and turbid, and the skies in the distance 
 putting on portentous shapes and colors. 
 
 In this the artist has depicted the reckless- 
 ness of youth, unapprizcd of what is before him ; 
 or, if not entirely ignorant, at least strong in his 
 self-reliance, confident that he will be able to 
 sustain any shock which may be made upon him. 
 
 How true a picture is this of the young 
 voyager on the actual stream of life ! With 
 what a bold and self-confident hand he seizes
 
 PERILS OF YOUTH. 51 
 
 the helm, and takes his chance on the perilous 
 flood ! 
 
 Whilst we would not wish to cast a, single 
 shadow over the bright prospect which a san- 
 guine and youthful imagination may have 
 sketched, nor conclude that, because ' many 
 have made shipwreck, all that come after them 
 will inevitably do the same, still must we be 
 allowed to suggest, as the artist himself has 
 done, that it would be well for this inexperienced 
 navigator to observe the perils which are before 
 him, and so to direct his course as, if possible, to 
 avoid them. 
 
 The two great impulses by which young men 
 are ordinarily swayed, are the love of pleasure 
 and the love of gain. The latter, with young 
 men, resolves itself into the former, as means to 
 an end; but the former the love of pleasure, 
 the mere selfish desire of enjoyment is the more 
 powerful, more constantly operative, and almost 
 universally prevalent. "Who will show us any 
 good ? " is the earliest, the most continued, and 
 the most clamorous inquiry.
 
 52 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 THE PLEASURIST AND IDLER. 
 
 That fairy-like vessel, with the winged hours 
 sculptured on its sides, gliding between banks 
 of flowers, and under skies of Italian softness, 
 is but an emblematical representation of the 
 dreamy idleness and self-indulgence which char- 
 acterize too many just entering upon manhood. 
 
 Easy enough it is to float upon the tide of 
 circumstances, to dream of greatness without 
 making any efforts to attain to it ; to indulge in 
 revery and sloth ; to lie down in the boat and go 
 to sleep, not caring what may happen to it, or 
 whither it may drive. 
 
 Some young men are just of this character, 
 pleasurists, idlers. They are the sons ordina- 
 rily of rich men. Some defect, far back in their 
 education, has occurred. Something went wrong 
 at the beginning of the voyage, and has gone 
 wrong ever since. How much, latterly, a 
 knowledge of their father's wealth has had to do 
 in forming their character to this supine and 
 indolent type, we cannot say ; but doubtless it 
 has exerted its influence. But there they are,
 
 PERILS OF YOUTH. 53 
 
 the living drones in a world where every energy 
 should be tasked, arid every moment employed. 
 
 They live on fare which their fathers' hands, 
 and not theirs, have earned ; and sleep on beds 
 which their fathers' sweat and toil have pur- 
 chased. They go in and out, choosing their own 
 hours, regardless- of the order established in the 
 family ; and with as independent a swagger as 
 if the whole premises were theirs, and all its con- 
 veniences were arranged for their special benefit. 
 They have no particular respect for their parents ; 
 and no affection, or next to none, for any 
 member of the household. Every thought of 
 theirs seems to be concentrated upon themselves. 
 The care that presses heaviest is, how they shall 
 get rid of time, or what new variety of pleasure 
 they shall pursue. 
 
 Their dress is scrupulously fashionable; but 
 who pays the tailor's bill? Their manners, 
 partaking of a haughty but languidly sensual air, 
 leave one in doubt whether in their constitution 
 there be more of the animal called the sloth or 
 of the bird known as the peacock 
 5*
 
 54 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 Miserable excrescences these, on the face of 
 society ! How little hope is there that they will 
 ever be reclaimed to industry, to virtue, to use- 
 fulness ! 
 
 Everybody seems to despise them; that is, 
 everybody whose opinion is worth quoting. 
 "What is the fellow about?'' says one; ''he 
 seems to know nothing, to do nothing, to be 
 nothing." " Why is he not brought up to some 
 useful occupation ? what can his father intend to 
 make of him ? " The rough artisan brushes by 
 him with a scornful glance, wondering why he 
 must labor for his bread, and this walking non- 
 entity, this statue of silk and broadcloth, parade 
 the streets in idleness ! 
 
 All are at work. the merchant, the mechanic, 
 the professional man, all are at it, toiling for an 
 honest livelihood, contributing their portion to 
 the healthful stock of labor. whilst this idler 
 saunters about and looks on, as if he had neither 
 part nor lot in the matter. 
 
 But what shall be done, in his case 1 The 
 only answer we can think of, after expostulation
 
 PERILS OF YOUTH. 55 
 
 and counsel have been tried in vain, is to cut off 
 his supplies. Give him to understand that he is, 
 at least, to earn his own clothing. In fact, 
 according to the Bible, he ought to earn his food, 
 as well as his clothing ; ' ' for he that will not 
 work," says that high authority, " shall not eat." 
 The community has no room for such idlers. 
 
 Let every young man do something; some- 
 thing that will tend to his own support, or to the 
 general weal. Be he ever so rich in prospect, 
 he is never rich enough to be an idler. If he 
 were an English lord, with an inheritance of 
 millions, he should cultivate habits of industry ; 
 he should do something to develop his own ener- 
 gies, and strive also to benefit his fellow-men. 
 
 Herein, I think, the artist, whose beautiful 
 picture is suggestive of these remarks, has failed ; 
 or, rather, I should say, has not been able to 
 include in the second picture certain moral 
 dangers to which the young are especially ex- 
 posed. He presents the youth to us as absorbed 
 wholly in the idea of fame. But, where ono
 
 56 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 thinks of fame, there are thousands who care 
 only for pleasure and relaxation. 
 
 TEMPTATIONS TO VICE. 
 
 Indolence we have described as the besetting 
 sin of some. The reader may not, perhaps, 
 recognize the portrait which we have drawn ss a 
 likeness of himself. He may not have become 
 such a useless drone. Nevertheless, he may find 
 that his greatest obstruction in the path of im- 
 provement is a habit of indolence. What is dif- 
 ficult, what will cost labor, what will task his 
 utmost efforts, he may not love to encounter. 
 And yet, all the good, and the wise, and the suc- 
 cessful, have thus toiled, in order to reach the 
 elevation on which they stand. 
 
 But many are vicious who cannot be called 
 idlers. They plead for sensual indulgence, 
 under the idea of necessary relaxation from severe 
 toil. " We must play, as well as work," say 
 they; "we cannot be always at it. ; ' 
 
 Who would deny the reasonableness of this 
 plea? And, if the relaxation were sought in
 
 PERILS OF YOUTH. 57 
 
 things right and innocent, -who would object? 
 Nature herself demands that amusement and 
 relaxation should be intermingled with labor. 
 But, to resort to vicious haunts, to mix with the 
 idle and the dissolute, and call such pleasures 
 needful relaxation, is to abuse both our health 
 and our reason. 
 
 How many moral dangers beset the young 
 ' man's way ! Along the stream down which he 
 carelessly glides, and on either bank of it, is 
 many a cove or inlet, into which the young 
 voyager is invited, where he may moor his bark, 
 indulge a drowsy hour, and take his fill of 
 pleasure. Siren voices are heard, so alluring, 
 so enchanting, that he cannot resist the tempta- 
 tion to pause and listen, to their melody. The 
 beauties of Eden could scarcely have been more 
 tempting in appearance than are some of the 
 bowers of pleasure into which he is drawn. But, 
 like that Eden, there is concealed there a dark, 
 designing spirit, who, in proffering the sweets, 
 whispers, " Ye shall not surely die."
 
 58 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 Our cities are full of amusements addressed to 
 the passions and sinful propensities of the young. 
 A gorgeous scene will be got up. in order to strike 
 the eye, or .to awaken the curiosity. Artistic 
 decorations the most beautiful will solicit the 
 attention. The daughters of music will be 
 enlisted, and strains of the sweetest melody will 
 be made to float out from the interior of splen- 
 didly furnished apartments. All this, attracting 
 the eye and saluting the ear, will seem to say, 
 "Come in and share in the gayety and gladness 
 of the scene." 0, how many out-signals are 
 hung around the porches of vice, intended to 
 strike the eye of the young man, and to allure 
 his feet into the haunts of infamy and of death ! 
 
 "What do these lights mean?" said an ingenu- 
 ous youth to his parent, as they came unexpect- 
 edly upon a brilliant display of lamps and gas- 
 light. The father heaved a sigh, thinking that 
 possibly his own dear son might one day know, 
 from sad experience, what they meant. "They
 
 PERILS OF YOUTH. 59 
 
 mean, my dear boy, that within that open door, 
 where you see young men passing in and out, 
 are scenes of idleness and dissipation, such as 
 blast the character, undermine the health, and 
 endanger the soul. Conviviality is there the 
 great attraction. There the inebriating cup is 
 mixed, and presented under its most seductive 
 forms. Drinking, and smoking, and even 
 gambling, are practised. Rapidly in this school 
 of vice are young men graduated, until, after a 
 short career, they are found outcasts from all 
 decent society; and they are very apt to end 
 their days as vagabonds in the streets, or as 
 felons in the cells of a prison. Steer clear of 
 those gorgeous lights! Behind them are the 
 rocks and the quicksands on which many an 
 unsuspecting youth has been stranded. They 
 are the temples of Bacchus, where mirth and 
 wine are sought and enjoyed, but where charac- 
 ter is sacrificed, and all virtuous sentiment ex- 
 tinguished. He who enters into them may 
 think that he treads on "enchanted ground ; but 
 the spell-bound victim must pay for his fascination
 
 60 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 in regrets that are unavailing, and in a remorse 
 like that of the undying worm." 
 
 Other dangers lie along the stream of life 
 threatening the frail vessel, and exposing the 
 young voyager to moral shipwreck. 
 
 ANIMAL PASSIONS. 
 
 His animal passions, developing in the now 
 matured body with a force that seems almost 
 irresistible, tempt the youth sometimes to play 
 the brute, and lose sight of the rational and 
 immortal nature. 
 
 Secret vice is sometimes resorted to, and lays 
 the foundation for more open and flagitious 
 wickedness, whilst it leads directly to imbecility 
 of body and of mind. How many have made 
 shipwreck here ! To quote the language of one, 
 whose long experience and high standing in the 
 medical profession authorizes him to speak with 
 emphasis on this subject, " The deleterious, 
 the sometimes appalling consequences of this vice, 
 upon the health, the constitution, the mind itself, 
 are some of the common matters of medical ob-
 
 PERILS OF YOUTH. Gl 
 
 servation. The victims of it should know what 
 these consequences are ; for to be acquainted 
 with the tremendous evils it entails may assist 
 them in the work of resistance." " The bodily 
 powers become completely prostrated : the 
 memory and the whole mind partake in the ruin, 
 and idiocy or insanity in their most intractable 
 forms close the train of evils." * 
 
 Of this class of vices, who does not know that 
 indulgence strengthens desire ; and that one step 
 in this fearful direction is apt to be succeeded by 
 another, until that threshold is reached from 
 \vhich, as from the house of the dead, there 
 seems to be almost no hope of return ! This 
 whirlpool lies hard by the gorgeous saloon and 
 the brilliantly lighted theatre. These latter are 
 as the rapids tending to THAT, as the awful 
 cataract. 
 
 In the voyage of life, who could undertake to 
 say how many of the young have been lost in one 
 or the other of these passages to death ? If their 
 
 * Dr. Ware on the " Relation of the Sexes." 
 6
 
 62 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 history, gathered from theatres, saloons and 
 brothels, could be presented, in all its moral 
 deformity, with all the premature and remorseful 
 deaths, all the broken hearts of parents, and the 
 deep mortification of relatives and friends, it 
 would be such a revelation of vice and its fearful 
 penalties as would startle, and even 'horrify, the 
 community. 
 
 But these things are not known. A veil is 
 thrown over these dark porticoes of ruin. The 
 cry of the lost is smothered, lest it should alarm 
 those who are in the same downward course. 
 One by one, the bloated corpses are carried out, 
 and with great secrecy consigned to ignoble 
 graves. 
 
 What multitudes are at this moment on this 
 dark flood, or tending towards it. multitudes of 
 young men, who have talents that might adorn 
 their country's annals, and energies which, if 
 properly developed and. directed, might place 
 them high in the esteem of their fellow-men; 
 but who, alas ! like Esau, are bartering and
 
 PERILS OF YOUTH. 63 
 
 sacrificing this noble birth-right for what is no 
 
 o o 
 
 better than '' a mess of pottage " ! 
 
 If any such shall chance to read these pages, 
 let me say to thee that life is too solemn a trust 
 to be thus sacrificed to sensual and selfish pur- 
 suits. Be a man, then, and despise these 
 grovelling pleasures ! Have decision, and say to 
 the tempter, coining in what guise he may, 
 " No, I am pledged to a virtuous life. I will 
 not even touch the fatal cup. nor take one step 
 towards the dark pathway of vice. I will walk 
 with the wise ; I will not be a companion of 
 fools." Above all, conscious of thy own weak- 
 ness to resist temptation, ask help of God, trust 
 in the protection of God ; for be assured that, if 
 " in all our ways we acknowledge him, he will 
 direct our paths." 
 
 INNOCENT PLEASURES. 
 
 Proscribing, as in duty bound, those pleasures 
 which allure only to deceive and to destroy, such 
 as are found in indolence, intemperance, and 
 Bensual indulgence, let me not be understood as
 
 64 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 objecting to those which are innocent and health- 
 ful. 
 
 The manly sports which develop the muscles, 
 
 naturally so much relished and practised by the 
 young, which promote a social rivalry, innocent, 
 though exciting, are open to all. and may be 
 enjoyed by all. 
 
 Society, as where the sexes meet and mingle 
 under such restraint as modesty would impose, 
 and with such motives as virtue would sanction. 
 
 the evening party, the excursion, the domicil- 
 iary visit, has in it not only a safe but a salu- 
 tary enjoyment. 
 
 Institutions of a literary or artistical char- 
 acter, as libraries and cabinets of natural 
 curiosities, may also be resorted to for amuse- 
 ment and relaxation, as Avell as for instruction. 
 
 Other sources of pleasant recreation, such as 
 music and painting, the study of natural history, 
 tours in foreign countries or in one's own coun- 
 try, each or all, may be more or less a means of 
 pleasurable relaxation, according to the taste, the
 
 , PERILS OF YOUTH. 65 
 
 pecuniary ability, and the opportunities which 
 Providence may have furnished. 
 
 If young men have low and beastly propen- 
 sities, they will not be very likely to appreciate 
 these more refined sources of enjoyment. Some 
 will be brutes, in spite of all you can do for them. 
 " Like brutes they live, like brutes they die." 
 
 But the majority of young men are not such ; 
 they need not be such. And our aim is not 
 only to call their attention to the dangers which 
 everywhere surround them, and so put them 
 upon their guard, but also to persuade them to 
 choose those purer pleasures which improve the 
 mind, preserve the health, and which leave no 
 sting behind. 
 
 If such pleasures be resorted to, and such a 
 course as we have recommended be pursued, we 
 may confidently predict that the stream of life 
 will flow smoothly, and that a virtuous youth 
 will be merged into a dignified and useful man- 
 hood. The body will expand into strong and 
 symmetrical proportions; the mind will be fur- 
 nished with well-digested knowledge, iuitL tlio 
 G*
 
 66 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 heart will be kept in a great measure from the 
 dark and polluting images of vice. 
 
 Such a course may not only lead to respecta- 
 bility and influence, but may even be crowned by 
 the higher blessings of true piety. Morality, we 
 know, is not religion ; yet not seldom is it the 
 proximate road to it. It leads into its neighbor- 
 hood. It places one in closer connection with its 
 institutions, and gives promise that a candid 
 attention, at least, will be given to its claims. 
 
 The stream of time ever sets in the direction 
 of eternity. The light shallop which floats upon 
 it, and in which so precious a cargo is em- 
 barked, should point its prow in the direction of 
 that harbor where no storms or tempests can ever 
 come. Then, with this "haven of rest" in 
 view, should a sudden blast from the wings of 
 death fall upon thee, that kind angel who started 
 with thee at the outset of the voyage will appear, 
 and furnish thee with a safe escort over the dark 
 and dismal flood. 
 
