rowing years, until we come to
sympathize with nothing which cannot take out a policy of assurance.

When we are young we may be susceptible to the new, only because it is
new to us. We are ready to welcome in book or speech anything which
charms us with a novelty we readily mistake for originality. After we
have crossed a line it may be well that most of us should become a bit
obstinate, a little stiff in our beliefs, lest we be blown about by
every wind of doctrine.[2] At the same time, there is always the
danger of becoming so rigid in our opinions and faith as to permit no
horizon of hope. There are multitudes, in our churches and outside
them, who, from want of the hope that saves, are dying from the top
downwards.

And among them is an increasing proportion of young men. I hear them
boast that they have no ideals, no hopes or aspirations that are above
the earth earthy. For once, at any rate, they have a conviction, and
it is, that man lives by bread alone, that his life is in the abundance
of the things which he possesses. They are too "knowing" to be caught
prisoners by ideas, too much "men of the world" to concern themselves
about the "Utopias of religion." And they call it strength. Strength!
It reminds one of the bitter remark of an historian on the march of the
Roman legions: "They make a solitude, and call it peace." Strength!
There are those in perdition at this moment who could tell them that
what they call strength is the stupidity which adds to sin the
increment of a huge blunder.

The young man who is strong is he who has the moral genius of his
years. He does not deny that man lives by bread, but he does deny that
man lives by bread alone. He has faith in the upward trend of the
world; and he has the hope which can give to faith its adequate
translation. He does not believe that there are two Almighties in the
world and that the devil is the greater; that sin shall breed sin for
ever. He does not believe that the many must drudge to the limit of
endurance and starve their higher nature as long as the world lasts,
that the few may taste the sweets of culture and opulence. He does not
believe that brute force shall for ever trample splendid intelligence
underfoot, or that we must always stand on the margin of the dark river
of wrong, in the unfathomed depths of which lie mysteries of
terror--the despair of man, the sorrow of God. He has hope, that
mighty dynamic--God's pledge to the y