and lovers of political freedom to stand unanimously and irresistibly in this Thermopylæ of our American history. Declare before high heaven that you will not give up the Sabbath, and that you will bring ignominious defeat to the enemies of God and the public weal! XXV. SELF-ASSERTION. THE greatest waste of life is wasted or perverted power. How few men make their lives noble! They sink into the grave with scarcely a trace to indicate that they ever lived. They lived and they died. Cradle and grave are closely brought together; there is nothing between them. There have been hundreds who could have rivaled the patriotism of a Washington, or the humanity of a Howard, or the eloquence of a Demosthenes, and who have left behind them no one memorial of their existence, because of lack of lofty courage, sublime moral heroism, the assertion of individuality. The world's great things have been accomplished by individuals. Vast social reformations have originated in individual souls. Truths that now sway the world were first proclaimed by individual lips. Great thoughts that are now the axioms of humanity proceeded from the center of individual hearts. Let not others fashion what your life shall be. Thomas Carlyle says that he would like to stop the stream of people in the Strand and ask every man his history. "But no," says the sage, "I will not stop them. If I did I should find they were like a flock of sheep following in the track of one another." Alas! men begin to lose their individuality of conviction the moment they begin life's business. Many a young man has sacrificed his individuality on the altar that a profligate companion built for him. Many a young man who knew right has allowed some emptyheaded street-corner loafer to lower his own high moral tone lest he should seem singular in the little world of society surrounding him. Thousands become bad, not because they intended to be bad, but because they had not the courage to resolve to do good. The worst weakness in the world is to fear to do right because others will criticise it. Dare to be singular! Dare to stand alone and unflinchingly for the right, though the earth reels and the heavens fall! I don't disparage associations. Exaggerated individuality makes a man impracticable. But the danger of our times is to shape ourselves by others, so as to destroy force and effectiveness, to think in cliques. Live, then, like an individual. Take life like a man-as though the world had waited for your coming. Don't take your cue from other men—the weak, the prejudiced, the trimmers, the cowards-but rather from the illustrious ones of earth. Dare to take the side that seems wrong to man's blinded eye. Scorn the praise of men. Learn to live with God, and you will pass from manhood to immortality with the seal of God upon your brow. XXVI. GAMBLERS AND GAMBLING. I SOLEMNLY warn you against gambling, because: 1. It is illegal. No man ever gambles but is a criminal to the law of God and to the law of the land. 2. It is dishonest. It is taking that to which you have no claim. Hazard is no title; winning is no ownership. Only fair exchange is no robbery. 3. It is destructive. Gamblers are seldom industrious men in any useful vocation. Labor loses its relish as the passion for play increases. It destroys all domestic habits and affections. The gambler may for a moment sport with his children and smile upon his wife, but his heart is not at home. "A little branch rill may flow through the family, but the deep well of his affections flows away from home." It destroys all that is good in the soul, vitiates the whole character, and drags down every lofty purpose and noble inspiration. Once in the fatal snare, |