 Take with thee, on thy brief voyage, young 
 adventurer, the anchor which is " sure and stead-
 
 PERILS OF YOUTH. 67 
 
 fadt ;" the chart which maps out the dangers; 
 the proffered pilot, who promises to guide by his 
 counsel all such as commit themselves to his care; 
 and then, if thy voyage be ended ere manhood is 
 attained, it "will leave no regrets for its early 
 termination, whilst before thee will be the pros- 
 pect of a glorious immortality.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 MANHOOD. 
 
 As from childhood to youth, so from youth to 
 manhood, the step is quickly taken. But it is 
 sailing, if we may so say, out of smooth into 
 troubled waters. This the artist, in his third 
 pictorial representation, has given us to under- 
 stand. 
 
 To quote his OAvn language, as descriptive of 
 the scene, " Storm and cloud enshroud a 
 rugged and dreary landscape. Bare impending 
 precipices rise in the lurid light. The swollen 
 stream rushes furjously down a dark ravine, 
 whirling and foaming in its dark career, and 
 speeding towards the ocean, which is dimly seen 
 through the mist and falling rain. The boat is 
 there plunging amid the turbulent waters. The 
 voyager is now a man of middle age. The helm 
 of the boat is gone, and he looks imploringly
 
 MANHOOD. 69 
 
 towards heaven, as if heaven's aid alone could 
 save him from the perils that surround him. 
 The guardian spirit calmly sits in the clouds, 
 watching with an air of solicitude the affrighted 
 voyager. Demon forms are hovering in the 
 air. 
 
 " Trouble is characteristic of the period of man- 
 hood. In childhood there is no cankering care, 
 in youth no despairing thought. It is only when 
 experience has taught us the realities of the 
 world that we lift from our eyes the golden veil 
 of early life, that we find deep and abiding 
 sorrow. And, in the picture, the gloomy, 
 eclipse-like tone, the conflicting elements, the 
 trees riven by the tempest, are the allegory ; and 
 the ocean, dimly seen, figures the end of life to 
 which the voyager is now approaching. The 
 demon forms are suicide, intemperance and 
 murder, which are the temptations that beset 
 men in their direst troubles. The upward and 
 imploring look of the voyager shows his depend- 
 ence on a superior power, and that faith saves 
 him from a destruction which seems inevitable."
 
 70 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 This representation, it must be confessed, 
 wears an aspect of gloom and despondency. The 
 shades are quite as dark as the reality will 
 justify. That manhood is thus, in many in- 
 stances, characterized by care, anxiety, peril and 
 temptation, is readily admitted. Perhaps, in a 
 majority of cases, the picture gives but a just 
 reflection of the struggles and dangers which 
 ordinarily are to be encountered. But there are 
 cases, we hope not a few, where a richer sun- 
 light might have been shed upon the scene ; a 
 calmer surface might have been exhibited, and a 
 sky not so darkened and deformed by those 
 
 / V 
 
 hideous figures have been made to hang over it. 
 Is not manhood sometimes marked even by an 
 uninterrupted flow of prosperity 1 
 
 But the artist, after all, has taken life as it is, 
 as in most cases it is realized; wherein the 
 struggle and the effort are attended with uncer- 
 tainty, and cares and apprehensions outweigh the 
 hours of comparative ease and tranquillity. 
 
 That the stream roughens in middle life no 
 one can deny; that the skies are, at times,
 
 MANHOOD. 71 
 
 lowering, even fearfully portentous, all must 
 admit ; that difficulties are to be met and over- 
 come, that dangers are to be encountered, 
 requiring skill and forethought, in order to their 
 avoidance, is clear to all \vho have passed into 
 the activities and responsibilities of manhood. 
 
 EARLY MANHOOD. 
 
 "Who can forget that hour when the idea first 
 took possession of him, " I am a man. I am no 
 more a boy. I must now think for myself, and 
 act for myself, and must take upon me the 
 responsibility which such thought and action 
 involve. Life is before me, not as a lake with 
 mirror-like surface, calm and bright, reflecting 
 only pictured clouds and overshadowing verdure, 
 where I may listlessly float, and please myself with 
 the mystic sounds which echo along its shores. 
 No ! but as a turbid and swollen tide, on which I 
 have launched, with whirlpools and eddies and 
 rapids all around me, requiring a vigilant eye, a 
 strong arm, and a cool judgment, in order to 
 steer my course safely and prosperously."
 
 72 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 Who can forget when care and anxiety began 
 to press upon the heart, and the question as to 
 ultimate success in life would too often recur, 
 with no possibility of a satisfactory answer ? 
 
 Nor is manhood, in general, a solitary strug- 
 gle, having respect only to the happiness of a 
 single bosom, or to the required supplies of a 
 single individual. Were this the case, the trials 
 would be less painful, whilst the motives to ex- 
 ertion would be far less influential.. Providence has 
 so ordered it wisely, no doubt that manhood 
 should shoulder the responsibilities of the domes- 
 tic state, should live and labor and struggle for 
 the good of those who naturally look to him for 
 support and comfort. This gives life its charm, 
 as well as its motive. It rouses and sustains 
 energies which otherwise had never been put 
 forth, and makes success doubly grateful, as 
 being shared by a circle of endeared and depend- 
 ent relatives. 
 
 Shall we not sympathize in the struggles of 
 manhood ? It is the period when human life is 
 at its zenith ; when the stoutest hearts are beat-
 
 MANHOOD. 73 
 
 ing, the sturdiest arms are bared, and the noblest 
 achievements are projected and accomplished. 
 Our streets are filled with manhood. So are our 
 work-shops and our stores. In every business 
 scene, every scene where strength of muscle and 
 strength of mind are required, where the anvil is 
 to be smitten or the anchor to be weighed, where 
 the perplexities of trade are to be solved or the 
 professional duty discharged, there is manhood, 
 putting forth its might in a thousand useful 
 occupations. 
 
 The young are in their training places and the 
 old are in their easy-chairs, or resting by the 
 way-side. But mark that tide of mortals that 
 sets along the busy street ! You will say, in 
 view of it, that life is sustained in all its strength 
 in all its great interests by manhood. Let 
 us sympathize with it. Let us encourage it. 
 Let us cheer it on in the great and arduous 
 struggle. Let us also survey its trials, its tempt- 
 ations, its perils, and inquire what are the best 
 means of sustaining and guiding its energies to a 
 successful issue. 
 7
 
 74 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 CHOICE OF BUSINESS. 
 
 A very important inquiry in the business of 
 life, which every man should institute, is, 
 whether his occupation, present or prospective, 
 be lawful and honorable. 
 
 Something, of course, must be done for a 
 livelihood. Some business or profession must be 
 selected and prosecuted, in order to support a 
 family, or to reach a condition of competency or 
 affluence. The choice is sometimes involuntary ; 
 but more generally the individual is led to it by 
 his own taste and preference, or by its supposed 
 availableness, in accumulating wealth. In what- 
 ever way it may have been chosen, a question of 
 practical morality ought to be settled respecting 
 it, namely, whether it be lawful and honorable. 
 
 There are certain occupations so palpably bad, 
 so visibly wrong and of wrong tendency, that no 
 man who covets peace of conscience, or who has 
 a regard for his reputation, would be found 
 engaged therein. 
 
 There are some kinds of business, which, by 
 common consent of all the good, are regarded as
 
 MANHOOD. 75 
 
 unlawful, and therefore dishonorable. No wealth 
 which could be accumulated, though vast as that 
 of Croesus, could varnish a character into respect- 
 ability who should at this day be engaged in the 
 slave-trade. 
 
 The same may be said, to a considerable ex- 
 tent, of wealth accumulated in the manufacture 
 or sale of ardent spirits. The evils are so great, 
 moral, physical, social, economical, every way 
 so great, they are so palpable, so direct, they 
 fall in such disgusting notoriety under our every- 
 day observation, that a business which thrives 
 by these woes and vices, by such infamy, degra- 
 dation and ruin, is, if we may make a compari- 
 son between two such odious occupations, of 
 worse tendency even than the slave-trade. No 
 wealth that comes from such a source, it seems 
 to me, can have on it anything but the signature 
 of God's deep displeasure. No man should select 
 such an occupation ; or, finding himself in it, no 
 man should continue therein any longer than it 
 will take him to wind up his affairs, and, at any 
 sacrifice, betake himself to something that is law-
 
 76 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 ful and honorable. lie should not leave upon 
 his posterity the stigma that their bread was 
 taken from the mouths of orphans, rendered such 
 by a father's cold-hearted avarice, or that their 
 grandeur was purchased by the death-groans of 
 the impoverished and the inebriate. 
 
 Other occupations might be named, if not so 
 palpably wrong, yet of wrong tendency, involving 
 a sacrifice of moral principle bordering on dis- 
 honesty, pandering to vice, or profaning the 
 Sabbath, all of which should be avoided, what- 
 ever may be the gains, or whatever apology for 
 their continuance necessity even might bring 
 forward. 
 
 A business, of whatever kind, which weakens 
 moral principle, which must be driven at the ex- 
 pense of conscience, or to the injury of others, 
 such a business should not be chosen, or, having 
 been chosen, should, as soon as possible, be 
 abandoned. 
 
 The stream of life is rough enough, at best ; 
 the trials of the spirit are hard enough to bear, 
 even when experienced in the prosecution of a
 
 MANHOOD. 77 
 
 calling that is honorable ; but rougher still 
 be the tide "with him who, in defiance of con- 
 science, and under the withering scorn and pity 
 and contempt of the humane and virtuous, 
 undertakes to make his bread out of the sorrows 
 of others, or to enrich himself by rendering 
 others poor and degraded. Such an one, look 
 which way he will, must see the evidences of his 
 infamy in the wretchedness of those whom his 
 avarice has beggared, and in the ostracism, so 
 to speak, by which he silently passes out of the 
 circle of the virtuous and the good. 
 
 "That man is a distiller." "He is a rum- 
 seller." " He is a gambler." Are not these terms 
 now-a-days daggers to any man's reputation? 
 Who can maintain his manhood whilst they 
 are hurled at him ? Who can look a virtuous 
 community in the face with such epithets scorn- 
 fully cast in his teeth ? 
 
 It is of vast importance, therefore, to have a 
 calling which may be prosecuted with a clear 
 conscience, and with the approbation of the 
 7*
 
 78 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 good ; a calling whose success shall administer to 
 the general weal. 
 
 HIGH AIMS. 
 
 Having selected a lawful occupation, the aim 
 should be to make the most of it, to excel in it, 
 to make it subsidiary to all the good of which it 
 is capable. "Every man," said one, "owes 
 something to his own profession." He should 
 strive to make it more honorable by his having 
 been in it. He should oblige men to say " that 
 such a business has really become of vast import- 
 ance in the hands of such a man." If he is a 
 shoe-black, he should try to put his polish 
 ahead of all the rest of the world. If he is a 
 mechanic, his work should come out as perfect as 
 it is possible to make it. His name and reputa- 
 tion should be stamped in the perfection of his 
 wares. Is he a merchant 1 No man's industry 
 should be greater, no man's honor brighter, than 
 his. His intelligence should keep pace with the 
 times ; and his increasing riches, placing him at 
 length among the princes of the land, should be
 
 MANHOOD. 79 
 
 liberally applied in the augmentation of human 
 happiness, the promotion of the arts ; and the 
 spread of the gospel. 
 
 The professional man, teacher, lawyer, physi- 
 cian, or minister, owes something respectively to 
 his profession. It should be the better for his 
 having been in it. It should command more 
 respect in consequence of his industry, his 
 talents, and his success. He must strive to Jill it. 
 His reputation must reflect back upon it, so that 
 it may be said by those who come after him that 
 the profession was greatly indebted to him for 
 efforts which he put forth while living, and for 
 works which have followed him after death. 
 Whatever is done in one's calling should be well 
 done, done in the best manner ; that is, as per- 
 fectly as the individual can do it, according to 
 his ability. With such aims, few will fail in the 
 occupation or profession which he may have 
 chosen. 
 
 COMPETITORS. 
 
 In this stirring strife of men, there is much 
 rivalry. There are many competitors who eye
 
 80 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 each other with an interest which common sym- 
 pathies and pursuits necessarily beget. Side by 
 side is the struggle going on, and each is vying 
 with all the rest in a contest of skill, where suc- 
 cess is doubtful, and where failure is not in- 
 frequent. How hard, under these circumstances, 
 to maintain always right feelings towards those 
 who are our rivals in trade, in the arts or in 
 professional life ! And yet the world is wide 
 enough for all. The stream is broad enough for 
 each one to steer his own vessel without jostling 
 against that of his neighbor, or coming so near 
 even as to take the wind out of his sails. 
 
 In this wide field of business competition, 
 every one should be allowed free scope and full 
 liberty to outrun all the rest, provided it be done 
 honestly and honorably. No man should be 
 blamed for doing his best, if, in so doing, he 
 fake no undue advantage of his neighbor, or use 
 no unlawful expedients to advance his own inter- 
 ests. 
 
 Comparisons will necessarily be made as to 
 the skill, or industry, or tact, or workmanship, of
 
 MANHOOD. 81 
 
 those who belong to the same craft ; and as to 
 the texture or value of goods sold by those of 
 the same trade ; and as to the learning, eloquence 
 or industry, of men pursuing similar professions. 
 The public, being interested in all this matter, 
 will, of course, take the liberty of making such 
 comparisons, and of choosing according to their 
 own judgment, and with a view to their own 
 interests, those to serve them who will serve 
 them the best or the cheapest. 
 
 Now, as all cannot stand first, as, in the 
 nature of things, and according to a law which 
 Providence has fixed, some must rise in skill, 
 tact, talent and workmanship, above others. it is 
 of vast importance to cultivate a right spirit in 
 this necessary and endless competition, involving 
 every grade of excellence, every variety of talent, 
 and every measure of success. The prosperous 
 should not become proud, nor should the unfortu- 
 nate be envious or desponding. It should be the 
 aim of all to learn that almost impossible lesson, 
 of " looking every roan not simply on the things 
 of himself, but on those of another;" that is, of
 
 82 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 wishing well to his neighbor, in all his interests, 
 even when one's own affairs may not be in the 
 most prosperous condition. This is a hard 
 lesson, we admit, in a world where selfishness is 
 naturally so strong, and its provocations so 
 powerful and numerous. But it is a point of 
 practical benevolence at which all should aim. 
 
 Often do we hear it said that ' ' competition is 
 a good thing." And so it is : good in many 
 respects ; good often for those who strive in the 
 race, developing skill and energy which otherwise, 
 perhaps, would have been latent or unemployed ; 
 good for the public, who reap thus a benefit 
 which isolated efforts could not, or would not. 
 afford ; good as to the general weal, multiplying 
 inventions and facilities which add to the comfort 
 and convenience of life. But not always is it 
 good in its effect upon the competitor. Malice, 
 envy and detraction, are too apt to be engendered 
 in this struggle for preeminence. Artifices not 
 the most honorable will sometimes be resorted to, 
 in order to get an advantage of one's neighbor, 
 to supplant him in the patronage which he has
 
 MANHOOD. 83 
 
 obtained, or to wrest from him the honors which 
 a life of labor and mental toil should have secured 
 to him. Endless are the legal conflicts which 
 such conduct has led to ; and inveterate is the 
 hate which such selfish aims and efforts have 
 produced. Such things roughen and render 
 turbid the stream of life, making it a boisterous 
 passage-way to a dark and self-reproachful end. 
 
 What if rny neighbor makes a better piece of 
 mechanism than I can make, or weaves a finer 
 fabric, or builds a swifter steamer or sail- vessel, 
 should I regret it ? Should I envy him an ad- 
 vantage which talent, skill or industry, has given 
 him 1 Considering the general good, I ought 
 even to be glad at his success. And suppose 
 that, by original genius, or intense application, 
 one should rise above me in a capacity to serve 
 the public as a teacher, a lawyer, a physician, or 
 a minister, elevating others as he elevates him- 
 self, serving his generation whilst reaping for 
 himself a harvest of fame or of money, should I 
 look darkly on his rising influence 1 Much less 
 should I seek to dim his reputation by detraction
 
 84 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 or reproachful insinuations ? His success 
 should only stimulate me to a noble competition 
 in the race of honor, industry and benevolence. 
 
