Leaving Home
“The younger son gathered all together, and took his journey.” — Luke xv. 13,
Seldom, It may be hoped, does a youth leave home simply because he has tired of it; still more rarely, we trust, because he wishes to lead a life of mere self-indulgence. One instance, however, of this kind we do remember, with its unlooked-for ending. In the town of Huntly there was living, a hundred years ago, a lad lately returned from college, whose only quarrel with a rough and regardless neighbourhood was the insufficient scope it gave to his love of fun and frolic. Having heard a great deal about London, and believing that it was the place where every man might do that which is good in his own eyes, he gathered all together, and took his journey towards the southern capital. On the road, however, he turned aside to visit a kinsman who had himself led a life of notorious wickedness, but whose friendship he wished to retain. This relative he found on a bed of sickness; but although his bodily sufferings were great, they were almost swallowed up in the anguish of his spirit. In a fearful tide of remorse, his sinful life came surging back upon his memory, and as God’s waves and billows went over him loud were the cries for mercy and vehement the promises of amendment, which he offered in every gasping interval. God spared him. Eventually he recovered; and recovering, he returned to the old excess of riot. But though he forgot his own vows and prayers, his visitor could not forget them — the outcries of a guilty conscience shaken over the mouth of hell. Not only did they drive all thoughts of folly from his mind, but they sent him back to his own abode a crushed and frightened penitent. At last, having obtained mercy, he startled his fellow-townsmen by standing up in the market-place and urging them to flee from the wrath to come; and although at first scoffs and derision — yes, and angry missiles — were his recompense, through a long life he persisted snatching brands from the burning, and giving numbers in Banff and Moray reason to bless his solemn and rousing
More frequently it is on an honourable errand that the youthful pilgrim sets forth. A subsistence must be
* The above particulars were related to us in 1840 by an “old disciple” in Huntly, James Maitland, who well remembered George Cowie, and who, we believe, was one of the fruits of his ministry. Describing the rough treatment given to the young evangeHst, our informant said — “They flung custocks at him;” and many of our readers will remember the old song which associates “custocks” (cabbage-stems) with Strathbogie. In a brief memoir it is mentioned that Mr. Cowie’s “first alarm about his soul was occasioned by witnessing the death of an uncle in the year 1765” (Kinniburgh’s Fathers of Lidependejicy in Scotland p. 13). Our impression is, that the uncle temporarily recovered.
earned, an education must be obtained, a profession has been chosen, a divine call is obeyed; and so the student goes to college, the recruit seeks his regiment, the sailor joins his ship, the aspirant after an honourable independence starts for the city or the distant colony; and there is on both sides true tenderness — on the one side the best intention, on the other many an earnest prayer. ‘’ Happy, thrice happy, as an after-remembrance, be the final parting between hopeful son and fearful parent, at the foot of that mystic bridge which starts from the threshold of home — lost in the dimness of the faropposing shore — bridge over which goes the boy who shall never return but as the man,”’’^
Blessed be God, the tearful hopes of that anxious moment are often fulfilled; and happy are the parents who, in the frank and affectionate communications of their absent child, see plainly that the heart is still at home; and still happier they who, after whatsoever interval, receive him back with new excellence developed or with character confirmed. To John Angell James’s mother it was a delightful discovery when the careless apprentice returned to Blandford and she found a Bible in his great-coat pocket. A bundle of bank-notes would not have made her near so happy. How the eyes of Henry Kirke White’s mother must have filled over these lines from her gifted son near the close of his Cambridge career: —” Never do I lay myself on my bed * Lord Lytton’s What will he do with it? vol. ii. p. 84.
before you have all passed before me in my prayers; and one of my first earthly wishes is to make you comfortable, and provide that rest and quiet for your mind which you so much need. I shall have some quiet parsonage, where you may come and spend the summer months. Maria and Kate will then be older, and you will be less missed.” And when the bitterness of death was over — for even though a sword should pierce through the soul, blessed among women is the martyr’s mother* — still more blessed may we deem in after-years that devout lady in Manchester, who, in the June of 1555, received this letter from her son in London, looking forward to his fiery chariot at Smithfield: — ‘’ I die as a witness of Christ, his gospel and truth, which hitherto I have confessed as well by preaching as by imprisonment; and now, even presently, I shall confirm the same by fire. I send all my writings to you by my brother Roger: do with them as you will, because I cannot as I would. I pray God to bless you and keep you from evil. May He give you patience, may He make you thankful for me and for yourself, that He will take your child to witness His verity.... Thus, my dear mother, I take my last farewell of you in this life; beseeching the almighty and eternal Father, by Christ, to grant us to meet in the life to come, where we shall give Him continual thanks and praise Him for ever and ever. Out of prison, your son in the Lord, John Bradford.”
