THE WESLEYAN SUNDAY-SCHOOL MAGAZINE. PRACTICAL PAPERS. ON MANLINESS IN RELIGION. A WORD TO YOUNG MEN. FROM ONE OF THEMSELVES. WE E cannot shut our eyes to the fact that religion is not popular with the vast majority of the young men of the day. Why? Because they look upon religion as something which renders its followers effeminate and weak; something which does not appear out of place in female garb, or under a gray head, but which is utterly inconsistent with and uncalled for in the gay or busy days of youth and manhood. This opposition may be accounted for by one of two causes; namely, either a false conception of the genius of Christianity, as the result of the misrepresentations of religion made by its enemies, or a self-formed idea of its nature, representing it as a system of peculiarities and oddities. The world observes, and the Church acknowledges, that religion is singular, and that he who will embrace its principles must come out from the former and enter the latter under the public gaze. The world takes up the singularities of the Church, and by ridiculing, exaggerating and colouring them with its own false hues, attempts to bring the whole system into contempt, and so deter the young through sheer cowardice and shamefacedness from leaving its own confines. The Church in its majestic isolation appears formidable, and almost stern, to the young aspirant after happiness, especially as he observes that the world's scorn and sarcasm will not lead her to effect any compromise, or abate by one iota her strict terms, or descend a single step from the sanctity of her position. Thus he is repulsed on the one hand by false representation; and on the other, by the nature of the truth itself. We are all familiar with the gross misrepresentations of religion and its votaries which popular caricaturists delight to present to a facetious public. You have marked the curl on the handsome lip of the young exquisite, as, "sitting in the seat of the scornful," VOL. IX. NEW SERIES.-December, 1874. N he entertains an evening party with his feeble mimicry of characters too high for him to understand, too noble for his vain mind to grasp. Or glancing over a comic journal of the day, you find that he that was born "after the flesh" has taken up the artist's pencil, and the embodiment of his idea of the pious youth of the day greets us in the person of a gloomy, unwholesomelooking individual with long face and short pants, straight hair, shabby hat, "Mrs. Gamp" umbrella, coat too small and gloves too large, and with the whites of his eyes unnaturally conspicuous. Or if you view the subject from the popular novelist's standpoint, how often will your religious sensibilities be grieved and shocked to find sacred things only mentioned to bring them into contempt ! Corrupt society, sensational fiction and the stage are the sole educators of vast numbers of the youth of the day; and as piety is not popular with any of these teachers, it is not wonderful that the shame of the Cross should be made more shameful to those whose youth and circumstances make them keenly sensitive to ridicule and afraid of appearing odd in the eyes of their fellows. It is overpowering to think of the amount of soul-destroying work which caricaturists will have to answer for in that great day when the offenders of the "little ones" shall be declared! Young men! avoid as you would the poison-cup or the contagion of the pestilence, the individual who would make religion ridiculous; who would pun upon Scripture, make fun of the fervency of its adherents, and bring into contempt the devotion of its converts. Fling the God-dishonouring publication from you. Courteously, yet firmly, rebuke the flippant joke or scornful laugh where sacred things are the theme, and forsake at once and for ever the company in which they are indulged. But if some are deterred from embracing Christianity because of the world's misrepresentations of its essential characteristics, others are deterred by those very characteristics. Christianity confesses that her service, like her reward, is singular, spiritual, and because not of this world, therefore not in favour with this world. And when "in the morning of life, with bosom elate,” the youth takes a forecasting view of life's prospects, there is at first sight apparently not much in religion to commend it to his preconceived notions of manliness. His eagerness to enjoy existence apparently meets with a sudden repulse from the command, "Love not the world." His desire for wealth seems to receive an immediate reproof in the inspired assurance that "the love of money is the root of all evil." His ambition is at once ON MANLINESS IN RELIGION. 267 dwarfed to the dimensions of infancy; if he would be great, a babe is to be his model. His pride shrinks from the idea of loving, praying for and requiting with good his bitter enemy, and his courage revolts from that of presenting to the smiter the yet unsmitten cheek. In fine, whatsoever things are apparently manly and noble, appear to be effectually damped by the chill dews of an uncongenial system of restraint called "Religion." We must acknowledge that plausible objections present themselves to the mind of the young to the beginning without delay to lead a devout and holy life; and instead of " pooh-poohing" such, it is well affectionately to expose their unreasonableness. The question to be looked at is, What is true manliness? Man is a tripartite being, animal, intellectual and moral. But which of these distinguishes his manhood? By his animal nature he is identified with the beasts that perish; his intelligence and his moral nature claim for him affinity to the great God Himself. That which is highest and noblest in man, then, and that which removes him furthest from inferior orders of creation, must be the essential characteristic of manliness, and that is his moral nature. Next to that come his intellectual powers, but only second in order, for even in the attributes of Divinity, theologians draw a distinction; and the very terms natural and moral suggest, according to human language, a distinction, with different degrees of excellence. Man, then, was created in the Divine image, and the more nearly