 "Live and let live," is an old and homely 
 maxim. But there is a great deal of meanin^ in 
 
 o O 
 
 it. All cannot be first. There must be kings 
 and queens, peers and nobles, in all professions 
 and pursuits. Some are such by nature, and 
 some by effort and by circumstances. The 
 highest standard is open to all. though reached 
 only by a few. All have their chance ; and none 
 should complain that a grade in life or a 
 measure of success is assigned him far below bis 
 merits, whilst others have been unduly exalted to 
 honor and to opulence. These things will be so ; 
 and Providence has much to do in their order- 
 ing. In the jostlings of life, some will seem to 
 get uppermost who should have occupied a 
 medium or perhaps the lowest position ; whilst 
 others will, for a time, be depressed, whose 
 talents or virtues should have given them a more 
 prominent station. ' But time and experience are 
 very apt to rectify this temporary derangement
 
 MANHOOD. 85 
 
 of things. In the end, and after a time, each 
 one ordinarily reaches the level which, by a just 
 appreciation of his talents and character, would 
 naturally have been assigned to him. A spuri- 
 ous reputation will, after a time, run itself out. 
 All the puffing and bolstering which can be applied 
 to sustain it will not succeed. It may rise to a 
 temporary notoriety, but it will go out like a 
 rocket, and sometimes almost as suddenly ; whilst 
 real worth, if for a time obscure or unappreci- 
 ated, will steal gradually upon the notice, and in 
 the end fix itself firmly in the esteem of all the 
 good and the virtuous. 
 
 To make the voyage of life pleasant, we must 
 cultivate that benevolence which rejoices in the 
 success of others, even though that success 
 should cast a shadow upon our own prosperity. 
 Such is the gospel rule. Is it an impossible reach 
 of moral virtue ? Happy the bosorn of him who 
 can say, "I desire the success of a rival. In 
 his prosperity I can rejoice, and in his misfor- 
 tunes I can feel for him a generous sympathy." 
 
 Many of the rough passages of life in early 
 8
 
 86 THE VOYAGE OP LIFE. 
 
 manhood are from the conflicts of selfishness, or 
 from unkind suspicions among rivals. But 
 adopt the principle recommended ; act up to the 
 irecept of " doing unto others as ye would that 
 they should do unto you,'' carry this out fully 
 into practical life, and it would spread over 
 society the aspect of Paradise. It would calm 
 the turbulent waters of strife, and make the pas- 
 sage over them more beauteous than the tri- 
 umphal regatta of Egypt's far-famed queen, with 
 her sails swelled by aromatic airs, and her golden 
 barge reflected in the calm waters of the Nile. 
 
 HELP AKD SYMPATHY. 
 
 "No man liveth to himself," is one of the 
 maxims of Christianity. This implies a sym- 
 pathy with others, and a disposition to lend a 
 helping hand in their troubles and afflictions. 
 
 In this eventful voyage on which we are all 
 embarked, there are vicissitudes as numerous as 
 are found amid the conflicting winds and tides 
 and currents of the ocean. Some will have a 
 favoring gale at the same time that others are
 
 MANHOOD. 87 
 
 becalmed ; and one will feel the storm from 
 which another will be sheltered. Now you will 
 discover one with sails all bent, and moving by 
 prosperous winds directly to the port of destina- 
 tion. Richly freighted, and without an accident, 
 he will enter the harbor. Again you will see 
 nothing but storms, and disasters, and shipwreck. 
 
 So is it in this great and perilous voyage of 
 life. Hence the prosperous should be ready to 
 sympathize with and aid the unfortunate. 
 
 How strange it would seem, if, Avhen a signal 
 of distress were seen flying, or the booming gun, 
 giving token of disaster and shipwreck, were 
 heard over the stormy deep, the tight and well- 
 appointed ship ploughing the waves hard by 
 should give no heed to such signals ! How 
 unfeeling, how inhuman even, would this be 
 considered ! It is expected, in such circum- 
 stances, that help will promptly be rendered. 
 And should it be otherwise when the signals of 
 distress are on the land, instead of the sea? 
 What renders the obligation greater to aid the 
 unfortunate in the one case, rather than in the
 
 88 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 other? True it is, that, on the ocean, life is 
 often in more imminent peril, and the aid which 
 is extended may save from an immediate and 
 awful destruction. In this respect it is admitted 
 that the relief seems more imperatively de- 
 manded. But how often, in the vicissitudes of 
 life, over which man has no control, comes there 
 a wave of misfortune, that extinguishes the hopes 
 of years, and sweeps away entirely the means of 
 support on which a circle of cherished hearts 
 were wont to depend ! Shall no generous mind be 
 found to sympathize, no ready hand be extended 
 to aid, no effort be made to cheer and encourage 
 the depressed and care-stricken man ? Too often, 
 alas ! in such circumstances, do the prosperous 
 sail by, without casting even an eye of pity on 
 the shipwrecked sufferer. 
 
 At such a time, one word of kindness, one 
 look of sympathy, and especially, where it can be 
 bestowed, the substantial help and succor so 
 much needed, would be worth a thousand demon- 
 strations of interest in ordinary or prosperous 
 circumstances. Pass not, then, by, like the
 
 MANHOOD. 89 
 
 priest in Scripture, with cold, averted eye ; nor 
 like the Levite, only giving a'look of pity and a 
 significant shake of the head ; but, like the good 
 Samaritan, go and bind up his wounds, and pro- 
 vide for his temporary sustenance, and start him 
 afresh on his journey. What has befallen him 
 may ere long befall thee. The storm that has 
 overtaken and prostrated him may not have been 
 of sufficient breadth to take in thy fair domain ; 
 but the time may come when the green bay- 
 tree of thy own prosperity may bow before the 
 tempest, and the sympathy which thou art now 
 extending to others be required and repaid 
 under circumstances quite as disastrous and 
 hopeless. 
 
 Beautiful is the sight when the prosperous are 
 seen aiding the unfortunate ! It is so in unison 
 with that religion which casts its sheltering arms 
 around the despairing soul ; which gives not only 
 to the unfortunate, but to the unworthy ; which 
 delights to seek and to save the lost, that religion 
 whose spirit was embodied and set forth in the 
 life and example of Him who sought not his own 
 8*
 
 90 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 glory, lived not for his own ease, labored not for 
 his own advancement, but who went about doing 
 good, sympathizing with the sufferer, and claim- 
 ing as his beneficiaries the outcast and the un- 
 fortunate. From his lips it was that the precept 
 fell, "as ye would that men should do unto you, 
 do ye even so unto them ;" and, acting in the 
 spirit of this precept, he set an example of be- 
 nevolence and self-sacrifice which none can equal, 
 but which all are bound to admire and to emu- 
 late.
 
 CHAPT ER V. 
 
 TRIALS HOW TO BE MET. 
 
 THE sympathy of others is needful, and their 
 help in adversity timely ; but the less reliance 
 that is placed thereon, the better. Manhood, in 
 its struggles "with adversity, has got to fall back 
 upon Providence, and upon its own indomitable 
 resolution. 
 
 In this rough and stormy passage, too much 
 forethought cannot be exercised, in view of pos- 
 sible disasters ; nor too much patience, and forti- 
 tude, and firm adherence to principle, when they 
 are actually encountered. " To look on the 
 bright side," as some will counsel, is not always 
 possible, unless there be strong faith in God ; and 
 sometimes, even where such faith exists, the 
 bright side is hid by the opaque shadow of actual 
 and pressing affliction. 
 
 These trials are various and numerous, and lie
 
 92 THE VOYAGE OF LIO. 
 
 upon us, with but; slight intermission, until the 
 end is reached. The best-concerted schemes 
 will sometimes miscarry. The hand of diligence 
 will not always insure riches, and the greatest 
 precautions will not avail in securing what 
 industry and skill have accumulated. Mutability 
 and uncertainty are written upon every earthly 
 possession and prospect. 
 
 How many, at the outset of life, are all hope, 
 animation and eager expectation ! Every sail is 
 unfurled, and every streamer dancing gayly in the 
 breeze. The skies seem to smile over them, and 
 the sea to present a placid or but slightly rippled 
 surface. But no more can we expect this to 
 last, in the career of human experience, than we 
 can expect the ocean to be always calm, and its 
 winds always propitious. 
 
 Rightly, as we conceive, has the artist repre- 
 sented the period of manhood as marked by 
 perils, and overshadowed for the most part with 
 clouds. See that frail bark, with its helm gone, 
 rushing towards the rapids, whilst the anxious 
 voyager, clasping his hands as if in supplication,
 
 TRIALS HOW TO BE MET. 93 
 
 looks eagerly for help from above. Every- 
 thing in the picture wears a sombre hue. The 
 overhanging cliffs, the descending flood, the shat- 
 tered vessel, the dim ocean stretching aAvay in 
 the distance, the lurid clouds revealing shadowy 
 and frightful forms, all bespeak a dangerous 
 crisis, in which the faith, the patience and the 
 fortitude of manhood, are to be put to a severe 
 test. 
 
 What is here allegorically pictured we may 
 see every day realized, in the blasted hopes and 
 shipwrecked prospects of early manhood. One 
 will be disappointed in his expectations of 
 domestic happiness. The bright visions of youth 
 give, in general, too deep a coloring to connubial 
 bliss ; and the anticipations of a domestic para- 
 dise have not only never been realized, but, with 
 some, have ended in trials the most unexpected 
 and insupportable. 
 
 Another will find his schemes of earthly 
 advancement thwarted, and the prize on which 
 he had set his eye forever eluding his grasp. 
 At a time when he expected to be rich, he will
 
 94 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 find himself poor ; and in circumstances where he 
 counted upon friends, he will see himself isolated 
 and deserted. With some it is a struggle even 
 for existence ; and this struggle has to be made 
 often with but little sympathy, and with no sub- 
 stantial succor. 
 
 Did the trial aifect but one, did it reach not 
 beyond the individual man, it would be compara- 
 tively easy to be borne. But, in general, it is 
 rendered the more poignant as abridging the 
 happiness of a beloved and dependent circle, who 
 had been nurtured, perhaps, in affluence, and 
 accustomed to all the comforts and luxuries which 
 affluence supplies. To say to these dear ones, 
 " I have not the ability to sustain you ; your 
 wants can no longer be supplied ; your bread 
 even is henceforth to be ' the bread of affliction,' " 
 is a trial which the stoutest and manliest h^art 
 cannot contemplate but with dismay. Yet how 
 many have to look this trial in the face ! The 
 prospect drives them almost to madness. Ah, 
 yes ! those shapes of horrid import, which the 
 artist has made dimly to glare from the clouds,
 
 TRIALS HOW TO BE MET. 95 
 
 the one brandishing a dagger, and the other ex- 
 tending the inebriating cup, are introduced as 
 suggestions which come from the spirit of dark- 
 ness to man under his deepest woes. 
 
 DESPAIR AND SELF-DESTRUCTION. 
 
 The painter has in this sketch but followed 
 the great dramatist, who, in a well-known pas- 
 sage, long ago, depicted the temptation to suicide 
 which the apparently insupportable trials of life 
 suggest. 
 
 " For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, 
 The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, 
 The pangs of despised love, the law's delay, 
 The insolence of office, and the spurns 
 That patient merit of the unworthy takes ; 
 When he himself might his quietus make 
 With a bare bodkin ? Who would fardels bear, 
 To groan and sweat under a weary life, 
 But that the dread of something after death, 
 The undiscovered country, from whose bourn 
 No traveller returns, puzzles the will, 
 And makes us rather bear those ills we have, 
 Than fly to others that we know not of? " 
 
 But where is our manhood, if the trials of life, 
 however severe, force us to so cowardly a device,
 
 96 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 to so horrible a crime ? Who will struggle 
 for our loved ones, if their natural guardian or 
 protector, by so desperate a plunge, has aban- 
 doned them? How ungenerous, mean, selfish, 
 to rush out of the world, in order to get rid of 
 responsibilities which none but ourselves can 
 feel, and which, mayhap, no one else will be 
 ready to assume ! Where is our fortitude, our 
 courage, if, in this day of our calamity, we 
 retreat behind the curtain of death, and leave our 
 dependent ones, less able than ourselves to 
 breast the storm ? 
 
 " Suicide," says an eminent writer on morals, 
 "has been called magnanimity; but what is 
 magnanimity ? A patient endurance of evil to 
 effect a proposed good ; and when, considering 
 the strange mutability of human affairs, are we 
 to consider this endurance as useless, or when 
 should hope terminate but with life 1 To linger 
 out year after year, unbroken in spirit, un- 
 changed in purpose, is doubtless a less imposing 
 destiny than public and pompous suicide ; but, if 
 to be, is more commendable than to seem to be ;
 
 TRIALS HOW TO BE MET. 97 
 
 if we love the virtue better than the name, then 
 is it true magnanimity to extract "wisdom from 
 misery and doctrine from shame, to call day and 
 night upon God, to keep the mind's eye sternly 
 riveted on its object, through failure and through 
 suffering, through evil report and through good 
 report, and to make the bed of death the only 
 grave of human hope."* 
 
 That dark suggestion, intimated first, perhaps, 
 in the wish to die, and then taking a still more 
 criminal shape, flitting before the mind under 
 its gloomy cogitations, that dreadful thought, 
 at once resist. Drive it hence, as one of the sug- 
 gestions of hell ! Stand up calm and resolute 
 amid thy shipwrecked hopes, and, directing thy 
 eye upward, like the man in the boat, call for 
 help upon God. " He is a present help in every 
 time of trouble." All is not lost where hope 
 remains. The darkest night has its succeeding 
 dawn. The wildest storm cannot rage forever, 
 ;and despair sometimes borders close upon salva- 
 
 * Sydney Smith. 
 
 9
 
 98 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 tion. Show thy manhood, in meeting and con- 
 quering these difficulties! Show thy patience 
 and perseverance and energy under them ! The 
 trial may be salutary, and thy character may 
 need brightening amid these very furnace-fires. 
 
 What a noble example is presented of suffering 
 patience in the character and conduct of an Old 
 Testament patriarch ! Whoever had greater 
 reason to give up than Job, to curse God and 
 die, as even the wife of his bosom advised him to 
 do ? But no ; he scorned the impious thought. 
 He would suffer God's will. He would wait 
 patiently until his change came. He committed 
 himself unto God. and resolved to trust in him. 
 though he should slay him. There was a noble 
 and courageous determination in him to suffer, 
 because the evil, as well as the good, came from 
 the hand of God. To commit suicide was, in 
 Job's estimation, to rush upon the thick bosses 
 of Jehovah's buckler. Away, then, with the 
 horrible suggestion, and breast thyself, 
 afflicted man, to the billows, and, with God's 
 help, struggle for the rock of safety !
 
 TRIALS HOAV TO BE MET. 99 
 
 INTEMPERANCE. 
 
 "But some, who would shudder at the thought 
 of self-destruction, adopt, nevertheless, means of 
 relief in trouble as certainly suicidal as if they 
 were to thrust a poniard into their vitals. 
 
 See ye that hand just emerging from the 
 cloud over the stream ; and that fiend-like face 
 that accompanies it, looking toward the voyager, 
 and seeming to invite him to partake ? That is 
 the personification of intemperance, and that cup 
 in his hand is the inebriating cup. 
 
 How many, when the storm gathers, and the 
 stream roughens, and things look dark around 
 them, are tempted by this vision, and seize the 
 fatal cup, in the hope of, at least, a temporary 
 oblivion of their cares ! 
 
