exclusive claims of a church to the cure of our
souls, who is unable to say what she thinks about it. Let us ask her
living interpreters then, and what shall we get for an answer? either no
answer at all, or contradictory answers; angrily, violently,
passionately, contradictory. Among the many voices, what is a young man
to conclude? He will conclude naturally according to his inclination;
and if he chooses right, it will most likely be on a wrong motive.

Again, _courage_ is, on all hands, considered as an essential of high
character. Among all fine people, old and modern, wherever we are able
to get an insight into their training system, we find it a thing
particularly attended to. The Greeks, the Romans, the old Persians, our
own nation till the last two hundred years, whoever of mankind have
turned out good for anything anywhere, knew very well, that to exhort a
boy to be brave without training him in it, would be like exhorting a
young colt to submit to the bridle without breaking him in. Step by
step, as he could bear it, the boy was introduced to danger, till his
pulse ceased to be agitated, and he became familiarised with peril as
his natural element. It was a matter of carefully considered, thoroughly
recognised, and organised education. But courage nowadays is not a
paying virtue. Courage does not help to make money, and so we have
ceased to care about it; and boys are left to educate one another by
their own semi-brutal instincts, in this, which is perhaps the most
important of all features in the human character. Schools, as far as the
masters are concerned with them, are places for teaching Greek and
Latin--that, and nothing more. At the universities, fox-hunting is,
perhaps, the only discipline of the kind now to be found, and
fox-hunting, by forbidding it and winking at it, the authorities have
contrived to place on as demoralising a footing as ingenuity could
devise.[AA]

To pass from training to life. A boy has done with school and college;
he has become a man, and has to choose his profession. It is the one
most serious step which he has yet taken. In most cases, there is no
recalling it. He believes that he is passing through life to eternity;
that his chance of getting to heaven depends on what use he makes of his
time; he prays every day that he may be delivered from temptation; it is
his business to see that he does not throw himself into it. Now, every
one of the many professions has a peculiar