FOR YOUNG MEN | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Tuesday, November 18, 1884

FromAdvent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 61, No. 46

FOR YOUNG MEN.

THE qualities that are essential to true manhood and to good citizenship in our boys are sobriety, industry, frugality, and piety.

The slave of an appetite or of a passion is only half a man at best. The real element of manhood is gone whenever one surrenders himself to the dominion of his lower nature. Dissipation and gluttony brutalize human beings. If our boys and young men give way to these things they degrade themselves, injure society, and dishonor God. Whenever a vitiated appetite or an unholy passion gains the mastery, the human will is enslaved, and then manhood is gone. Paul urged Timothy to “exhort young men to be sober-minded,” to have self-control, as rendered by Messrs. Conybeare and Howson. Self-control is the most important factor in every true man.

Boys and young men should diligently cultivate habits of industry. Always be employed at something that is profitable or useful, something that will benefit yourself or some one else. Industrious habits are a great safeguard against the vices so common in our land. Most of our young men start to ruin from having nothing to do. Idleness is the mother of all vice. Satan always finds some mischief for idle hands to do. One who does nothing, or has nothing to do, is sure to fall into sin. Be employed.

It is exceedingly important that our boys form frugal habits while young. If they are wasteful, careless, or destructive while young, they will come to poverty and want when they are grown.

Boys should be taught—should learn to take care of everything, even the little things. This is all the more important now because this seems to be the careless age, the destructive age. A real frugal man would live on what many of us throw away. The stumps of some boys’ cigars would afford a competent support to other boys. Many of the boys and young men of this age chew up and spit out or puff away in smoke a handsome fortune before they come to man’s estate. A long train of evils is sure to follow this kind of wastefulness.

Industry and frugality are the corner-stones of the temple of worldly prosperity. Many large fortunes, acquired by hard labor, have been speedily thrown away by indolent and thriftless sons. A race of spendthrifts will ruin any country in the world.

Last, but not least, boys and young men should be religious. The religious principle, if we only know it, lies at the base of human action. When a young man, or any man, says in his heart, “No God,” he is ready for any sin in the catalogue of crime. In any given matter, at any time after the inception of moral accountability, every man who sins first says, “No God,” or “God, or no God, I intend to do this thing. To me, for this time, and in this thing, there is no God—nothing but self-will.” The word of God says such persons are “fools,” and so they are. Young men and boys should learn to do right things because they are right; because they are well-pleasing to God; and because they elevate, beautify, and dignify human character and action. In any matter where our hearts condemn us, we may know, assuredly, that God will also condemn us. When we sin, we sin against our better self as well as against God. In the day of Judgment the condemnation of God will have the approval of our own hearts. No man can ignore the religious element of human action without giving the lie to his own heart.

Religion has the approval of our better judgments, because it is in perfect accord with our higher natures. The normal—the natural—state of man is the religious state, and the best men and women of the world have been governed by religious principle. This is not an accident, but the result of a law of grace. Sin is an abnormal, an unnatural thing. We are restless, uneasy, unsatisfied, without peace of mind, and unhappy while in sin. Religion is the right thing, the only thing that can give us peace of mind in this life.—Religious. Intelligencer.