 It is told of an Indian navigating his canoe 
 near the rapids of Niagara, that, finding his 
 efforts unavailing to reach the shore, and sup- 
 posing his fate inevitable, he took his liquor- 
 flask and drank it off, and then, lying down in 
 the bottom of the boat, was carried over the falls,
 
 100 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 and seen no more. How often have we heard 
 also of mariners, when their vessel seemed about 
 to break up, and every energy was required to 
 keep her afloat, and thus save the precious lives 
 intrusted to their care, suddenly seized with a 
 panic, and, rushing to the lockers, drink them- 
 selves into stupidity, that they might not be 
 conscious of their impending destruction. 
 
 The same reckless, atheistic principle will 
 sometimes seize upon a husband or father, in 
 view of disasters and trials which have befallen 
 him ; and he will fly to this dreadful opiate to 
 drown the sorrows of his mind, and render him 
 for the time unconscious of his and their misery. 
 Shame on the man who will thus destroy what is 
 left of hope to himself and his family ! It is 
 worse than suicidal. It is a death-blow to his 
 own soul, and an entailed disgrace, which will fix 
 on those who, when spoken of, will be spoken of 
 as the wife and children, the brothers and sisters, 
 of a drunkard. And is it not cowardly, succumb- 
 ing to vice at a time when the most heroic 
 virtues are called for ?
 
 TRIALS HOW TO BE MET. 101 
 
 Say to misfortune, then, " Thou shalt rather 
 drive me to madness than to inebriation. I will 
 die a virtuous man, and leave to my posterity a 
 name which they shall not blush to own." It 
 will be no disgrace to them that their husband or 
 father was unfortunate, was poor ; but it will be 
 an indelible stigma, if with his poverty must be 
 associated one of the most beastly and destruc- 
 tive of vices. 
 
 In thy troubles, brooding over them until they 
 wear a shape of dark and despairing magnitude, 
 should the demon whisper to thee of the inebriat- 
 ing cup, say No ! Think of all the awful con- 
 sequences, and say " No, never ! " 
 
 Satan tempted the holiest, in an hour of weak- 
 ness, abstinence and loneliness. And he takes 
 occasion, in like manner, when troubles arise, to 
 tempt men, weak men, to despair, suicide 
 and inebriation. And, 0, how many have thus 
 gone down to an endless despair, and left behind 
 them " the memory of the wicked that shall rot ! " 
 
 If any who read these pages, thus situated, 
 are thus tempted, let the warning note be heard 
 9*
 
 102 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 in time to rescue from a shipwreck -which takes 
 with it body and soul, that sweeps into the 
 same vortex the hopes and the reputation of 
 those whom he is bound to love and to cherish, 
 and who in general are willing to take the same 
 lot with himself, and uncomplainingly submit to 
 the same privations. For their sakes, as well as 
 for his own, let him eschew all such relief as 
 these temptations would suggest. 
 
 NONE NEED DESPAIR. 
 
 There is no need of absolute despair in the 
 worst of situations, in circumstances the darkest 
 and most disheartening. There is a possibility that 
 " something may turn up," a possibility which 
 has been as a day-star to many an unfortunate. 
 There are pithy sayings, transmitted by human 
 experience, which serve as life-buoys in the flood 
 of human trials; such as "Hope on, hope ever," 
 " The darkest time is just before the day," 
 " Never give up." To these maxims, derived 
 from human experience, may be added those 
 which are more than human, which are divine ;
 
 TRIALS HOW TO BE MET. 103 
 
 such as, ' ' Trust in the Lord and do good ; so 
 shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou 
 shalt be fed." " None of them that trust in 
 him shall be desolate." " It is better to trust 
 in the Lord than to put confidence in man." 
 " Light is sown for the righteous." " Take no 
 thought (anxious thought) for the morrow : suf- 
 ficient unto the day is the evil thereof." " Give 
 us this day our daily bread," is a prayer which 
 all the dependent creatures of God have a right 
 to offer ; and which, if offered in sincerity and 
 faith, will be heard and answered. . 
 
 There is not on earth a more noble sight than 
 a man, amidst overwhelming trials, resolving to 
 bear meekly and submissively the ills of life, 
 accompanied with the purpose to try every ex- 
 pedient which may lawfully be used to rise above 
 them. This is being the man. It is manhood in 
 its sublimest attitude. " To do faithfully," says 
 an eccentric but popular writer,* " whatsoever 
 thing, in your actual situation, then and now, 
 
 * Carlyle.
 
 104 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 you find expressly or tacitly laid down to your 
 charge ; that is, stand to your post ; stand in it 
 like a true soldier. Silently devour the many 
 chagrins of it, all situations have many, and 
 see you aim not to quit it, without doing all that 
 is your duty." 
 
 The man who thus acts who aims, amid 
 severe trials, to workout his temporal salvation 
 will be likely to find a favoring Providence ready 
 to work with him and to work for him. Such 
 an one will also have the sympathy of all gener- 
 ous hearts ; and, cold as the world is said to be, 
 he will be very apt to find an occasional hand 
 extended to help him in his struggles. 
 
 PHOSPEKITY. 
 
 But the supposition all along has been that 
 manhood is the period only of disaster and of 
 trial ; and founded on this supposition have been 
 the counsels which, under such trials, seemed 
 needful and appropriate. But is there not a sea- 
 
 
 
 son of prosperity ; and are there not dangers and 
 perils peculiar to such a state, if not as palpable
 
 TRIALS HOW TO BE MET. 105 
 
 or as readily acknowledged, yet as real, and 
 sometimes as fatal, as in adversity ? I am 
 aware of the practical scepticism that exists on 
 this subject. I also understand how little appre- 
 hension is felt by the votaries of the world in 
 regard to the moral dangers of earthly prosperity. 
 " Be it so," says the eager devotee of wealth or 
 fame ; " admit that there are some such dangers; 
 yet who would not be willing to run the risk, if 
 he might only be one of fortune's favorites ? 
 Give me my wishes in this respect, and I am 
 ready to incur the hazard and to take the 
 responsibility." 
 
 Foolish and inconsiderate declaration ! Thou 
 knowest not what thou sayest. Thy selfish 
 heart, thirsting for riches or reputation among 
 men, and bent on their attainment, as containing, 
 in thy estimation, all that man can wish, sees 
 not the evils which lurk in the path that leads to 
 them, nor the perils to which, when obtained, 
 their possessor is exposed? Blind, or rather 
 dazzled to blindness, by that one object, the 
 golden prize, thou seest not the temptations
 
 106 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 which beset the man who is determined to seize 
 upon it. In the pursuit, dishonesty, criminal 
 worldliness, neglect of the soul ; in the possession, 
 avarice, pride, sensuality. The " deceitfulness 
 of riches " is a scriptural expression which ex- 
 perience interprets and verifies. These are 
 deceitful. Their power to make happy is mere 
 pretension. They may add to one's happiness 
 who has other and higher elements of felicity ; 
 but, when they .are sought as the principal means 
 of happiness, they are sure to " pierce their 
 possessors through with many sorrows." 
 
 DISHONESTY. 
 
 Riches tempt to dishonesty. If they can be 
 gotten honestly, well ; but if not, and if the 
 .opportunity offer to reach the prize by tortuous 
 and dishonest ways, he whose sole aim is 
 wealth will be very apt so powerful is the sway 
 of this one desire to barter his character, his 
 integrity, his soul, for gold. In such a case, 
 must it not prove as " a canker that shall eat his 
 flesh as it were fire " ?
 
 TRIALS HOW TO BE MET. 107 
 
 Worldly prosperity, the increase of riches, is 
 often accompanied by avarice, and operates, in 
 many cases, to foster it. We have known men 
 liberal when poor, or comparatively poor, and 
 penurious and close as they became affluent. 
 Their donations to charitable objects grew pro- 
 portionably small as their means to bestow grew 
 abundant. How is this ? Simply on the prin- 
 ciple that a naturally selfish heart contracts 
 more and more in the process of accumulation. 
 Practical benevolence, giving to, and doing for 
 others, this is the only antagonism to our 
 naturally selfish inclinations. 
 
 A miser is, by common consent, a mean 
 character ; and who will argue that he is happy ? 
 Yet how many, in the pursuit of wealth, where 
 wealth is the all-absorbing object, approach this 
 sordid grade of existence, having the moral traits 
 without the outward discomfort and squalid con- 
 dition of the miser ! 
 
 The character which I have in view is no un-
 
 108 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. * 
 
 common one. It is exemplified, and some may 
 see it exemplified, in their own conduct, whenever 
 generosity is appealed to, or charity solicits aid. 
 
 You will see a man selfishly extravagant in 
 the outlay which he makes on his house, or his 
 table, or his equipage, or his dress ; but who 
 never has it in his power to assist the unfortu- 
 nate, to help on the great work of charity, or to 
 do his part with others in some generous plan for 
 the public weal. A decent regard to his repu- 
 tation may induce him to give a mere pittance ; 
 but even that is bestowed so ungraciously, and 
 with so many professions of poverty or bad luck 
 or misfortune, that it is as much a matter of 
 self-denial in the applicant to ask it of him, as it 
 evidently is for him to bestow it. 
 
 Now, such a man cannot know the meaning, 
 cannot comprehend the meaning, of that declara- 
 tion, "It is more blessed to give than to receive." 
 The happiness of him "who considereth the 
 poor " is a species of felicity to which such a 
 bosom is, and ever must be, a stranger. 
 
 If such be the effect of riches, if the heart
 
 TRIALS HOW TO BE MET. 109 
 
 must be paralyzed by them, robbed of all its 
 generous sympathies, reduced to adamant, is it 
 not a perilous pursuit ; one that promises a good 
 whose attainment must often be attended with 
 evils which more than counterbalance a thousand 
 times that good 1 
 
 It behooves the prosperous, then, to take host- 
 ages of fortune, to make friends wiih " the 
 mammon of unrighteousness," to do battle with 
 their selfishness. Whatever be the suggestions 
 of avarice, they should nevertheless turn their 
 ear to the call of charity, and compel themselves, 
 if it can be done on no more generous principle, 
 actually compel themselves to a course of be- 
 nevolent action. What is done at first by con- 
 straint may ultimately be done as a pleasure. 
 They may find a sweet after-thought, even in 
 their extorted charity, which may lead them to 
 repeat the deed, until, at length, is formed a 
 habit of generous bestowment. 
 
 Some are, indeed, liberal by nature, and need 
 no such exhortation ; but most men who have 
 toiled to accumulate wealth, in giving to chari- 
 10
 
 110 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 table objects, are obliged to do a sort of violence 
 to the selfishness which has for a long time 
 intrenched itself in the heart. 
 
 EXTRAVAGANCE. 
 
 Another evil into which prosperity sometimes 
 leads a man is extravagance. 
 
 Under the first flush of success in business, or 
 not unfrequently even in anticipation of such 
 success, some will launch forth in a style of 
 grandeur unwarranted by their prospects, and, in 
 the eyes of all discreet persons, ominous of their 
 fall. With other men's money they will build, 
 and furnish, and dash, until a crisis comes, such 
 as in mercantile life is not uncommon, when lo ! 
 this vision of grandeur vanishes, like a dream of 
 the night. 
 
 Such is a brief history of many who start on 
 the voyage of life with more pride than discre- 
 tion, with more sail than ballast ; and the voyage 
 with them is both short and disastrous. 
 
 Beware, then, reader, of the rock on which so 
 many have made shipwreck ! Spread not too
 
 TRIALS HOW TO BE MET. Ill 
 
 much canvas at first. The tendency of the 
 times is to start on the top wave, to crowd all 
 sail, regardless of consequences. A scale of 
 living such as would insure comfort and conve- 
 nience, such as, half a century ago. would even 
 have been deemed stylish, is now too plain, too 
 almost vulgar, to satisfy the ambitious aspirant, 
 who foolishly associates outward show with 
 respectability. 
 
 There is a vast disproportion, in many cases, 
 between the scale of household expenditure and 
 the actual income. Among the influences which 
 tend to make shipwreck of early manhood, this 
 of extravagant living is not the least frequent. 
 And hence we say to all those who are about to 
 set up in life, and we address ourselves to 
 young householders, women as well as men, 
 be sure that your scale of expenditure be care- 
 fully graduated to your actual income. Away 
 with that foolish pride, that seeks to emulate the 
 more opulent neighbor, or to vie with one who 
 may himself be steering in a direct course 
 towards the whirlpool of bankruptcy ! Be satis-
 
 112 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 fied to move discreetly, and even slowly, in the 
 matter of household luxury. When the time 
 comes for enlargement, when, by the blessing 
 of Providence on well-applied industry, you are 
 able to live on a scale even of grandeur, who will 
 object? Who has a right to object, provided 
 you see fit to adopt such a course ? 
 
 In our view, everything should be symmetrical 
 and well proportioned. The rich man naturally, 
 and, for aught we can see, very properly, adopts 
 a scale of household expenditure proportioned to 
 his vast income. He lives, it may be, in a 
 palace; and he expends money in a thousand 
 ways, which go to sustain the humbler classes 
 in the prosecution of the industrial and decorative 
 arts. Thus, while ministering to his own taste, 
 he is aiding in the support of others ; a benefad- 
 tor to society unconsciously, even while selfishly 
 surrounding himself with temporal grandeur. 
 
 But, if, emulating this show and glitter, one 
 should seek to put on the tinsel at the expense 
 of others, to build, and furnish, and decorate, 
 when, as yet, there was no real foundation for
 
 TRIALS HOV TO BE MET. 113 
 
 the outlay, how soon would his fair fabric be 
 likely to give way, whilst he himself, in the 
 hands of the sheriff, would become an object of 
 pity to some, and of scorn and contempt to others ! 
 More than half the misery which occurs in our 
 business circles is traceable to extravagance in 
 some form. It comes from the effort of men to 
 seem to be what they really are not. On this 
 reef how many in middle life have made ship- 
 wreck of their earthly hopes ! 
 
 THE GREATEST DANGER. 
 
 Prosperity, even when real, is not without its 
 dangers. Few can bear it. The greatest danger 
 lies in the moral state of the heart, as affected by 
 it. Pride, and self-confidence, and conscious 
 independence, are results which push the soul out 
 of the circle of influences so necessary to its sal- 
 vation. Worldly prosperity has many times 
 proved the way to everlasting ruin, rendering 
 the soul obtuse to all gospel influences, shutting 
 against it the door of hope, or making it as dif- 
 ficult of entrance almost as for " a camel to go 
 10*
 
 114 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 through a needle's eye." What a startling 
 inquiry was that which our Saviour makes, in- 
 dicating the danger of worldly prosperity, 
 especially as it relates to the possession of riches, 
 " how hardly shall they that have riches enter 
 into the kingdom of God ! " Yes ; and that 
 other, if possible, still more startling query, 
 " what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole 
 world, and lose his own soul 1 " The shipwreck 
 of fortune, what is it to the loss eternally of the 
 soul ? Says a writer * already quoted, and one 
 who will not be accused of cant, discoursing on 
 the moral insensibility which worldly prosperity 
 is apt to engender, " Those who are sheltered! 
 from the various perils of poverty begin to for- 
 get the precarious tenure of worldly enjoyments, 
 and to build sumptuously on the * sand. They 
 put their trust, as the Psalmist says, in chariots 
 and horses, and dream they shall live forever in 
 those palaces which are but the out-houses of 
 the grave. There are very few men, in fact, 
 
 * Sydney Smith.
 
