FALSE SHAME OF YOUNG MEN.
YOUNG men who come from the country to town, and who get on in the world, are often ashamed of their parents, of the rustic dress they once wore, and of the simple but kindly ways of their childhood. And too often when they assume the fashionable clothes and adopt the fashionable ways of their new friends, they leave behind them the religion of their childhood, and forget the piety which they learned at a mother's knee. They have outgrown the priestly dress in which their mother dedicated them to God, and think her religion old-fashioned and worn out. This is false shame. It is a sin against the dearest and most sacred instincts of our74nature. So far from being manly, it is mean and dastardly. Depend upon it, the man who will have the most of the esteem of his fellow-creatures and of the favor of heaven, will be he who keeps unchanged all through life the mantle of heavenly devotion with which his mother clothed him. He who makes the religion of his youth the habit of his life—his garment and way of acting all through—will come to honor, and will enjoy the proud blessings of consistency. His life will be a gracious verity, like that of Samuel; it will have one steadfast purpose running through it all. The outer life will be of one piece with the inner; one part will not reproach the other; and what he seems, that he ever is.—Selected.