* Luke ii. 35; i. 28, 42.
For character there is a twofold security — the first commandment and the fifth — love to God and hallowed domestic affections: nor is that character likely to drift where both anchors are out, and where the heart is well moored both to the home on earth and the home on high. Reader, have you both? Young men, scattered about in little companies or dwelling alone in your solitary lodging, have you both? Like a good ship off a dangerous coast, are you keeping your heart with all diligence, and are both bower and sheet anchor out? the bower of memory binding you to the fireside far away where loved ones linger? the sheet-anchor of hope entering within the veil, and attaching to the Fathers house and the goodly fellowship assembled there? Inasmuch as both homes are lost to sight, they are in your case things of faith; but in the storm of temptation, when the importunities of sense and the enticements of Satan are equally vehement, the only preservative from shipwreck is faith in the unseen — faithful memory or faithful hope; and when the poor little kedge of carnal policy comes home — when like a leaden fluke good humour bends, like a rotten cable worldly wisdom snaps in sunder — they are only God’s anchors which continue sure and steadfast.
To those who are still in the outset of their active life we offer a few further hints. They will be received in good part, for they are given by one who still remembers some of his own youthful feelings, and who has often had reason to rejoice in the good and gallant fight of young men who were ‘’ strong and overcame the wicked one.”
If you wish to have a happy and honourable career, you must choose the best companions. Your fellow-clerks, your neighbours in the shop or factory, you cannot choose: they are chosen for you: but it is left in your own option to select your friends; and you may find it a great difficulty. If you were a dry, disagreeable fellow, people would let you alone; but if you are worth cultivating; if instead of being a proser or a pedant, you have pleasant dispositions and a frank, popular way; instead of being a silent solemn automaton, or the next thing to it, a man of one idea — a wooden centaur who has grown into the same substance with his hobby; if you have a rich and varied nature; if you have humour; if you are musical; if you are fond of athletic sports; if you read; if you row; — every separate liking is just a several hook, a distinct affinity to which a kindred spirit will be apt to attach itself, and ere ever you are aware you may find yourself complicated with an acquaintanceship which, although at some point or other agreeable, is on the whole cumbrous or uncongenial. It is pleasant to feel that you are liked, and it is painful to keep at arm’s length those who take to you and would evidently value your society. Nor would it be fair to call them by hard ‘names. They are not seducers or systematic assassins, lying in wait for the precious soul; and the harm they do is not so much from having any evil purpose as from their having no right principle. Nevertheless, if a man carrying contagion proposes a visit or offers you his arm, although he intends no injury, you stand aloof, and you are not to be denounced as a churl for declining a danger which he does not realise. And in the philharmonic class or in the rifle corps, you are alongside of a splendid shot or an excellent singer, and you are not a little drawn to one another; but if on nearer intercourse it turns out that he drinks too freely, or keeps no Sabbath, or has loose notions on morality — “can a man take coals into his bosom and not be burned?” the companion of fools shall be destroyed “— it would not be complaisance but cowardice — it would be a sinful softness, which allowed affinity in taste to imperil your faith or your virtue. It would be the same sort of courtesy which in the equatorial forest, for the sake of its beautiful leaf, lets the liana with its strangling arms run up the plantain or orange, and pays the forfeit in blasted boughs and total ruin. It would be the same sort of courtesy which, for fear of appearing rude or inhospitable, took into dock the infected vessel, or welcomed, not as a patient but a guest, the plague-stricken stranger. A great help is a good companion. Robert Story and Thomas Pringle were lads of seventeen who from the same pleasant Roxburghshire went up to Edinburgh College sixty years ago. They” lodged in the same rooms, where amidst the novelties of the capital they continued to ’ remember their Creator in the days of their youth.’ They performed religious service regularly, as they had been accustomed to see it done at home, taking the duty alternately. The Sabbath they kept holy, as they had been taught to do; avoiding so much as opening a book on that day which was not of a directly religious character.” “^^ To the nobler attributes nothing is so fatal as fast living, and with the pure innocent lives which these young friends led It was wonderful how rich in romance was the rest of existence, how rich withal in religious feeling. That fine idealism which, added to faith, gives the soul two pinions and makes the subllmest spirits, was never broken in the case of either, and they could not only soar at will, but — as long as you continue a little child you keep the sceptre, you retain the kingdom of heaven