 TRIALS HOW TO BE MET. 115 
 
 who are capable of withstanding the constant 
 effect of artificial distinctions. It is difficult to 
 live upon a throne, and to think of a tomb. It 
 is difficult to be clothed in splendor, and to 
 remember we are dust. It is difficult for the 
 rich and the prosperous to keep their hearts as a 
 burning coal upon the altar, and to humble them- 
 selves before God as they rise before men. In 
 the mean time, while pride gathers in the heart, 
 the angel is ever writing in the book, and wrath 
 is ever mantling in the cup. Complain not, in 
 the season of woe, that you are parched with 
 thirst ! ask not for water, as Dives asked ! you 
 have a warning which he never had. There 
 stand the ever-memorable words, "It is easier 
 for a camel to go through a needle's eye than for 
 a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God," 
 to break down the stateliness of man, and dissi- 
 pate the pageantry of the earth. Thus it is that 
 the few words of God can make the purple of the 
 world appear less beautiful than the mean 
 garments of a beggar, and, striking terror into 
 the heu'ts of rulers, turn the banners of dominion
 
 116 THE VOTAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 to the ensigns of death, and make them shudder 
 at the sceptre -which they wield. To-day you 
 are clothed in linen and fare sumptuously ; in a 
 few and evil years, they shall hew you out a 
 tomb of marble whiter than snow, and the cun- 
 ning artifice of the workman shall grave upon it 
 weeping angels, and make a delicate image of 
 one fleeing up to heaven, as if it were there ; and 
 shall relate in golden letters the long story of 
 your honors and your birth, thou fool ! ! He 
 that dieth by the road-side for the lack of a 
 morsel of bread, God loveth him as well as he 
 loveth thee; and at the gates of heaven, and 
 from the blessed angels, thou shalt learn that 
 "it is easier for a camel to go through the eye 
 of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the 
 kingdom of heaven." 
 
 MANHOOD A PEKIOD OF GREAT INFLUENCE. 
 
 Human life culminates at forty or forty-five. 
 Henceforward it moves as on a sort of table- 
 land until sixty or sixty-five, and then ordinarily 
 declines.
 
 TRIALS 110 W TO BE MET. 117 
 
 The period of greatest personal influence is 
 usually assigned to manhood, embracing a space 
 somewhat indeterminate between youth and old 
 age. 
 
 Those in the field will not yield to the pruri- 
 ent demands of youth. Influence is of slow 
 growth, and young men must take their turn. 
 Time will soon make room for them, when, after 
 a brief struggle, they also must give place to 
 others. 
 
 It is astonishing how small a portion of ex- 
 istence is available for the stirring events of life. 
 The preparation season is long, extending from 
 infancy to manhood, a period of over twenty 
 years. Few are actually introduced to the 
 great arena before twenty ; and even then 
 personal influence, for a long time, is but gradu- 
 ally augmenting and acquiring breadth. How 
 soon after it has reached its zenith does it begin 
 to decline ! They who struggled side by side for 
 fame, power, or riches, are obliged in a wonder- 
 fully short space of time to give place to other 
 and succeeding competitors. " He has seen his
 
 118 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 best days," is a declaration that sometimes 
 startles the man who had supposed himself still 
 in the vigor of manhood. 
 
 Such being the case, human influence being 
 thus of slow growth and of short duration, what 
 is to be done for the generation in which we live, 
 for those who are with us or who are to come 
 after us, must be done with energy and despatch. 
 
 How impressive, in this view, is the admonition 
 of one who took a careful survey of life's duties 
 and responsibilities ! " Whatsoever thy hand 
 findeth to do, do with thy might." 
 
 The stream on which we are embarked, com- 
 mencing in the slow and placid current that 
 flows around the cradle-scenes of existence, and 
 then, gathering force, sparkles and leaps along in 
 the juvenile period of buoyant hope and wild 
 delight, at length deepens into the strong current 
 of manhood, and rushes onward with almost ter- 
 rific rapidity, until at last it spreads away into a 
 darkening estuary, and a still more distant ocean, 
 emblematical of that subsiding and hazy term of
 
 TRIALS HOW TO BE MET. 119 
 
 life, when the weakness of ago is setting towards 
 the misty and awful future. 
 
 How the picture speaks to our hopes and to 
 our fears ! How the rushing tide of existence 
 warns us to steer for the haven of peace and 
 safety ! How the impetuous flood bids us do 
 what we have got to do with our might ! 
 
 If any man is dreaming of a time when he will 
 construct some novel and important piece of 
 mechanism, or when he will write some valuable 
 treatise, or lay the foundation for some charitable 
 institution, as a perennial source of good to body 
 or mind, let him understand that time and death 
 and advancing age all cry out. " Be at it; do it 
 at once, and without delay ! " 
 
 The season for efficient action comes late, runs 
 off rapidly, and is gone. Whilst we are plan- 
 ning and anticipating, resolving and purposing, 
 lo ! the knell of time rings out our destiny ; and 
 we go into decrepitude or death, ere the half of 
 life's projected plans are even begun. 
 
 If such a fatality attend us as it respects our 
 earthly hopes and wishes, what shall we say of
 
 120 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 the multitudes who live on the purpose of repent- 
 ance, are always intending to find time to set 
 their house in order, and get ready for their 
 departure, who resolve and re-resolve that at 
 no distant day religion shall claim their serious 
 and undivided attention ; but who, alas ! find 
 themselves surprised into the awful reality, on 
 the brink of death, in its very last article and 
 agony, without the least preparation for its 
 solemn issues ? What shall be said of such ?
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 OLD AGE. 
 
 WHAT marks the period of old age, or where 
 is the boundary between it and manhood 7 Who 
 can define the exact point where it begins ? So 
 gradually does the stream set towards this state of 
 weakness and incapacity, that few are observant 
 of its approach ; and many deny its existence, 
 even when to others the indications are clear and 
 unmistakable. The first gray hair is plucked 
 out without exciting any surprise, but, ere long, 
 the process of eradication is given up in despair ; 
 for nature outruns the effort, and the head is 
 seen blossoming all over like the almond-tree. 
 The first wrinkle that streaks the forehead, or 
 which time plants at the angle of the eye, is 
 scarcely noticed ; but how soon does that old 
 hour-glass bearer multiply these furrows, and 
 steal the crimson from that cheek ! It is in vain 
 11
 
 122 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 to attempt to cheat ourselves into the idea of 
 perpetuity. The eye will not see as clearly as 
 ones it did : and the effort to coax the hair over 
 the naked brow, or to conceal its baldness by a 
 wig, will neither deceive ourselves or others into 
 the belief that we are as young as once we were. 
 
 Nevertheless, there is a vast difference among 
 men as to the time when physical sti-ength and 
 beauty if the term beauty may be applied to 
 men begin to decline. Some appear quite old 
 at fifty, and some look hale and vigorous at 
 sixty. Some ripen soon, and soon decay ; others 
 gather slowly, and hold on long. Sickness, care, 
 intense study, anxiety long continued, and excess- 
 ive bodily labor, have their effect in imprinting 
 the tokens of decay on the physical man. By 
 these wearing and wasting influences, a compara- 
 tively young man will sometimes look old ; and, 
 exempted from them, an old man will sometimes 
 wear almost the aspect of youth. 
 
 A few years, however, will suffice to set the 
 question at rest, to stamp the body with a sig-
 
 OLD AGE. 123 
 
 nature which all \vill recognize, and to point the 
 index-finger in a direction which all understand. 
 
 THE LAST PICTUEK. 
 
 Behold that venerable figure seated in the 
 stern of the fairy-vessel, looking upward, and 
 catching with his dim eye those glorious forms 
 which stream along that bright avenue to which 
 the guardian angel points ! 
 
 To adopt the artist's own language, " Porten- 
 tous clouds are brooding over a vast and mid- 
 night ocean. A few barren rocks are seen 
 through the gloom, the last shores of the 
 world. These form the mouth of the river, and 
 the boat, shattered by storms, its figures of the 
 hours broken and drooping, is seen gliding over 
 the deep waters. Directed by the guardian 
 spirit who thus far has accompanied him unseen, 
 the voyager, now an old man, looks upward to 
 an opening in the clouds, from whence a glorious 
 light bursts forth, and angels are seen descending 
 the cloudy steps, as if to welcome him to the 
 haven of immortal life.
 
 124 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 " The stream of life has now reached the 
 ocean to which all life is tending. The world to 
 old age is destitute of interest. There is no 
 longer any green thing upon it. The broken 
 and drooping figures of the boat show that time 
 ig nearly ended. The chains of corporeal ex- 
 istence are falling away, and already the mind 
 has glimpses of immortal life. The angelic 
 being, of whose presence until now the voyager 
 has been unconscious, is revealed to him ; and, 
 with a countenance beaming with joy, shows to 
 his wondering gaze scenes such as mortals have 
 never yet seen." 
 
 There is a pathetic tone, a touching sublimity, 
 in this scene, which makes us look upon it with 
 seriousness and self-application, as if we saw in 
 it a type of our own hastening end. The lights 
 and shades are here put in strong contrast. 
 Death and immortality are brought into close 
 proximity. That dark estuary, and that still 
 darker ocean, stretching to a shoreless distance, 
 emblematical of eternity ; those rocks, reflecting 
 on their serried brow the light that gleams over
 
 OLD AGE. 125 
 
 them, and gilds them as with a departing ray ; 
 the boat shorn of its original splendor, its winged 
 hours almost torn from its sides, its prow bat- 
 tered, and the hour-glass gone from it ; the old 
 man of hoary head and beard, no longer stand- 
 ing but sitting, these all proclaim that the end 
 is drawing nigh. 
 
 But. lo ! the clouds have opened, and a light 
 from the third heavens is streaming down and 
 resting on the darkness below. In this terraced 
 way to glory may be seen troops of angels bright. 
 messengers of love and mercy, throwing 
 themselves forward on their wings, as if eager to 
 execute the commission assigned to them. The 
 guardian angel reappearing, and directing the 
 eye of the voyager to these bright companions, 
 all these show that, as the " earthly house of 
 man's tabernacle " is dissolving, there is reserved 
 for him, if a Christian, "a house not made 
 with hands, eternal in the heavens." 
 
 But, dismissing the picture, or only keeping it 
 in view as the guide of our thoughts, we will 
 indulge in some reflections on the condition of 
 11*
 
 126 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 the old man, his joys, his trials and his pros- 
 pects, which, we hope, may be profitable to the 
 reader, whatever be his age. If old, he will be 
 likely now to sympathize with them ; and if 
 young, he may be sure that, ere long, should life 
 be not abruptly terminated, he, too, will feel and 
 acknowledge their application. 
 
 OLD AGE ITS JOTS AND TRIAI3. 
 
 Old age has both its joys and its trials. If 
 the battle of life has been fought and won, if 
 success has crowned the efforts of manhood, and 
 a worldly competency be enjoyed, who can 
 doubt that a high degree of satisfaction may be 
 felt, even in advanced life? We have seen old 
 men apparently happy even under the pressure 
 of bodily pains and infirmities ; the wrinkled 
 brow relaxing into a smile, and the eye lighted 
 up with a benevolent joy. 
 
 Old men seem to live over their lives in their 
 descendants. When their own joys are failing, 
 they fill their cup out of the spring which bub- 
 bles up in their track. They seem to forget
 
 OLD AGE. 127 
 
 their infirmities in the participated relish which 
 is shared by those of their kindred who surround 
 them. 
 
 The aged father lives in the life of a favorite 
 son. If the boy ripens into promising manhood, 
 and that manhood be characterized by honor and 
 success, the father is reconciled to personal inat- 
 tention or public neglect, whilst he calmly enjoys 
 the growing reputation of his child. 
 
 The affections, also, are strongly developed 
 towards the little ones of a third generation. 
 They are his as much and as truly as were his 
 own children. With less responsibility in their 
 training, less care and anxiety respecting them, 
 there is scarcely less affection towards them. 
 Indeed, sometimes it would seem as if there was 
 a somewhat more tender and indulgent love than 
 under the sterner circumstances which modify 
 the merely parental relation. The grandsire, 
 with his children's children, looking confidingly 
 into his face, clambering on his knee, offering 
 their assistance to his tottering steps, amusing 
 him with their gambols, interesting him in their
 
 128 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 juvenile sports, and thus almost compelling him 
 to be young again, is surely not an object of pity, 
 but of congratulation. The setting sun is not 
 more bright and serene often than is he. A more 
 radiant picture can hardly be set in the. frame of 
 human observation than one which places the 
 old man in the midst of his descendants ; having 
 discharged his duty faithfully to them, and won 
 their respect and love, whilst severally and col- 
 lectively they are vying with each other in 
 offices of kindness towards him, an old 
 Anchises, as it were, with .ZEneas and his family, 
 ready even to hazard their own lives, in order to 
 preserve that of their beloved sire, what could 
 be more beautiful, and where can happiness be 
 found, if not amid such a group ? 
 
 But there is a higher source of enjoyment 
 even than this. The old man may have within 
 his breast the anchor of hope, and in his eye the 
 crown of everlasting life. He may have all the 
 matured graces of the Christian, rendering him 
 as "a shock of corn, fully ripe in its season." 
 Having sailed through stormy seas, he may have
 
 OLD AGE. 129 
 
 reached the opening port of a calm and cloudless 
 immortality. His hoary head may be encircled 
 with a crown of righteousness, to be rewarded, 
 ere long, with the crown of glory which fadeth 
 not away. 
 
 Beautiful is the sight of age wedded to 
 religion, supporting itself on her arm, comforted 
 by her consolations, cheered by her hopes of 
 glory ! To see the pilgrim thus, leaning on a 
 staff which no vicissitudes of earth can break, 
 and travelling in a road which grows more fra- 
 grant as the sun is setting and the dews are 
 falling,- the night gathering and the stars 
 coming forth, how, in view of him, can we feel 
 any other sentiment than that of cheerfulness ! 
 How can we use any language towards him, but 
 that of congratulation ! 
 
 Aged Christian ! travel on, with a smile on 
 thy brow, towards thy home in the skies ! 
 Mourn not that thy path on earth is growing 
 dark, if the light above thee and within thee is 
 deepening ! Sigh not because earthly bliss is less 
 enjoyed, if thy relish for divine things is but
 
 130 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 increasing ! Indulge not a thought of regret, 
 that you must soon say to earth farewell, pro- 
 vided you are drawing nearer, and still nearer, to 
 your eternal home ! 
 
 THE OTHER SIDE OF THE PICTURE. 
 
 But the picture of a happy old age is not, per- 
 haps, a very common one. Hence the experience 
 of mankind has assigned to that period more 
 trials than joys. How often do we hear one and 
 another express the wish that he " may not live 
 to be old," which hope or wish, if sincere, we 
 many times doubt its sincerity, goes' to show 
 that, in the general estimation, it is an undesir- 
 able condition of existence. Why is the wish of 
 an earlier exit out of the world expressed, unless 
 it be that old age is looked upon as a misfortune, 
 a dreaded remnant of life, useful for nothing, and 
 a burden to surviving friends ? 
 
 We have, indeed, seen instances of longevity, 
 where the evils were so many and the good so 
 little, that one might be pardoned for deprecat-
 
 OLD AGE. 131 
 
 ing, under similar circumstances, a prolonged 
 existence. 
 
 An old man. for example, in abject poverty 
 and dependence, with none to provide for him 
 and none to pity him, depending on the coarse 
 and cold and official charity which the public may 
 have provided, is an object simply of commisera- 
 tion. Such a close of life's wearisome voyage is 
 surely to be deprecated. Who would not pray, 
 " From such evils, Lord, deliver us !" 
 
 An old man, who has the misfortune to have 
 ungrateful children, undutiful as children, and, 
 when arrived at manhood, hard-hearted and 
 without natural affection, seeing these children 
 indifferent to his welfare, practising towards him 
 marked neglect, wishing him out of the way, 
 wishing him dead, supplying his wants with a 
 niggardly stint, and looking on him from day to 
 day as a mere incumbrance. such an old man 
 goes heavily and heart-broken towards the grave. 
 Who could be blamed for wishing to escape the 
 tender mercies of such parricidal hands 1 
 
 One who has led a life of vicious indulgence,
 
 132 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 whose passions survive often after the ability to 
 gratify them is gone, an old, worn-out sensualist, 
 whose beastly propensities are still visible amid 
 the wreck of his physical powers, bloated in 
 countenance, tottering in gait, breaking forth 
 occasionally with some coarse or obscene allu- 
 sion, a carcass almost, it would seem, without a 
 soul, such an one is a horrible excrescence, 
 awaiting only the stroke of an apoplexy or 
 palsy, or possibly delirium tremens, to send him 
 to a doom for which, even if eternal, his charac- 
 ter and his crimes have fitted him. "In fact,' 5 
 says Sydney Smith, " the old age which has 
 raised all this terror is the old age of sin ; it is 
 the spectacle of young and ungoverned passions 
 in a perishing body ; of a man giving up the 
 world by his trembling limbs, giving it up by his 
 wasting strength, and clinging to it with all the 
 appetites of his heart ; a man marked deeply by 
 time, and with thoughts busied about the mortal 
 pleasures of sin : to such a man old age is, indeed, 
 terrible ; for it is a mark of the coming vengeance 
 of God ; the pains and evils of the body are to
 
 OLD AGE. 183 
 
 him signs that his eternal punishment is near at 
 hand, that he is standing in the threshold to the 
 place of torment. I am not endeavoring to prove 
 that this old age is not terrible. It is, indeed, 
 the greatest of human terrors ; and, though the 
 three-score and ten years may first pass away, 
 yet the knowledge that it must come at last 
 shoots across the horizon of life, and mingles the 
 terror of God with the early pleasures of youth." 
 