he approximates to that image the more truly he becomes a man. Religion is the only assimilator of the human to the Divine, and therefore there can be no true manliness without true religion. Christ is the Christian's model, and if there is one feature which stands out prominently in the character of our Saviour it is its thorough manliness. Yes, our Elder Brother was in the highest and noblest sense a Man! None the less so when He took His beloved disciple to His bosom than when He scourged the sacrilegious traders in the temple; not less so when He wept bitter tears over the favoured city than when His curses rung over unrepentant Capernaum, and when His righteous hatred of hypocrisy and sham burst forth in scathing rebuke of scribe and Pharisee. He did not forfeit His manliness by fondling little children on His knee, nor by bathing the wearied feet of His Apostles, nor by manifesting filial concern publicly and during His last hours for His widowed mother. He was a Man, although He was often to be found on the unpopular side, and took the part He was of the weak against the strong. Jesus." "the Man Christ Brothers! if you are fearful of sharing with Jesus the shame of the Cross, if you dread the conspicuousness of a journey "without the camp," if you imagine that the religion of the Nazarene will unman you, let me invite you no more to study Christian character by the light of its borrowed and often obscured rays as dimly reflected upon its human exponents, but raise your eyes to the Orb of Truth, the "Light that lighteth;" see Jesus, contemplate the Model Life, and say, what word or act in all that matchless career was unmanly or effeminate? And until you discover something in that Life calculated to bring the religion of Jesus into contempt with true men, cease to discountenance a system which consists simply in imitation of the God-Man ! But are Christians altogether free from the guilt of not commending a manly religion? Alas! is it not a fact that the Church's worst enemies are sometimes to be found amongst her professed friends? Indecision, half-heartedness, desire to effect a compromise with the world, have too often had their fruit in gross inconsistencies and relapses into sin, and the further alarming consequence of making religion apparently the pitiable thing which many consider it to be. May God forgive those whose religion is weakness, and whose piety, because of its puniness, lays the whole system open to the charges of feebleness and inefficiency which its enemies rejoice to bring against it! What wonder is it that worldly, calculating men view with suspicion a system of which its professed followers fail to prove the power and sufficiency in their lives? and why wonder that they should sometimes fall into the error of attaching to the system itself a weakness which belongs only to its inconsistent adherents, and is the result, not of the observance, but of the neglect of its principles? Why wonder, indeed, when they see men calling themselves Christians, evidently anxious, if not to obliterate, at least to render as indistinct and undiscernible as possible, the boundary line which is supposed to separate them from the world; apparently careful to conceal Immanuel's uniform under the cloak of worldly conformity; starting out boldly in the royal way of the Cross when in godly company and sneaking back to forbidden paths when surprised by that of the godless! Why should the sinner wonder, indeed, when he discovers that little stands between him and the professed saint but a highsounding name! It is a startling and humiliating fact, but a fact ON MANLINESS IN RELIGION. 269 none the less, that there are men who consider themselves abandoned to their sin, whose compeers in guilt are to be found in the ranks of Christian professors. Many of these are not wilful hypocrites; they would like, in fact, to slip along life's by-ways, by the least public road to heaven, if not clothed in the livery of darkness, at all events in a kind of nondescript garb, and under ambiguous colours. We can imagine the worldling soliloquising thus, as he contemplates one of these characters, and measures himself by the standard of his profession: "I sometimes indulge too freely in pleasures of the table; well, so does he. I backbite my neighbours now and again, but not more than he. I dress gaily, and love gay company, but he does the same. I enjoy the semi-profane jest or joke of doubtful propriety, but his laughter thereat is as hearty as mine." And reversing this odd seal of Christian character, he finds in the obverse little to condemn him or to provoke unfavourable comparison: "He goes to the house of God; so do I. He observes the Sabbath to some extent; I also. He parts with a trifle sometimes to further God's cause; I give quite as liberally. He can talk a little on religion occasionally; I more." And from these analogies, the sinner not. unnaturally concludes that the inconsistent professor is not a whit better than multitudes of men who make no such profession at all. What is wanted in Christian young men is Christian manliness. If they are destitute of this element of true character, their profession of religion will do more harm than good. How seasonable the advice given by Mr. Simeon to young men, in his sermon on Sober-mindedness: "Consider on every occasion what impression your conduct is likely to make on others. This is on no account to be overlooked: an inattention to it is productive of incalculable evil. We are not at liberty to cast stumbling-blocks in the way of others. Religion of itself, however careful we may be, will be sufficiently offensive to the carnal mind, without having anything added to it by our imprudence." Young men! it is good to develop your muscles, "for bodily exercise profiteth" a "little;" the cultivation of your mind is of unspeakable value, for "that the soul be without knowledge, is not good;" but that which chiefly assimilates you to God in Whose image man was originally created, and may yet be renewed, is to you of the chiefest importance. Cultivation of the body will not do that, for it is dust; development of the mind will not of itself accomplish that end, for sin and intelligence are too |