How to Hold the Young People.
By T. L. Cuyler
UPON no practical question are many pastors more exercised (as the Scotch phrase is) than the question, How shall the young people of my congregation be drawn more closely to the church, and be developed into a healthy spiritual life? All manner of devices have been attempted; and again and again the well-intended experiments have ended in failure. The cardinal blunder that has been too often made is that the church of Christ is bound to furnish amusements to her young people, and that they are to be constantly bribed, like spoiled children, with confectioneries and convivialities. No time need be spent in exposing the folly of a course which deprives spiritual character, dishonors the church, and ends in disappointment and disgust. Everything that makes the youthful portion of the spiritual household self-indulgent and worldly-minded is directly damaging. Why transplant a young man out of the world into the church if he carries the old soil with him, and yields the same old fruit? In these days the church is quite too much tempted to go “one mile” into worldliness, without teaching the next generation how to go into it “twain.” The vital thing to be done is to hold the young to the church by the same tie that holds them to Christ; and the chief aim should be to strengthen that tie. Literary clubs are good things in their way and place; but their aim is not to develop Christian graces, and the church must be careful how it organizes its sons and daughters for the profit of the head, with no reference to the heart. There might be a demand for some things in the way of mental culture among the poor, uneducated lads of a mission school, that an ordinary church is not bound to furnish to its well-educated young folk. Social entertainments may be wisely introduced occasionally, as condiments are set on the same table with bread and beef; but woe to the eater if there is nothing else there but pepper and mustard! Old Lyman Beecher used to work off his nervous excitement with a violin, but that is no reason why a minister of God should be a professional fiddler. Right in this direction of social amusement lies the danger; how to use the social instinct without abusing it requires both grace and “gumption.”—T. L. Cuyler.