 It is in view of such cases, including, per- 
 haps, some where the individual was merely 
 burdensome, without being degraded or despised, 
 that the wish for an earlier death has been 
 uttered. But those who thus speak, who so 
 recklessly express their wishes, can have no just 
 appreciation of the relations which man sustains 
 to the present and the future world. 
 
 God has .appointed the lot of man, numbered 
 his days, set the bounds of his earthly habitation. 
 It ill becomes any of his creatures to wish either 
 to overleap that boundary, or to anticipate it by an 
 early death. " Our times," including the end 
 of our time on earth, are all "in his hand." 
 12
 
 184 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 His wisdom has appointed them, and his power 
 will see that they are fulfilled. Should his pur- 
 pose be that I shall reach three-score and ten, or 
 should he give me strength to see even four- 
 score years, it would ill become me to complain, 
 because I might foresee some possible evils to- 
 which my longevity would expose me. Resig- 
 nation to the divine will is as much a duty when 
 the continuance as when the termination of life 
 is concerned. If it be a calamity to die in early 
 manhood, as will generally be conceded, and 
 an equal or greater calamity to drag out an ex- 
 istence until eighty or ninety, why should we not 
 be as submissive in the one case as in the other 1 
 In neither is it our right to complain. Taking 
 one view of human life, we might say, with Job, 
 "I would not live alway;" but, with the same 
 patient patriarch, we should add, "all the days 
 of my appointed time will I wait until my 
 change come." 
 
 OTHER REASONS WHY OLD AGE 19 DREADED. 
 
 Neglect is one reason why old age is dreaded.
 
 OLD AGE. 135 
 
 We all shrink from this, as implying uselessness 
 and decay. The old are particularly sensitive to 
 neglect, as they are peculiarly exposed to it. The 
 young sympathize with the young. Those in 
 middle life are so absorbed in the daily conflict, 
 that they can scarcely pause, even if inclined, to 
 give the expected recognition and the respectful 
 attention which are due to the aged. The 
 offices of life, the business of life, its plans and 
 projects, are, for the most part, divided among the 
 young and the middle-aged. Between such, 
 intercourse is not only natural, but even necessary. 
 They are so related, so dependent upon each 
 other, as to require a very frequent intercommu- 
 nication. But the old man is turned aside. He- 
 has worked out his day, and by common consent 
 he has his discharge. Hence one must go out 
 of the way to meet him, and to pay him those 
 respectful attentions which his age and his stand- 
 ing demand. 
 
 To guard against this neglect, the Scriptures 
 have enjoined on the young special and profound 
 respect towards the aged. ' ' Thou shalt rise up
 
 136 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 before the hoary head, and honor the face of the 
 old man, and fear thy God, I am the Lord." 
 In this, as in all the other enactments of the 
 divine word, we discover a wisdom as happy in 
 its bearings on the individual as it is useful in its 
 influence on the state ; and blessed will that 
 period be 3 if it ever should arrive, when shall be 
 felt and expressed by the young generally a 
 respect for honorable old age ! 
 
 But let not the aged complain because they 
 are set aside, as in the arrangements of active 
 life they are very apt to be, let them not com- 
 plain at this. They have had their day and 
 their turn ; and, as wave follows wave, others are 
 now coming into their places, exercising their 
 functions, doing their work, and of right reaping 
 their rewards. They cannot be always young 
 and strong and attractive. They cannot have 
 the same efficiency in old age as they had in 
 their ripened manhood. So God and nature have 
 ordained. As they look at those who seem to be 
 crowding them aside, and occupying their posts 
 of influence, let them calmly and contentedly
 
 OLD AGE. 137 
 
 give place. Those who are now their juniors, so 
 ardent, so athletic and so aspiring, will, in a few 
 years, have themselves to quit, and go into the 
 same paths of stillness and obscurity. 
 
 You have been accustomed, perhaps, to shine 
 in conversation ; to draw around you a circle of 
 admirers ; to catch the eye of the passer-by, as 
 presenting a form of manly beauty : to be hailed, 
 perhaps, as the centre of influence and attraction. 
 All this, however, must go and be given up, as 
 the indices of advancing age and infirmity creep 
 over the mind and body. Others must jostle 
 you aside in these respects, and you must be 
 content to totter on towards the end with less 
 and less attention* from the world. Is it hard ? 
 No ; not if things be rightly viewed ; not, espec- 
 ially, if in time you have seen the vanity of so 
 foolish an ambition, the emptiness of so meagre 
 a portion, the dryness of so broken a cistern ! 
 If you have found a staff to lean upon, such as 
 religion gives, you may bid defiance to all these 
 changes, mortifications and disappointments, and 
 travel on to the last earthly limit with a calm 
 12*
 
 138 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 and steady pace, and with a countenance lighted 
 up from above. Do you fear the decay of your 
 powers, and the consequent diminution of your 
 usefulness? Does that idea, "My joys are 
 gone," haunt you? If your aim has been to 
 please the flesh, and that only, you may well be 
 grieved as the senses grow dull, and the power 
 of gratification becomes less and less ; or, if the 
 smiles of human favor have been all the sun- 
 light that has warmed your heart, you may well 
 mourn when it is withdrawn. Miserable old 
 man, if these sources of good alone have been 
 open to thee ! What is left, when these are 
 gone ? and gone they will be, when old age has 
 come. 
 
 But this very decay of the physical powers is 
 to the Christian a signal of ultimate and com- 
 plete victory. Nature, in this, comes to the aid 
 of grace, or rather works in unison with it ; and 
 he who had struggled hard and successfully 
 against the flesh in early life has in old age a 
 still easier victory, when that flesh has lost much 
 of its polluting power.
 
 , OLD AGE. 139 
 
 And now that the world, of its own accord, 
 is withdrawing from him, offering' its prizes to 
 others rather than to him, how much easier will 
 it be for him, calling faith to his aid, to overcome 
 the world ! 
 
 The Christian can hid the world adieu in 
 feeling long before he is separated from it by 
 the actual stroke of death. His growing incapac- 
 ity for sensual enjoyment renders his relish for 
 that which is spiritual all the keener. No sigh 
 need he send back after a world which has 
 proved, by its allurements, its cares and its 
 temptations, his greatest hindrance in the path 
 to heaven. Why, with the port in view, the 
 haven of rest which he has so long desired, 
 should he wish to put back upon the stormy 
 deep, and take his chance again amid its vicissi- 
 tudes and its perils 1 Let the world neglect 
 him, all the better for him ! He is left thus at 
 greater leisure to set his house in order, and to 
 prepare for his exit to a better world. He gets 
 into a more tranquil current, which sets strongly 
 towards the opening vista, so beautifully pic-
 
 140 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 tured in the scene before us, where the light is 
 breaking forth, and the angels are coming into 
 view, and all the calm scenery of heaven is 
 unfolding, with no more rapids to dread, no more 
 storms to encounter, but one pure and beaming 
 vision of blessedness rising on the enraptured 
 soul, and indemnifying it, a thousand times over, 
 for the loss of all things earthly. 
 
 USELESSXESS. 
 
 Terrible is the idea of outliving his usefulness, 
 to an energetic, stirring man, who finds his 
 felicity in action, especially in those acts and 
 labors which have a direct tendency to advance 
 the cause of science, or promote the welfare of 
 mankind. This to him is worse than neglect, as 
 being, in fact, the cause of it. But let us dwell 
 on this point a little. 
 
 It is not denied that for one to outlive his 
 usefulness must be a sore trial. At the bare 
 thought of it, the benevolent and sensitive heart 
 recoils. But there are many thoughts connected 
 with this apprehension which it may not be amiss
 
 OLD AGE. 141 
 
 for the writer to utter, nor unprofitable for the 
 reader seriously to consider. 
 
 The first thought that I would suggest is, that 
 old age is a condition of existence ordered by 
 Providence in respect to a certain number of his 
 creatures. Should it be our lot, it is not for us 
 to complain either at the appointment or at the 
 circumstances which may attend it. We are 
 bound to put our trust in God, and to believe, 
 that, having guided us by his counsel, and sus- 
 tained us by his providence, he will not, " when 
 we are old and gray-headed, forsake us." 
 
 But what right have any to suppose that, if 
 continued to old age, they will necessarily 
 become useless ? Leave that where it ought to 
 be left, in the hands of God, saying, " My times 
 are in thy hand, and so is my condition, and so 
 is my destiny; and, Lord, thy will, not 
 mine, be done." 
 
 THE OLD MAN'S LAST HIS BEST DATS. 
 
 But again, it is possible that a man may be as 
 useful in old age as he ever was when young, or 
 in middle life.
 
 142 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 Some waste their youth in mere pleasure. 
 They live only to themselves. They play the 
 part of a profane Esau, and sell their great 
 birthright for a sensual dish. Of what use are 
 such to society ? Some carry their vicious 
 habits even into manhood. All they care for, 
 even then, is to aggrandize or to gratify self. 
 Avarice may lead them to struggle in the race 
 of fortune, or ambition may induce them to 
 truckle to popular prejudices ; and in these pur- 
 suits they are obliged to seem to be useful by an 
 outlay of energy necessary to accomplish their 
 sordid ends. Indirectly, and without aiming at 
 it, they may thus subserve somewhat the good 
 of society. But, where the aim and motive are 
 so supremely selfish, they can hardly be ranked 
 as benefactors to mankind. 
 
 But, supposing that in the latter period of life, 
 seeing the vanity and wickedness of their course, 
 such persons are. by God's grace, brought to 
 repentance ; and that, instead of seeking, as here- 
 tofore, only to please and aggrandize self, they 
 adopt a new principle of action, and begin to do
 
 OLD AGE. 143 
 
 all things for the glory of God, who Avill deny 
 that their last Jays may prove to be their best 
 days? They may, indeed, have to mourn. as, 
 if their repentance be sincere, undoubtedly they 
 will. that so much of life has been wasted in 
 vain pursuits, and that so small a remnant is left 
 in which to redeem the time ; yet surely they 
 will be grateful, that even in old age, at the 
 eleventh hour even, they may be engaged as 
 laborers in the vineyard of the Lord. 
 
 And some Christians, who talk much of useful- 
 ness, may possibly be mistaken as to the period 
 when it will become most apparent. Can they 
 say, amid the cares and strife of this world, from 
 which even they are not excused, that when thus 
 toiling, and giving only the interstices of time 
 directly to the cause of religion, they are really 
 more useful than when, in the evening of life, 
 with less of earth's burdens pressing upon them, 
 they are shedding a mild and hallowed light 
 around them, using their undivided influence in 
 promoting the spiritual welfare of others, and 
 employing much of their uninterrupted leisure in
 
 144 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 dressing their own souls for heaven ; can they 
 certainly affirm that they were more useful in 
 the earlier than they can be in the later period 
 of their Christian labors and experience? But 
 this also we must leave with God. 
 
 Talk of an old man as being useless ! It is 
 absurd. It need not be. In many cases 
 may we not say in most 1 it is not. With 
 some, as we have been assured, it is the period 
 of their greatest usefulness, as well as happiness. 
 By prior neglect, by personal vices, by indolence 
 and indulgence in earlier life, we may, indeed, 
 make it a sorrowful portion of existence ; but is 
 it necessarily so 1 The experience of thousands 
 will testify to the contrary. 
 
 A VIKTUOtJS AND HONORABLE OLD AGE. 
 
 Again ; how much influence can a man exert, 
 enjoying a virtuous and honorable old age, by 
 the associations connected with his name and his 
 labors ! His countenance is a book, worn, it is 
 true, by the action of time, yet legible, in which 
 we may read the history of the past. If he is
 
 OLD AGE. 145 
 
 not able now to wield any great direct influence, 
 by reason of increasing infirmities, why should 
 he despond, when, by a life of industry in some 
 honorable calling, by past efforts successfully 
 exerted for the benefit of others, he has left an 
 example, which is all the more influential on 
 account of his continued presence among men? 
 He is a pillar, even in his loneliness, marking 
 not only the progress of time, but the improve- 
 ments of the age to which, by his own well- 
 applied energies, he may have more or less con- 
 tributed. 
 
 THE OU> MERCHANT. 
 
 " Do you see that old man," says one, " so 
 respectable in his appearance, with hair so white 
 and countenance so bland, to whom, as he passes 
 along the busy mart, so many give the token 
 of respectful homage? Well, that man has been 
 one of our first merchants. He was always an 
 upright and honorable man. His reputation for 
 honesty was as great as his skill in business was 
 successful. He was the model merchant. Hi3 
 13
 
 146 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 opinions are now quoted, and his upright exam- 
 ple is felt, throughout a wide circle of business 
 men." 
 
 Do you see that other old man ? He was a 
 most industrious man. Up early in the morning 
 working cheerfully at his trade, hammering out 
 a living, yea, at length a fortune, and setting 
 an example of economy as well as industry ; living 
 within his means, and laying up something for 
 the winter of life, he is now, in his advancing 
 age, an object of interest and respect to his 
 descendants and to the community. 
 
 THE MAN OF SCIENCE. 
 
 And that one, do you notice him? whose 
 head is blanched by time, but whose eye is still 
 bright with the fire of intelligence, who bears in his 
 massive features the lines of thought and the seal 
 of true dignity, is he not sublime even in his 
 decline 1 That is a man who has toiled over the 
 midnight lamp, and has raised a proud column in
 
 OLD AGE. 147 
 
 the temple of science. All consent to honor him. 
 He cannot do what he once could. Age has put 
 its paralyzing hand upon him ; but nothing can 
 deprive him of the satisfaction of having done 
 something for his race, nor of the homage and 
 respect which a grateful public will always pay 
 to genius or high intellect, even when its radiance 
 has been dimmed by time. 
 
 THE STATESMAN. 
 
 The venerable statesman passes before us. 
 His steps are slow and feeble, for the keepers of 
 the house have begun to tremble. He speaks ; 
 but his voice, once so clear and ringing like a 
 trumpet, is tremulous and weak. Yet, at the 
 sound of that voice, every eye is fixed, every car 
 attentive. All countenances wear an expression 
 of deep interest and respect. That man is ven- 
 erated now, as aforetime he was feared and 
 admired. The young men look upon him as a 
 Nestor in experience and in wisdom. They take 
 knowledge of him as one of the great lights of the- 
 age. They mark his career, and say, Let me be
 
 148 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 as he has been ; let me serve my country as he 
 has. He towers among men as the aged oak 
 among the humbler trees of the forest. His 
 influence and usefulness are by no means gone 
 with age. They run back over a long period, 
 and connect his venerable form with stirring 
 scenes of patriotic interest, in which the wisdom 
 of his counsels or the thunders of his eloquence 
 contributed to the welfare of the state, or saved 
 it from serious detriment. Is it sad to grow old 
 under such circumstances ? Is usefulness gone, 
 while such associations are clustering around the 
 living though comparatively broken pillar of the 
 state? 
 
 THE MINISTER. 
 
