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WM. GUEST, F. G. S.,

REV. J. D. WELLS, D. D.

American Tract Society

New York

TO

GEORGE WILLIAMS, ESQ.

TREASURER OF THE LONDON ASSOCIATION,

AND

To the various Members of the Young Men’s Christian Associations in the United Kingdom and America:

To you I beg to offer the four following addresses—they may be helpful in your service for young men. Thousands there are who watch your Associations with deep and grateful interest. By some persons, it may be, your aims are misunderstood. I have never learned that you condemned other literary and recreative associations; but you have felt that there was room for one distinctively Christian. You do not frown on joy and pastime; you do not disparage literary education; but you have not been ashamed to avow that your object is to save young men from irreligion, and to promote among yourselves spiritual and Christian culture. To not a few it therefore appears that not only are your associations among the very noblest, but that they preëminently meet the demand of these times. Reading-rooms and opportunities for social enjoyment are doubtless most desirable, but it is true piety that is the safety and mainspring of prosperity to a community.

To the best and most distinguished men of this era it seems that the stability and progress of the great Christian nations depend upon the maintenance of Christianity in its integrity, and as honestly derived from the supernatural teaching of the New Testament Scriptures. We have, however, come upon an age of the gravest perils. What has been the spring-head and occasioner of these perils? This: Men have become estranged from intercourse with God, and from the thoughts of the holy and spiritual world. No longer living in believing relation to the Father of their spirits, they have lost the light whereby all things become luminous and harmonized. Three errors now lay straight in their path; and to one or other of these, according to temperament, they have been drawn: materialistic worldliness, that inclines man’s whole attentions to the interests, pleasures, and gains of the world of sense; scientific atheism, whereby a small minority, happily, of scientific expounders attempt to bow God out of his universe, and to resolve all creation into spontaneous life and self-development; intellectual rationalism, that makes man his own savior, denies sin and atonement, moral weakness and Divine grace. It would appear as if Satan’s last and deadliest assault upon the hopes and progress of the race was to be the denial of the self-existent God. Assuredly, let the control of this belief go, and this vital consciousness be lost, and the wide floodgates of iniquity and of lawlessness will be opened, and nothing can save millions from relapsing into barbarism. Even Mr. Buckle has taught that a materialistic philosophy led the way to the horrors of the French Revolution. At such a time, then, as this, Christian associations, with objects so clearly defined, and where arrangements are primary to secure intercourse with Christ and with a spiritual world, meet the deepest want of the age. Moreover, who so well as young men can work among the young? You know the snare that is spread for their feet; “the cup that is poisoned and reached out for their hand; the eye that glares death which is fixed upon them in secret.” Every good man must, therefore, wish you encouragement in your labor to save and ennoble your companions. You are blessing your country and your times. Your work will be fruitful and abide. Thousands who now do not understand you will afterwards pour benedictions over your memories. You, in an age of speculative and moral dangers, will be held to have been benefactors. The days are surely coming when above all other days men will be needed who, by their Christian enlightenment and sanctity, can impart steadiness and elevation to their times. Then the men to whom the age will turn will be men with hearts and understandings which have been animated by Christian faith. To secure such a generation is your high aim. May God prosper your purpose and your devotion.

To you, then, I dedicate my little book, which attempts to portray some of the aspects of modern life, and some of the alarming and imperilling temptations with which modern habits and modes of opinion are surrounding young men.

The first lecture was printed in a separate form; but as the whole edition has been disposed of, it has been thought better to let it now appear with the others.

W. G.

London: Canonbury Park.