our dead ideals! Amid the dust and din of the battle in after-years we
turn to this radiant spot in our journey with smiles or tears; according
as we have been true or false to the impulses, aspirations, and purposes
inspired within us by that first, and brightest, and nearest
manifestation of God. Such a season is a natural to every life as the
April buds and June roses are to forest and garden. The springtime of
some lives is deferred by unpropitious circumstance to the time when it
should be glowing with autumnal glory, and rich in the fruitage of the
closing year. The life that does not blossom into religion in youth may
have light at noon, and peace at sunset, but misses the morning glory on
the hills, and the dew that sparkles on grass and flower. The call of
God to the young to seek him early is the expression of a true
psychology no less than of a love infinite in its depth and tenderness.

His college-course finished, my young friend returned to California, and
in one of its beautiful valley-towns he entered a law-office, with a
view to prepare himself for the legal profession. Here he was thrown
into daily association with a little knot of skeptical lawyers. As is
often the case, their moral obliquities ran parallel with their errors
in opinion. They swore, gambled genteelly, and drank. It is not strange
that in this icy atmosphere the growth of any young friend in the
Christian life was stunted. Such influences are like the dreaded north
wind that at times sweeps over the valleys of California in the spring
and early summer, blighting and withering the vegetation it does not
kill. The brightness of his hope was dimmed, and his soul knew the
torture of doubt--a torture that is always keenest to him who allows
himself to sink in the region of fogs after he has once stood upon the
sunlit summit of faith. Just at this crisis, a thing little in itself
deepened the shadow that was falling upon his life. A personal
misunderstanding with the pastor kept him from attending church. Thus he