—in virtue of their very unworldllness, they had strange ascendency over men. The one, a cripple and a man of letters, inspired his own family with enthusiasm such as clansmen used to feel for stalwart chieftain, and in the make-believe of his genius the South- African glen to which he carried them off wanted no Tweed in order to resemble the Border, whilst from his gentle goodness there fell on Bushman and Caffre a reverence and a respect for his little settlement not to be gained by the musket and cannon. The other we still remember with lustrous eyes wide open to the beauties of the landscape, but in his inner daily walk expatiating through scenes far fairer: weak in that logic in which Scotchmen are strong, but strong in that love and devotion without which school Leitch Ritchie’s Memoirs of T, Pr ingle, p. xvii.
logic IS weak: the pastor of Roseneath, a brightly-cloudy pillar, transcendental and indefinite, but irradiated at top by a sun which to his spirit all these forty years had never set: with a creed not the clearest, but with a Christ-loving heart, moving on before his people in a way which made them feel that if they could only follow the same shining track, they too would reach the better land.*
Two are better than one, and you will find it both protection and incentive if you can secure a faithful friend; and in some respects better than two are the many: therefore you cannot do more wisely than seek out in the Young Men’s Society a wider companionship; and whilst instructed by the information of some, and strengthened by the firmer faith or larger experience of others, there are important themes on which you will learn to think with precision, and in the exercise of public speaking you will either acquire a useful talent or will turn it to good account.
You are a young man away from home. We have said, Choose good companions; we must add, Beware of bad habits.
* Some one called Pringle “a Scot without guile.” See Seattle’s Life of Thomas Campbell vol. ii. p. 56. His effort to secure “homes abroad” for his kinsfolk by carrying them out to South Africa is an interesting chapter in the history of emigration, and from his venerable widow, long an attached member of Regent Square congregation, the author has heard many anecdotes of lion-hunts and other incidents of life at Glen Lynden.
It was the third hour of the day, and Abdallah still lingered over the morning repast, when there came a little fly and alighted on the rim of his goblet. It sipped a particle of syrup and was gone. It came next morning, and the next, and the next again, till it caught the eye of the scholar. As he considered it, and as it gave forth its many colours and moved itself aright, it seemed beautiful exceedingly, and in his heart he could not find to drive it away. Wherefore it came day by day continually, and waxing bolder and bolder it withal became greater and greater, till in the size as of a locust could be perceived as the likeness of a man; and the greater that it grew the more winning were its ways, frisking like a sunbeam, singing like a peri, so that the eyes of the simple one were blinded, and in all this he did not perceive the subtlety of an evil jinn. Wherefore, waxing bolder and yet bolder, whatsoever of dainty meats its soul desired the lying spirit freely took, and when, waxing wroth, the son of the prophet said, ‘’ This is my daily portion from the table of the mufti; there is not enough for thee and me;” playing one of its pleasant tricks, the brazen-faced deceiver caused the simple one to smile; until in process of time the scholar perceived that as his guest waxed stronger and stronger, he himself waxed weaker and weaker.
Now also there arose frequent contention between the demon and his dupe, and the youth smote the demon so sore that it departed for a season. Thereupon Abdallah rejoiced exceedingly, and said, ‘’ I have triumphed over mine enemy, and when it seemeth good in my sight I shall smite him that he die.” But after not many days, lo and behold! the jinn came again, arrayed in goodly garments, and bringing a present in its hand, and with its fair speech, saying, ‘’ Is it not a little one?” it enticed this silly dove so that he again received it into his chamber.