 Rising in the sacred desk, an aged servant of 
 God appears before you, with head silvered o'er, 
 with a countenance calm, even majestic, and he 
 speaks in tones affectionate, and seemingly pro- 
 phetic. He opens the Sacred Book, and unfolds 
 the truth in language plain, and by illustrations 
 the most simple. He seems intent only on the 
 good of his hearers. All show and parade with
 
 OLD AGE. 149 
 
 him have long since been dismissed ; and now, as 
 he nears his home, he is anxious mainly to feed the 
 flock of Christ. "Who is that venerable man?" 
 is the inquiry. He seems to have reached almost 
 the end of his earthly journey. How benignant 
 his countenance, how affectionate his address, how 
 deep his experience ! Such is an involuntary testi- 
 mony to the moral worth and long -continued labors 
 of one who has spent his manhood in the sub- 
 lime work of preaching the everlasting gospel. 
 But he has almost done his work, and sometimes 
 the fear will haunt him that his usefulness is at 
 an end. At an end ! No ; not so long as his 
 example gives proof of the power and purity of 
 the gospel. He will be useful while there is a 
 Christian to relish his counsels, a young convert 
 to be instructed by his experience, or a candidate 
 for the ministry to study his life and labors. His 
 very countenance will preach, even after his voice 
 
 has become silent. Such a man's usefulness 
 
 
 
 cannot end. Age cannot destroy it; may we 
 not go so far as to say that even death itself 
 
 cannot? 
 
 13*
 
 150 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 There are those, we are aware, who are inca- 
 pable of appreciating the rich fruit which such a 
 man bears ; who are accustomed to call him dull, 
 because, forsooth, he flourishes not his arms, nor 
 thunders with his voice, nor deals in bombastic 
 language, nor " seeks to court a grin when he 
 should woo a soul; " there are such weak-minded 
 hearers, such unspiritual souls, ever thirsting for 
 dramatic entertainment, rather than the pure 
 water of life. But let the aged pastor, for his 
 consolation, remember that others. those who 
 love the truth for the truth's sake, who want to 
 be fed rather than amused, that all such delight 
 to sit at his feet, and learn from his experience 
 and his teaching the way to heaven. They can 
 and do appreciate his worth. One sermon drawn 
 from his deep experience, and his familiarity with 
 divine truth, is to them better, far better, than 
 the beautiful essay, baptized with a little of the 
 waters of the sanctuary, just enough, or 
 scarcely enough, to give it the name of a sermon. 
 
 The old minister has his trials, we know ; but 
 has he not also his consolations and his reward ?
 
 OLD AGE. 151 
 
 See him, even when no longer able to preach, 
 when infirmity has confined him to his study- 
 chair, is he useless even then ? No, in- 
 deed ! His life is a perpetual sermon, and all 
 who are observant thereof are constantly listen- 
 ing to it. Men go to him for counsel. The 
 aged drop in to get some useful hint. Upon all, 
 ' his words drop like the rain, and his speech 
 distilleth as the dew." His very presence among 
 men exerts a conservative influence ; arid his 
 prayers, which cease only with death, are as- 
 cending continually for Zion, and for Zion's 
 friends, for his country, and for the world. 
 
 How sublime a picture, to see the patriarch of 
 four-score moving towards the promised land, 
 getting within sight of the Jordan, and oc*casion- 
 ally ascending some Pisgah to catch a glimpse 
 of the outspread glories of that paradise into 
 which he is so soon to be admitted ! Talk of 
 buch a man's being useless !
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 INCAPACITY FOR ENJOYMENT. 
 
 THIS is another object of dread, which makes 
 certain persons wish not to reach an extreme old 
 age. "I should rather die. literally," say they, 
 "than to become entombed in the stillness and tur- 
 pitude of second childhood. Why should we wish 
 to live, when all life's enjoyments are gone, and 
 all capacity even for enjoyment is extinct?" Is 
 such language proper, even admitting the conse- 
 quences anticipated? Are we not bound, I 
 repeat, to submit to the divine decree ? But the 
 language is unjustifiable, assuming, as it does, 
 that extreme old age is invariably bereft of all 
 enjoyment. That there may be cases of this 
 kind, we do not deny ; but to take for granted that 
 old age is without its enjoyment, is to talk like a 
 mere sensualist, or a downright infidel.
 
 INCAPACITY FOR ENJOYMENT. 153 
 
 It is true that, as the physical powers decline, 
 that keen relish for sensual pleasure felt in earlier 
 life is perceptibly blunted, and those passions die 
 down which constitute the stamen of enjoyment 
 to so many. It is these passions which give bril- 
 liancy and attractiveness to the scenes where 
 fashion and frolic and animal excitement reign. 
 They light up the ball-room, radiate around the 
 shrine of beauty, and reflect lustre on the gor- 
 geous festival. They make, in fact, the heaven 
 which the worldly and the sensual desire. Of 
 course, their decay is deprecated, and their 
 extinction dreaded, by all such, as carrying away 
 with it the possibility of that enjoyment which 
 constituted their supreme, if not their only 
 felicity. And it is a premonitory retribution, 
 when the old man finds himself with desires 
 which his physical weakness forbids him to 
 gratify, a sort of burning hell within him, like 
 " the worm that never dies, and the fire that is 
 never quenched." That such an old age is to be 
 deprecated, we frankly admit ; and we say, more- 
 over, that he who dreads it on such grounds, and
 
 154 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 with such views, is not prepared to die, whatever 
 be his period of life. 
 
 OLD AGE A SEASON OF CALM FELICITY. 
 
 But we take a very different view of old age 
 from all this. We think it possible, by previous 
 moral discipline, by study and by labor, to make 
 it a season of calm felicity, in which pleasure, if 
 less exciting, is not less exquisite ; and we say 
 that even in extreme old age we can conceive of 
 enjoyments such as far exceed the boasted pleas- 
 ures of the world. 
 
 We have alluded to domestic pleasures, en- 
 joyed by the old man often as keenly as by any; 
 to the respect which is awarded to him, itself 
 no small satisfaction ; to the pictured scenes of the 
 past, for the memory of the old loves to indulge 
 in these reminiscences ; above all, to religion, the 
 anchor of hope that grows strong when every- 
 thing else grows weak ; to all these we have 
 referred as sources of happiness in advanced life ; 
 but the catalogue might be greatly enlarged. 
 The old man loses not certainly he need not
 
 INCAPACITY FOR ENJOYMENT. 155 
 
 lose his relish for intellectual pursuits and for 
 works of taste, nor his admiration for all that is 
 beautiful in the varied works of God. 
 
 Old men have been found engaged with all 
 the ardor of youth in scientific pursuits, seeming 
 to enjoy their intellectual labors more even than 
 when young. The octogenarian has been found 
 over his diagrams, at his experiments, and pur- 
 suing historical investigations, from the mere 
 love of the employment, after all ambition had 
 died out of the soul. The mind has flourished 
 and enjoyed to the very last. 
 
 FBAXKLIN. 
 
 Referring to the illustrious Franklin, Dr. 
 Rush says of him, " He exhibited a striking 
 instance of the influence of reading, writing and 
 conversation, in prolonging a sound and active 
 state of all the faculties of his mind. In his 
 eighty-fourth year he discovered no one mark, 
 in any of them, of the weakness or decay usually 
 observed in the minds of persons at that advanced 
 period of life."* 
 
 * Rush on the Mind.
 
 156 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 MILTON, COWPER AND BURKE. 
 
 That immortal poem. " Paradise Lost," was 
 written by the old and blind prince of epic 
 poetry ; and the " Task," no less immortal, if less 
 great, was the work of one whose declining years, 
 by this effort of his genius, were lighted up with 
 a mild departing ray. Some of the most splendid 
 works of the greatest of British statesmen, 
 Edmund Burke, those in which the hues of 
 his fancy rise, like the lights of the aurora, to an 
 almost mysterious grandeur, were produced at an 
 age bordering on seventy. Of Edmund Burke 
 it was said, by one who was as great in the pul- 
 pit as Burke was in the forum, the late Robert 
 Hall, and in terms as truthful as they are elo- 
 quent. "His imperial fancy has laid all nature 
 under tribute, and has collected riches from 
 every scene of the creation and every work of 
 art." 
 
 Naturalists, too, have lost none of their ardor, 
 by advancing age, in studying and classifying 
 the wonderful works of God. To the very last
 
 INCAPACITY FOB. ENJOYMENT. 157 
 
 they have been seen, as the high priests of 
 nature, offering their homage in her temples, 
 though with trembling hands, and breathing out 
 their life amid the half-finished works which they 
 had projected. 
 
 These, I know, are peculiar cases. They are 
 neither numerous nor of common occurrence : 
 and it were well, perhaps, to take a grade of 
 remark and reflection which may apply more 
 generally. 
 
 A TASTE FOR READING. 
 
 May not a taste, then, for reading be culti- 
 vated, and kept up ordinarily to old age ? May 
 not the mind be trained to this habit, so that, 
 when the strife and toil of middle life is over, the 
 old man may have a sweet and refreshing source 
 of pleasure still open to him 7 When others are 
 too busy to converse with him, and time would 
 otherwise hang heavily, here is a fund of enter- 
 tainment and instruction, by which he can hold 
 converse with the noblest intellects, the most 
 14
 
 158 THE VOYAGE OP LIFE. 
 
 gifted geniuses, the most refined and acute 
 critics. 
 
 History comes to him. and proposes, by way 
 of recreation and amusement, to lead him back 
 over the track of centuries, and to cause the 
 panorama of life to pass before him, under all 
 its former peculiarities, and its once exciting 
 scenes. 
 
 Poetry, in its ten thousand lights and shadows, 
 its day-dreams and its night-dreams, its gorgeous 
 grandeur and its soft, soothing melodies, its 
 sarcasm and its satire, its sententious and its 
 swelling verse, its playful lyrics and its sublime 
 epics, its enshrinement of the past and its proph- 
 ecies respecting the future, poetry, that so 
 delighted his boyhood, soothed and cheered his 
 midway course, comes now, in the evening of 
 life, and steals into the imagination, to re-light 
 its darkening chambers, to re-touch the pictures 
 over which time has passed his dusky fingers, 
 and to re-kindle emotions which the wear 
 and tear of this busy life had well-nigh ex- 
 tinguished.
 
 INCAPACITY FOR ENJOYMENT. 159 
 
 We have known aged men who could relish 
 such reading as keenly as in earlier life ; and 
 some have we known whose constant practice it 
 was to interweave among the more solid works 
 which they perused a portion of poetry, such as 
 Cowper or Milton, Shakspeare or Young. We 
 have even known aged men try their own hand 
 at verse, and produce such melody in words, and 
 such chasteness in thought, as might have been 
 mistaken for the productions of better known and 
 more celebrated bards. Surely no man who 
 retains a taste for reading need fear the loneliness 
 of age. 
 
 CONTEMPLATION OF NATURE. 
 
 May not an aged man also find pleasure in the 
 works of nature, in those beauties which every- 
 where court the eye, and convey through the 
 eye, and ear, and touch, and smell, impressions 
 of the divine goodness? May he not walk amid 
 these silent companions, and receive their saluta- 
 tions, while his soul utters its responses in his 
 awakened gratitude, and his undefined yet
 
 160 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 pleasurable emotions ? Is the flower not beautiful 
 to the eye which is somewhat dim with years, or 
 the song of bird not sweet because it falls on a 
 somewhat less sensitive ear? Cannot the old 
 man look on the sun and moon and stars, and 
 say, ' ' These are thy glorious works " ? Is he 
 shut out from nature's harmonies, or doomed 
 to dwell alone, when so many consolatory 
 voices from earth, air and sky, are addressing 
 him? 
 
 How wrong, then, to assert that old age has 
 not its blessings, its felicities ! To assert that it 
 is a period replete only with evils, an intoler- 
 able waste, where burdens only are to be 
 borne, and sighs only to be breathed, where 
 there is neither light, nor solace, nor hope, a 
 portion of human life simply to be dreaded, 
 worse, in the estimation of some, even than 
 death itself ! This is a wrong view, an atheistic 
 view. 
 
 True it is, as we have already intimated, that, 
 not revering the Creator in earlier days, casting 
 away the opportunity for salvation in youth or
 
 INCAPACITY FOR ENJOYMENT. 161 
 
 middle life, the last days must come to us under 
 circumstances in which we shall say "we have 
 no pleasure in them." But does this apply to 
 the good man. to him who has made preparation 
 for old age. who has cultivated his mind and 
 heart, and taken the staff which God has given 
 him to lean upon ? No, indeed. His last are 
 often his best and brightest days. "An old 
 disciple " is like a richly-freighted ship, coming 
 from the land of spices and aromatics, whose long 
 and perilous voyage may have given to her a 
 somewhat battered and rusty aspect, but within 
 lies the precious cargo. As she approaches the 
 destined haven, who inquires about her external 
 beauty, whether her streamers be gay, her sides 
 bright, or her sails without a rent ? It is for 
 something far more valuable that she is welcomed 
 to port ; and it is a proud day when this old and 
 weather-beaten bark, after battling successfully 
 the storms of the ocean, is moored safely in the 
 harbor to which she was destined. 
 
 Is it not somewhat so with the aged Christian ? 
 Is he not stored with fruits from the better land, 
 14*
 
 162 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 and is he not bound for a harbor where storms 
 and tempests never come ? His outward man, 
 by the lapse of years, may lose somew-hat of its 
 beauty, if by that word is meant the bright 
 coloring of youth. He may not have the vigor 
 and bearing of early manhood ; but he has, under 
 all that apparent dismantling of the outward 
 man, a glorious accumulation of hopes and joys, 
 of faith and love, fruits of the spirit imported 
 into the soul through years of experience and 
 self-denial ; and, as he nears the end, how, as 
 in the picture before us, do the bending angels, 
 eager to welcome so precious an arrival, come 
 forth to pilot him into the peaceful haven of 
 eternal rest ! 
 
 A more sublime sight than an aged Christian, 
 with the radiance of heaven upon his brow, and 
 the world beneath his feet, every earthly ligature 
 loosened, having fought the good fight and kept 
 the faith, and now only waiting in patience the 
 coming of his Lord, a more sublime moral spec- 
 tacle is not to be found in the whole presentation 
 of this world's sublimities.
 
 INCAPACITY FOR ENJOYMENT. 163 
 
 THE LAST MESSENGER. 
 
 Death is the appointed messenger to call the 
 aged pilgrim to his rest. ' Go up to the mount 
 and die there," was the word of God to Moses. 
 Jacob leans upon the top of his staff, and gives 
 his dying counsels to his sons. Simeon takes in 
 his arms the long-expected consolation of Israel, 
 and says, " Now, Lord, lettest thou thy servant 
 depart in peace." Sublime, indeed, is the spec- 
 tacle of an aged disciple giving up the ghost. 
 Death has but a feeble claim on such. It 
 scarcely requires the action of death to break up 
 the cell, and to give the long-imprisoned spirit its 
 liberty. 
 
 THE OLD MAN'S BEST COMPANION. 
 
 This, we hesitate not to say, is the Bible. It 
 is the only staff strong enough for him to lean 
 upon. Sir Walter Scott, when old and infirm, 
 suffering under a paralysis, and expecting, ere 
 long, to give up his account, said, one day, to his 
 son-in-law, then in attendance, " Hand me that
 
 164 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 book ! " Not understanding him at first, Lock- 
 hart said, " What book 1 " " There is but one 
 book," replied this patriarch of literature. What 
 a testimony to the value of the Scriptures to an 
 old man hastening to the grave ! 
 
 We have seen aged Christians contracting 
 gradually their circle of reading, laying aside 
 first one volume and then another which had 
 been wont to occupy their attention, and concen- 
 trating their interest more and more upon the 
 Bible. The daily study of this blessed book 
 brought to them a soul -satisfy ing pleasure. 
 As their days Avere fast numbering, and their 
 sun sinking towards the horizon, they regarded 
 every other book with a sort of jealous eye, 
 as serving to supplant this best of books ; 
 or, with a growing indifference to scenes and sub- 
 jects which constitute the material of earth's 
 literature, and taking a deeper hold on the world 
 to come, now so near, they found in the Bible 
 those great and precious promises, that clear and 
 well-defined road to heaven, that food so appro- 
 priate to the soul, and that firm support under
 
 INCAPACITY FOR ENJOYMENT. 165 
 
 all its trials, which, in their circumstances, 
 rendered it. as Scott remarked. " the owfybook." 
 
