Suppose you take the helm out of a ship and hang it over the bow, and
send that ship to sea, will it ever reach the other side? Certainly
not. It will drift about anyhow. Keep religion in its place, and it
will take you straight through life and straight to your Father in
heaven when life is over. But if you do not put it in its place, you
may just as well have nothing to do with it. Religion out of its place
in a human life is the most miserable thing in the world. There is
nothing that requires so much to be kept in its place as religion, and
its place is what? second? third? "First." Boys, _first_ the Kingdom
of God; make it so that it will be natural to you to think about that
the very first thing.

There was a boy in Glasgow apprenticed to a gentleman who made
telegraphs. (The gentleman told me this himself.) One day this boy was
up on the top of a four-story house with a number of men fixing up a
telegraph wire. The work was all but done. It was getting late, and
the men said they were going away home, and the boy was to nip off the
ends of the wire himself. Before going down they told him to be sure
to go back to the workshop, when he was finished, with his master's
tools.

"Do not leave any of them lying about, whatever you do," said the
foreman.

The boy climbed up the pole and began to nip off the ends of the wire.
It was a very cold winter night, and the dusk was gathering. He lost
his hold and fell upon the slates, slid down, and then over and over
to the ground below. A clothes-rope stretched across the "green" on to
which he was just about to fall, caught him on the chest and broke his