THE POWER AND POSSIBILITIES OF YOUNG MEN.

but they developed them. Are your possibilities unknown? So were theirs, but they grew and expanded them. And you may. As one should get the best and most nourishing food for the body,so of the mind.

Avoid cheap things. Shun slops. Poverty may compel one to live on cheap bodily food, albeit it hinders growth and impairs strength, but surely in this country, and in these days, one need not starve the mind. But get the best. Then use it, work by it, live by it. An ounce of solid truth, well used, is of more worth to you than would be a planet's weight of any knowledge which you do not put into deed, or incorporate into mental fiber.

Avoid mercilessly all second rate, or worse, matter. You will get a new body by and by, but the mind, the soul, the selfhood, lives forever. Therefore, put mainly the best and choicest into it. Do you ask which is best? The world has very many good, but there is only one best. Do you inquire which it is? Ask the Covenanters, Puritans, Pilgrims, blessed martyrs, apostles, prophets of all time, what gave them strength for such heroic deeds and hallowed deaths, and there will be but one

answer.

Do you know of a book in all the world that you shall wish to pillow your soul on when the body is dying? Very well; that is the one for you to cultivate and feed your mind on now. There is but one such, I repeat, in all the wide world. It is the book that has made, and yet makes, more noble men and women than any or all other books or things combined, the book from whence comes all other excellence. It is the book that can alone make your life and mine a complete success. That book is the Bible. While not neglecting the many other good and valuable books of the world, you should, above all others, read this. Study it. Transmute it into deed. Become obedient to its truths. Follow its directions, and you shall become at length the perfect man. It gives and develops power as no other does, and it alone prepares man for the tremendous possibilities of this life, and those of the life that is to come. As a song

of life I venture to dedicate this hymn to you young men and to cntitle it

THE BATTLE CRY OF SUCCESS.

Now the Lord hath spoken to me,

May no evil day undo me;

Lies before me clear and fair,
Pathway up a mountain stair,
Sunlight in the upper air.

Many years Thy Whisper moved me,
Many years Thy Right Hand proved me;
Thou afar didst see to-day;

All the noontide hidden lay
In the morning dim and gray.

Many lands and many oceans,
Many peoples in commotions,

Thou hast shown me as a sign
That Thy Whisper is divine;
May Thy purposes be mine!

Evermore by Thee enshrouded,
In the azure sky or clouded,

Let me follow Thy behest.
Without hasting, without rest,
As a star moves toward the west.

Thou my Helmet, Falchion, Leader,
Lord and Saviour, Interceder,

Both my left hand and my right,
Fill with javelins of light

And with ten archangels' might!

The Influence of Young Women.

LADY HENRY SOMERSET, London.

President of the British Woman's Christian Temperance Union.

MISS FRANCES E. WILLARD,

President of the World's Woman's Christian Temperance Union.

'T is within the present province of mankind to develop nature but not to improve on it. All the present deliciousness of fruits or flowers was contained in the original seeds out of which they were developed. Men have added nothing to nature. Now the normal condition of men and women is that of the family. Without one's family, what were all else of life? Without them would life be worth the living? How could there be love, and hope, and ambition, without the family? There might be lust of appetite, of acquisition, of conquest, for mere existence, but how could holy love exist without the family relation? And love is life. In the Bible the words are almost interchangeable in meaning.

Now men are ruled by their appetites, and women by their affections, until education has taught them the proper uses of both. As the highest relation is the family, the highest position in that highest relation is given by nature to women, to wit, the care and culture of home and children. She holds in her keeping the happiness and the welfare of the world.

As a rule the first seven years of life determine the future of the child and so of the man. If the home-life is cheap, frivolous, impure, unintelligent, its product will be such. Not only a man, but a man's children, are what his wife will let them, and him, be. If she is socially, naturally, his superior, she can elevate him. But if she is socially inferior to him, her condition fixes his status: for, however good or great a man may be, he is always

degraded and humbled in his own sight and in that of the world, when he has to blush on account of or make apologies for his wife.

The young women of to-day will be the matrons of to-morrow, and while they never can make over the young men whom their mothers have made years ago, they can almost wholly determine the character of the next generation, by wisely using their influence with the present one. What kind of associates, what kind of companions, will you choose among men? Fate will not fix it for you, but you must determine it. There are serious vices among men, foul blots on humanity that impair its energies, that bar all upward progress of the race, that are steadily dragging it downward to bestiality and diabolism,-vices that breed crimes, natural, unnatural, and preternatural, by which and from which woman has been and is the silent, greatest sufferer,-shall they be perpetuated? On its answer hangs the destiny of the ages. Shall the vice of the father be fastened on your innocent child through you? That is the problem you are to solve. Over against the world's misery stand the young women of the day with power not merely to assuage it, but to blot it out. Will they do it? Do you ask how? By resolutely refusing to be the medium for its perpetuation. Demand purity of thought, purity of purpose, purity of deed inexorably of the young men with whom you consort. How long would the vice of drink, the filth of tobacco, the delirium of gambling, the leper-seeking of lust, dwell in this world, if the young women in it were to refuse fellowship with any young man tainted by them? Not a generation.

How often one may see on the public thoroughfares, intelligent, refined virtuous young women in company with gentlemen acquaintances who so far forget the honor of the lady's company as to belch forth the smoke and stench of the cigarette and cigar, or the lesser filth of the quid? Would they do it if they knew they should forfeit the lady's favor? No young lady wishes to go through the Golgotha of suffering of the drunkard's wife-yet how few have courage to refuse

association with a young man who takes his wine, if he be a man of wealth, or position? No young man of sense would take for a consort one whose impure life would entail nameless sufferings on himself and offspring. Why should not a young lady be equally prudent and exacting? Demand of your gentleman friends both the purity of life and of speech they require of you. Believe me, there is no young man whose acquaintance is worth the having who will not respect and admire you more for refusing to fellowship what he may call his petty weaknesses, than he will do if, for the sake of his company, you quietly ignore vices you would not think of cherishing in yourself. You know and he knows that a woman's social condition, aye, her eternal condition, is determined, not by her wealth, nor by her beauty, but by her moral and mental qualities. Will the eternal balance be less exacting in his case? If not, why do you seek to make it so in this life by smiling on his vices?

The young women of the world must redeem it of its vices, or doom it. Nature-no, he who created nature-has given them an influence that would regenerate the race if they would but use it aright. Nature's great decree is that man shall seek his mate, not the mate the man. If he come unclean of body or of soul shall he find the pure equally as ready as the unclean to welcome him? Shall there be no distinction? Is it not time that the pure young women of the land face toward the future, and demand a noble, virtuous companionship? It will come, but only at their bidding. To have it come, frown down intemperance, the tobacco evil, profanity, impurity of deed and speech, idleness, and dudishness. Insist on the cultivation of mind as well as brawn, of godliness rather than covetousness, of gentleness as well as genteelness, of truth rather than tricks in trade. Have it understood that respect, courtliness, and kindness toward one's own mother and sisters is as great virtue in a young man as vows of love to his sweetheart. Make it known that honor is greater than gold, and that the heart outweighs and outranks the brain.