most valuable mental and spiritual discipline, and earnest parents of
to-day are at a loss how to supply it.

I will press upon your attention only one argument for the culture of a
religious spirit, and that is the argument of experience. What is the
universal testimony of those whose lives are really governed by the fear
and love of a divine Creator? It is that in the consciousness of a
desire to obey God and live in harmony with His laws they find their
highest happiness.

To everyone who lives beyond the earliest period of childhood, comes at
some time or other sorrow, disappointment, sickness, loss, bereavement.
The great fact of death looms up at the end of every pathway, however
bright and happy. The universal testimony of the human race, from the
earliest records of human experience to the present time, is that only
faith and hope in a beneficent God ruling over all events can sustain
and comfort the human heart through all the changes and vicissitudes of
life, and reconcile to the thought of death.

Early youth is naturally happy, gay, care-free, and indifferent to
sorrows and fears of which it knows nothing. But there comes a time to
every sensible and earnest young heart when it realizes the
transitoriness of all earthly things, and longs for something on which
the heart can take hold and rest. I do not believe any young person
fails of this experience sooner or later. It is a hunger of the heart
which nothing but the love of God can fill, and if, when it is first
felt, the heart only humbly and earnestly turns to God with high and
firm resolve to seek a knowledge of Him and His laws, to bring all
actions and plans of life into harmony with His revealed will, the
foundation of an enduring happiness is laid for this life, and doubtless