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 which he was just about to fall, caught him on the
chest and broke his fall; but the shock was terrible, and he lay