On the morrow, when Abdallah came not into the assembly of studious youth, the mufti said, “Wherefore tarrieth the son of the faithful? perchance he sleepeth.” Therefore they resorted even to his chamber, and knocked, and lifted up their voice; but as he made no answer the mufti opened the door, and behold! on the divan lay the dead body of his disciple. His visage was black and swollen, and on his throat was the pressure of a finger broader than the palm of a mighty man. All the stuff belonging to the hapless one was gone, the gold and the jewels, and the parchment-rolls, and the changes of raiment; and in the soft earth of the garden were discerned the footsteps of a giant. The mufti measured one of the prints, and lo! it was six cubits long.
What means the apologue? who can expound the riddle? Is it the bottle or the betting-book? is it the billiard-table? is it the theatre, or the tea-garden, or the music-saloon? is it laziness? is it debt? is it the wasted Sunday? But know that an evil habit is an elf constantly expanding. It may come in at the key-hole, but it will soon grow too big for the house. At first it may seem too trivial for serious attack, but it will presently prove the death of the owner. We know not that we can give a better commentary than the experience of! a citizen of Boston, whose kindly memory is still honoured in New England. Writing to a young friend, says Amos Lawrence: “At the commencement of your journey take this for your motto, that the difference of going just right or a little wrong will be the difference of finding yourself in good quarters or in a miserable bog or slough at the end of it. Of the whole number educated in the Groton stores for some years before and after myself, no one else, to my knowledge, escaped the bog or slough; and my escape I trace to the simple fact of my having put a restraint upon my appetite. We five boys were in the habit, every forenoon, of making a drink compounded of rum, raisins, etc., with biscuit — all palatable to eat and drink. After being in the store four weeks I found myself admonished by my appetite of the approach of the hour for indulgence. Thinking the habit might make trouble if allowed to grow stronger, without further apology to my seniors I declined partaking with them. My first resolution was to abstain for a week, and, when the week was out, for a month, and then for a year. Finally, I resolved to abstain for the rest of my apprenticeship, which was for five years longer. During that whole period I never drank a spoonful, though I mixed gallons daily for my old master and his customers. I decided not to be a slave to tobacco in any form, though I loved the odour of it then, and even now have in my drawer a superior Havannah cigar, given me not long since by a friend, but only to smell at. I have never in my life smoked a cigar; never chewed but one quid, and that was before I was fifteen; and never took an ounce of snuff, though the scented rappee of forty years ago had great charms for me. Now, I say to this simple fact of starting /W^ right, am I indebted, with God’s blessing on my labours, for my present position, as well as that of the numerous connections sprung up around me.”*
It is of vast moment to be ‘’just right” when starting. At Preston, at Malines, at many such places, the lines go gently asunder; so fine is the angle that at first the paths are almost parallel, and it seems of small moment which you select. But a little farther on one of them turns a corner or dives into a tunnel, and now that the speed is full the angle opens up, and at the rate of a mile a minute the divided convoy flies asunder: one passenger is on the way to Italy, another to the swamps of Holland; one will step out in London, the other in the Irish Channel. It is not enough that you book for the better country: you must keep the way, and a small deviation may send you entirely wrong. A slight deflection from honesty, a slight divergence from perfect truthfulness, from perfect sobriety, may throw you on a wrong track altogether, and make a failure of that life
* Diary and Correspondence of Amos Lawrence, Boston, p. 10.
which should have proved a comfort to your family, a credit to your country, a blessing to mankind.
Beware of the bad habit. It makes its first appearance as a tiny fay, and is so innocent, so playful, so minute, that none save a precisian would denounce it, and it seems hardly worth while to whisk it away. The trick is a good joke, the lie is white, the glass is harmless, the theft is only a few apples from a farmer s orchard, the bet is only sixpence, the debt is only half-a-crown. But the tiny fay is capable of becoming a tremendous giant; and if you connive and harbour him, he will nourish himself at your expense, and then, springing on you as an armed man, will drag you down to destruction.