ring sunshine of infancy, have deepened into virtues, graces,
heroisms. We have the bold outlook of calm, self-confident courage,
the strong fortitude of endurance, the imperial magnificence of
self-denial. Our hearts expand with benevolence, our lives broaden
with beneficence. We cease our perpetual skirmishing at the outposts,
and go upward to the citadel. Down into the secret places of life we
descend. Down among the beautiful ones, in the cool and quiet shadows,
on the sunny summer levels, we walk securely, and the hidden fountains
are unsealed.

For those people who do nothing, for those to whom Christianity brings
no revelation, for those who see no eternity in time, no infinity in
life, for those to whom opportunity is but the hand maid of
selfishness, to whom smallness is informed by no greatness, for whom
the lowly is never lifted up by indwelling love to the heights of
divine performance,--for them, indeed, each hurrying year may well be a
King of Terrors. To pass out from the flooding light of the morning,
to feel all the dewiness drunk up by the thirsty, insatiate sun, to see
the shadows slowly and swiftly gathering, and no starlight to break the
gloom, and no home beyond the gloom for the unhoused, startled,
shivering soul,--ah! this indeed is terrible. The "confusions of a
wasted youth" strew thick confusions of a dreary age. Where youth
garners up only such power as beauty or strength may bestow, where
youth is but the revel of physical or frivolous delight, where youth
aspires only with paltry and ignoble ambitions, where youth presses the
wine of life into the cup of variety, there indeed Age comes, a thrice
unwelcome guest. Put him off. Thrust him back. Weep for the early
days: you have found no happiness to replace their joys. Mourn for the
trifles that were innocent, since the trifles of your manhood are heavy
with guilt. Fight to the last. Retreat inch by inch. With every step
you lose. Every day robs you of treasure. Every hour passes you over
to insignificance; and at the end stands Death. The bare and desolate
decline drops suddenly into the hopeless, dreadful grave, the black and
yawning grave, the foul and loathsome grave.

But why those who are Christians and not Pagans, who believe that death
is not an eternal sleep, who wrest from life its uses and gather from
life its beauty,--why they should dally along the road, and cling
frantically to the old landmarks, and shrink fea