eat many men are forced into associations they despise, and there are
business circles in which we are compelled to go which we do not like, but
if you have a choice, see that you make an intelligent and safe one.

This principle is just as true in regard to social connections. Let no
young man or woman go in a social circle where the influences are vicious
or hostile to the Christian religion. You will begin by reproving their
faults, and end by copying them. Sin is contagious. You go among those who
are profane, and you will be profane. You go among those who use impure
language, and you will use impure language. Go among those who are given to
strong drink, and you will inevitably become an inebriate. There is no
exception to the rule. A man is no better than the company he continually
keeps.

It is always best to keep ourselves under Christian influences. It is not
possible, if you mingle in associations that are positively Christian, not
to be made better men or women. The Christian people with whom you
associate may not be always talking their religion, but there is something
in the moral atmosphere that will be life to your soul. You choose out for
your most intimate associates eight or ten Christian people. You mingle in
that association; you take their counsel; you are guided by their example,
and you live a useful life, and die a happy death, and go to a blessed
eternity. There is no possibility of mistaking it; there is not an
exception in all the universe or ages--not one.

For this reason I wish that Christians engage in more religious
conversation. I do not really think that Christian talk is of so high a
type as it used to be. Some of you can look back to your very early days
and remember how the neighbors used to come in and talk by the hour about
Christ and heaven and their hopes of the eternal world. There has a great
deal of that gone out of fashion.

I suppose that if ten or fifteen of us should happen to come into a circle
to spend the evening, we would talk about the late presidential election,
or the recent flurry in Wall street, and about five hundred other things,
and perhaps we would not talk any about Jesus Christ and our hopes of
heaven. That is not Christianity; that is heathenism. Indeed, I have
sometimes been amazed to find Christian people actually lacking in subjects
of conversation, while the two persons knew each of the other that he was a
Christian.

You take two Christian people