oung and unspoiled soul of a
coming day when all that is false and unbelieving and wicked shall be
cast into the consuming fire of divine holiness. He has faith in the
great day of the Lord; and with the splendid optimism, the hope
peculiar to his years, he cries: "I can, and I will, hasten the coming
of my Lord." This is one great element of a young man's strength--hope
in goodness, which goes so far to sustain the toil that can realize it.
"I have written unto you, young men, because ye are strong."

Another factor in this strength is--Freedom. I hardly like the word,
but I want to express by it immunity from certain responsibilities.
Young men, up to a given period, are, as never again, free to sacrifice
for what look like the forlorn hopes and apparently lost causes of
humanity. "My six reasons for taking no risks," said a man in the
American Civil War, "are a wife and five children." The reasons which
in one man may resolve themselves into prudence, in the case of another
man, differently circumstanced, may be nothing better than cowardice.
Some years ago four men stood on the cage at the mouth of the shaft
that penetrated to the workings of a Yorkshire coal-mine. There had
been an explosion, and over forty men were imprisoned in what seemed
likely to be their grave. The brave fellows on the cage knew they were
taking their lives in their hands, but they stood calmly waiting the
signal which should lower them into a possible death. While some
detail of the machinery was being adjusted, a fine stalwart young man,
some three-and-twenty years of age, forced his way through the crowd,
and, seizing one of the rescue-party, literally flung him out of the
cage to the pit-bank, and before the people could recover from their
astonishment the men were being lowered through the pathway of the
deep. Then they realized the meaning of the action. "He did it," said
the man who had been so summarily handled, and his voice shook with
emotion, "because I have a wife and bairns." The younger man was free
from responsibility; he could better afford the risk.

There is a very real sense in which the same consideration tells in the
warfare against sin and wrong. Some of us have less to risk in taking
up the challenge which the powers of death and hell throw down to every
true man. I write unto you, young men, because from your relationship
to circumstances you are more free to accept risks.

We often hear men lament, and