with the “Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world”; common love for mother and sister, which for their sakes maketh it impossible to wrong their womanhood, even when fallen into the dust; common self-respect, which is so strong in some men, and makes them shrink from anything in the nature of mud, is often sufficient to accomplish this end.  But still, when all is said, if in answer to your mother’s prayers you can implant in your boy a sense of the Divine Presence and the cry of the quickened conscience, “How can I do this great sin and wickedness against God?” you have doubtless given him the best panoply against the fiery darts of temptation.  Only I would again warn you that there must be no forcing of the religious emotions, no effort to gather the fruits of the spirit before the root, in the shape of the great cardinal virtues everywhere presupposed in Christian ethics, has been nourished, and strengthened, and watered into strong, healthy growth.  We have to bear in mind our Lord’s words, which it seems to me religious parents sometimes forget, that there is an order of growth in spiritual things as in natural—­first the blade, then the ear, and then the full corn in the ear; and we are not to try to force the full corn in the ear before the stalk and the blade have grown.  For the want of laying to heart these words of the great Teacher, I have known much pulpy, emotional religion engrafted on young souls—­admirably adapted to exhaust the soil, but with the smallest possible bearing upon right conduct; a religion perfectly at its ease with much scamping of lessons and hard work in general; indulgent of occasional cribbing, and of skilful manipulation of awkward truth, of betting and small extravagances; and innocent of all sense of dishonesty in allowing a struggling parent to pay large sums for education while the school-time so purchased, often at the cost of home comforts and pleasant outings, is squandered in idleness.

What a boy really needs, and, indeed, all immature things—­for I found it equally true of immature men—­is a simple, practical religion, based more on the facts of life and conscience than on doctrines and dogmas.  To know God as his Father; to know that he has a Redeemer who laid down His life to save him from sin and who takes account of his smallest and most broken effort to do what is right; to realize that it is only so far as he is like Christ and in Christ that he can be really a man and work out what is highest in him; to know that he has been baptized into a Divine Society, binding him to fight against all wrong, both within and in the world without; above all, to know that there is a supreme spiritual Power within him and about him to enable him to do right, and that in the line of duty “I can’t” is a lie in the lips that repeat, “I believe in the Holy Ghost”; this is as much as his young soul can assimilate, not as mere religious phrases, but as realities to live by.

    “So nigh to glory is our dust,
      So nigh to God is man,
    When duty whispers low ‘Thou must,’
      The soul replies, ‘I can.’”