up
with the fashions and to make the people forget that he was once a
country boy. City life, as is often the case, breaks up his youth,
destroys his morals, undermines his character, steals his reputation,
and finally leaves the promising youth a wrecked man. Was the game worth
the candle?

Young men, never be ashamed of the old log-cabin in the country, or the
old bonnet your mother used to wear, or the jean pants your father used
to toil in. I had rather be a poor country boy with limited surroundings
and a pure heart than to be a city man bedecked in the latest fashions
and weighted down with money, having no morals, no character. I had
rather have the religion and faith of my fathers than to have the
highest offices. I had rather have glorious life, pure and lofty, than
to have great riches. Sir Walter Scott was right when he said,

"Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife,
To all the sensual world proclaim:
One crowded hour of glorious life
Is worth an age without a name."

Young men, what is the basis of your life and what is its goal? Have you
digged deeply and thrown out all the waste material of follies and vice
and built upon a substantial foundation of honest manhood and sterling
character? If not, you are a failure. However, chords that are broken
may vibrate once more; take up the angled threads again and weave
another pattern. The book that will always be the best and safest guide
for weaving life's pattern is the Bible,--the truest and best friend
any young man can have. If you want oratory, you need not talk about
Demosthenes walking along the shores of Greece with pebbles in his
mouth, nor about that great American orator, Daniel Webster, but if you
turn almost to the beginning of that wonderful Book and listen to the
pleadings of Jacob's sons as they begged for the life of their father,
it will surpass your Demosthenes or Webster in true eloquence. If you
want logic, even though Aristotle may be world famous as the "father of
logic," yet if you listen to the hunch-backed, red faced, crooked nosed,
baldheaded Jew, Saul of Tarsus, you will find his logic stands
unsurpassed in all the ages of the world. The history of four thousand
years and more you will find there. You will discover the beginnings and
the end of things. Reason, with her flickering torch, cannot point to
any such sublime truths as are found in the Bible. Philosophy with her
school stands amazed when confronted w