 BIBLE ADAPTED TO THE AGED. 
 
 The Scriptures are remarkable among the 
 many remarkable things which characterize them 
 for their adaptation to all classes of men, to 
 men of all ages and conditions of life. 
 
 The child is here addressed in language which 
 he can comprehend. Youth is warned of the 
 vices and errors to which lie is exposed, and 
 earnestly counselled to choose the path of wisdom 
 and piety. Manhood is addressed amid the toils 
 and temptations of the world, and by a thousand 
 arguments is urged to. serve God rather than 
 mammon. Nor is old age forgotten in the admo- 
 nitions and the consolations of the Bible ; but to 
 living pictures of venerable piety and preeminent 
 faith are added innumerable counsels calculated 
 to throw a calm sunshine over the dying embers 
 of existence. 
 
 The patriarchs of the Old Testament, living on, 
 as they did, until the weight of years bent down
 
 166 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 the body, and a life-long experience made wise 
 the soul, stand out on the sacred page as striking 
 examples of a sanctified old age. Their life, so 
 holy, was a beautiful preparation to their death, 
 so calm, so sublime. 
 
 ABRAHAM AND OTHER PATRIARCHS. 
 
 In Abraham, the migratory prince, the called 
 of God, the God-befriended man, with his faith, 
 his self-denial, his courage, his noble independ- 
 ence, his death, so concisely told, yet evidently 
 BO triumphant, in this holy old man we see what 
 a mellow and attractive lustre may linger around 
 the last days of a virtuous humanity. 
 
 Look also at Moses, the ex-prince of Egypt, 
 robed in spirit with garments more lustrous than 
 ever enfolded the limbs of the Pharaohs, ahigh- 
 souled man, with the learning of Egypt stored 
 away in his capacious brain, as ready, when 
 Providence so ordered, to tend a flock in Horeb, 
 as he was to wear the diadem in courtly halls ; 
 yea, even more so, for " he esteemed the reproach 
 of Christ greater riches than the treasures of
 
 INCAPACITY FOR EXJOYMENT. 1G7 
 
 Egypt;" willing for forty long years to remain 
 in obscurity, and yet equally ready, at God's 
 command and for God's glory, to become after- 
 wards conspicuous; look at this man, growing 
 old amid scenes the most wonderful and the most 
 trying, in which we know not whether more to 
 admire the interpositions of God, or the almost 
 superhuman wisdom and meekness of his servant ; 
 see him, too, resigning without a murmur all the 
 expectations of an earthly rest, bowing his aged 
 head to the verdict that makes his tomb to open 
 at the very moment that his triumph was com- 
 plete, that gives him only a distant glimpse of 
 the long-hoped-for land, and then assigns him a 
 resting-place amid the undiscovered clefts of 
 Mount Nebo ; see this venerable man, under all 
 these circumstances, acting the saint as he had 
 acted the sage, and leaving an example of meek- 
 ness and of faith which throws over his end a 
 lustre as bright as that which was shed over his 
 earlier career ! 
 
 Samuel, the judge ; David, the prince, the war- 
 rior, and the poet; Daniel, the inflexible, the
 
 168 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 wise, the holy, men who lived amid stirring 
 events, growing old in honor and virtue, and 
 whose old age is instructive in proportion as 
 their earlier history was eventful, who lived the 
 life of the righteous, and died their death, such 
 men are set before us, as the lights of a patri- 
 archal age, to be studied, admired and imitated, by 
 all Avho read the word of God. 
 
 With such moral portraits hung around the 
 vestibule, and impanelled in the walls of that 
 great temple of truth, how comforting to the 
 aged to be permitted to enter and to gaze upon 
 them ! How much more satisfactory than to 
 study the history of the proudest heroes and 
 sages of Greece or Rome ! 
 
 BIBLE PROMISES. 
 
 Then, again, the Bible is full of promises that 
 respect a state of dependence. It supplies a 
 staff on which the weary may lean. Some of 
 these promises have special reference to old age ; 
 and all of them are full of consolation, such as 
 that period of weakness and decline renders both
 
 INCAPACITY Foil ENJOYMENT. 169 
 
 applicable and precious. ' : I will never leave 
 thee nor forsake thee." " They shall still bring 
 forth fruit in old age." " And even to your old 
 age I am He." " Now, when I am old and gray- 
 headed, God, forsake me not ! " u Thou 
 shalt come to thy grave in a full age, like as a 
 shock of corn cometh in, in his season." But 
 more comforting still are those passages which 
 speak of the future, opening upon the aged eye 
 visions of a bliss in which there is no alloy ; of 
 a state where there is no decay or dissolution, 
 where nothing grows old, where no bright hue 
 ever fades, no sigh is ever heaved, where the 
 inhabitants never say "I am sick," and where 
 God wipeth away all tears with his own hand ! 
 
 A book that brings such things to view, 
 coming into the hand when it is too feeble to 
 grasp any earthly support; that discloses the 
 light of heaven when to the eye all earthly 
 grandeur is fading ; that spreads heaven's sun- 
 shine around the path when a portentous dark- 
 ness is stealing over it, and suspends over the 
 very portals of the grave the bright garland of 
 15
 
 170 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 immortality, such a book cannot fail to interest 
 the aged pilgrim, as he totters on towards the last 
 sad scene that awaits all the children of mortality. 
 "Who can doubt that the Bible is the best com- 
 panion of the old man] or who, that has studied it 
 with eyes enlightened from above, can dread the 
 hour when its revealed glories now the 
 objects of faith shall, by death, become glori- 
 ous realities, and be in actual possession, and that 
 forever ! 
 
 THE CLOSE. 
 
 We are drawing to a close. The stream of 
 thought is tending to that great estuary which 
 opens into the wide, wide ocean, the eternity 
 which engulfs all living things. 
 
 The voyage, beginning in the fiowery grotto 
 of childhood, has reached, at length, the cold, dark 
 scenery of old age. Seems it to be long ? Ask 
 the patriarch of eighty. "Few and evil," will 
 he say, " have been the days of the years of my 
 pilgrimage." In the retrospect, this voyage is but 
 as a night-vision. Yet how many incidents are
 
 INCAPACITY FOR ENJOYMENT. 171 
 
 crowded into it ! How many influences combine 
 to make it one of moral peril ! 0. how much 
 are we indebted to that chart which gives us the 
 way-marks, which points out the rocks and 
 dangers, which casts a beacon glare over the whirl- 
 pool, and reveals to the eye of faith, in the dim 
 distance, the haven of eternal rest ! 
 
 Child of mortality, embarked on this eventful 
 voyage, study this heaven-inscribed chart ! 
 With this in hand, and the guardian angel in 
 attendance, thou mayest steer thy course in 
 safety. 
 
 Man of the world, borne on in the world's 
 rapid current, thou needest to consult this divine 
 oraCle, lest thou shouldst be swallowed in the 
 vortex that opens before thee ; and when thy sor- 
 rows and fears are upon thee, and the night sets 
 in dark and dreary, so that thou knowest not 
 what to do, then will this book of books give 
 thee " an anchor sure and steadfast," and set on 
 the brow of the gloomiest tempest the day-star 
 of hope ! 
 
 Aged pilgrim, bowed under the weight of
 
 172 THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 years, and nearing the outlet of existence, that 
 dark and dreaded passage-way to eternity, where 
 go many have been wrecked, and which so few 
 have passed in triumph, keep thy eye steadfast 
 on that bright opening in the lurid sky, where 
 are seen those angel forms, and whence are heard 
 those angel voices, saying, " Come up hither ! " 
 Above all, "look unto Jesus, the author and 
 finisher of faith," who himself has passed 
 those fearful straits, and who, to encourage thee, 
 now about to make the same dark passage, 
 says, " Fear not, for I will be with thee ;" and, 
 as thy dim eye, growing still more hazy amid 
 the cold mists of the Jordan, fixes its gaze on 
 Him, thou shalt see " the chariots of God, with 
 their thousands of angels," and the Lord Jesus 
 in the midst of them, ready to welcome thee to 
 the everlasting and glorious rest ! This is that 
 " eternal life," the recompense of those who, by 
 faith in Jesus Christ, " seek for glory, honor and 
 immortality."
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 THE OUTFIT. 
 
 WHEN a long or important voyage is about 
 to be undertaken, the inquiry naturally is, what 
 is the requisite outfit? Some things are indis- 
 pensable, and some are merely convenient. 
 Who would think of embarking on the trackless 
 ocean, without a chart to mark out the way, and 
 a compass to guide the vessel ? Anchors and 
 cables must also be provided, as a security against 
 shipwreck, in case of peril from storms, on a 
 dangerous coast. The ship must be well manned 
 and amply provisioned. All these things are 
 carefully attended to by those accustomed to do 
 business on the great waters. Experience 
 teaches them what is needed ; and a regard to 
 their personal safety, and the success of the 
 voyage, induces them to see that all needful 
 things are provided. 
 15*
 
 174 APPENDIX. 
 
 And should not those who undertake the 
 eventful and perilous voyage of life inquire as 
 to what is needful ; in order, so far as human 
 foresight can go, to insure security and success 1 
 The question applies especially to the young, 
 who are in the condition somewhat of those who 
 are making preparation for a voyage. The 
 young are getting ready for the active and re- 
 sponsible duties of life. They are laying in 
 stores for the voyage. They may scarcely be 
 said, as yet, to have spread their sails on the 
 wide ocean. What, then, is needful for them, ere 
 they shall set forth to encounter the vicissitudes 
 of life's troubled deep ? 
 
 They must, in the first place, provide them- 
 selves with a chart. Is there such a thing to be 
 had 1 one that is reliable, that indicates-the 
 true path, and lays down all the rocks and quick- 
 sands ? The great point with the navigator is that 
 his chart be accurate, so perfectly accurate 
 that he can place the utmost confidence in its in- 
 dications. He accordingly compares it with other 
 charts, purporting to mark out the same course.
 
 THE OUTFIT. 175 
 
 He inquires, also, of those who have sailed by it, 
 if they have found it reliable. All these precau- 
 tions being taken, if the chart be well authenti- 
 cated, he fearlessly trusts himself to its guidance. 
 Xow. there is but one safe and reliable chart 
 for the young voyager, a map of life's ocean, 
 that never deceives ; that points out the track to 
 be pursued, and reveals all the hidden dangers to 
 which he may be exposed. That chart is the 
 Bible! In the previous pages allusion has 
 frequently been made to it, and its precepts have 
 been the guiding principles in all the activities 
 and duties of life, as set forth in this little vol- 
 ume. It traces in unerring lines the whole 
 pathway of existence, and unfolds the bright and 
 glorious haven to which the successful voyager 
 at length arrives. Many, nay, millions, have 
 sailed by this sure guide, and have found that it 
 never deceives. Their testimony is, in the lan- 
 guage of inspired song, "Through thy precepts 
 I get understanding." " The law of the Lord 
 is perfect." "By it is thy servant warned, and 
 in keeping of it there is great reward." " Thou
 
 176 APPENDIX. 
 
 wilt guide me with thy counsel, and afterward 
 receive me to glory." This chart teaches the 
 young what they may expect, and what they 
 must do. " Wherewithal shall a young man 
 cleanse his way? By taking heed thereto 
 according to thy word." There is no treacher- 
 ous current that it does not indicate ; and no 
 adverse wind that blows, but it signalizes. It 
 was written by one who sees the end from the 
 beginning; who traces the human heart per- 
 fectly ; and whose omniscience enables him to 
 portray, with minute accuracy, its deceitfulness, 
 and the temptations and dangers to which it is 
 exposed. 
 
 Take this chart, then, as an indispensable 
 guide ; unroll it every day, and mark, with eye 
 intent, its every indication. Whatever perplex- 
 ity may attend thy course, however dark the 
 atmosphere may grow, attend to this sure guide, 
 and steer by its marks and lines, and you will 
 neither falter nor founder in your course. 
 
 There must also be provided a compass, whose 
 needle shall always indicate the true position of
 
 THE OUTFIT. 177 
 
 the vessel. That needle points unerringly . to 
 one part of the heavens. The mariner is never 
 deceived by it. Darkness and storm may sur- 
 round him ; but, with his eye on the compass, he 
 knows the direction, and understands how to 
 manage his helm. What a provision is this ! 
 How wonderful the Providence that has dis- 
 covered it ! What vast interests are intrusted to 
 that little, trembling needle, which holds commu- 
 nion with some mysterious power of nature at the 
 north ! What could a vessel do in mid ocean 
 without some such guide? 
 
 But is there no moral compass in life's event- 
 ful voyage 1 If the Bible is a chart, may we 
 not say that the religion of the Bible true 
 Christian principle is the needle that points 
 unerringly to the heavens? The soul that is 
 renewed is like the steel that is magnetized ; it 
 turns instinctively to God and to heaven. The 
 love of God is the loadstone that draws in one 
 direction. It never greatly deviates. Like the 
 needle, it may have its perturbations, may be 
 disturbed, and for a moment made to vibrate,
 
 178 APPENDIX. 
 
 but soon settles in the same direction. Launched 
 on the ocean of existence, where so much is at 
 stake, and so many perils await us, how much 
 the young voyager needs this compass, this soul- 
 magnet, drawing him in the direction of heaven, 
 and showing to his oft bewildered mind the star 
 of Bethlehem, shining on the brow of the moral 
 firmament ! 
 
 The spiritual outfit includes what the apostle 
 calls the " anchor of the soul." " Which hope 
 we have as an anchor of the soul, sure and 
 steadfast." Hope is generally represented under 
 this symbol. Hence the phrase "anchor of 
 hope." But the mere earthly hope, that which 
 looks only to what may be enjoyed in this world, 
 offers but a frail support amid the storms of life. 
 We need an anchor strong enough to hold us 
 safe, amid the heaviest billows and the fiercest 
 winds. We need one that shall hold us safe, 
 even when the waves of Jordan rise dark and 
 dreadful around us. None but "that which 
 entereth within the vail," which fixes itself on 
 the eternal throne, nothing, in short, but a
 
 THE OUTFIT. 179 
 
 true Christian hope, can prove an adequate 
 support and stay. 
 
 The young are apt to think they can get on 
 without much extraneous aid, that, depending 
 on their conscious energies and activities, they 
 can cope with the difficulties and trials that are 
 before them. This is owing, in part, to their 
 inexperience. But, ere they have proceeded far 
 on their voyage, they find themselves encom- 
 passed with dangers and perplexities, and are fain 
 to seek for some friend to interpose and help 
 them. Some sink under their early discourage- 
 ments, and never rise to the dignity of conquered 
 evils. They founder ere the voyage is half over. 
 How many shipwrecked youthful hopes are seen 
 on the shores of life ! It makes one's heart bleed 
 to witness the premature ruin that is going on in 
 our population, among young men and women, 
 but especially among young men, who might 
 have lived to adorn their country's annals, and 
 shed over society a healthful influence ; but who, 
 through pride, and vanity, and sensuality, and 
 self-confidence, have gone down to an early 
 grave and to a disgraceful end !
 
 180 APPENDIX. 
 
 What they needed was religion. They fol- 
 lowed their own impulses, their own evil pas- 
 sions, instead of that unerring guide which 
 God has given, and by taking heed to which a 
 young man may cleanse his way. They went to 
 sea without a chart. They flung themselves out 
 on the deep with nothing to guide them. They 
 suffered themselves to float wherever the waves 
 of selfish passion set. They had no compass, 
 no religious principle to fall hack upon when 
 temptation, beset, or when error was presented. 
 What wonder, then, that they made shipwreck of 
 their early manhood ? 
 
 Sad picture ! and too often not a picture, but 
 a reality. 0, youthful voyager, bound for 
 eternity ! so soon to lie stranded on the shores 
 of time, so soon to end thy course, why wilt 
 
 -* 
 
 thou not provide against the evils which threaten, 
 and secure the good that is attainable ? Secure 
 the necessary outfit, the chart, the compass, 
 the help divine. Make God your portion, and 
 heaven your aim. Steer by the Star of Beth- 
 lehem, and the voyage, even if tempestuous, will 
 terminate in peace !
 
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