LETTERS TO A YOUNG MAN by L. P.

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Sep 26, 1911

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 38, No. 38.

LETTERS TO A YOUNG MAN

By L. P.

BY A YOUNG MAN

MY DEAR ROBERT,— There are some things I have been wanting to say to you for a while past; but I have held back, thinking the opportune moment had not arrived. Your last letter convinces me that I should wait no longer. You are now entering social life in earnest, and are making the nearer acquaintance of certain young women. There is nothing wrong in this, providing you do not give an undue amount of your time to such matters, and thus come to neglect those studies, the faithful carrying on of which are vital to your mental growth and development. I am not displeased with your learning to know these young ladies; but I am a little disappointed at the tone of the remarks you drop concerning them. No doubt they have their weaknesses as well as young men; and sometimes the little foibles of a woman seem silly or utterly unintelligible to the opposite sex; but if these girls are worthy your acquaintance a deeper look will reveal hidden strength. A good deal of the frivolity that we deplore in young women is owing to the habit both men and women have of showing their least worthy side when in society. A man treats a woman as a sort of plaything, and unconsciously she responds to this treatment by showing the most superficial and least lovable side of her character. Some few women perhaps are wholly superficial, and lack the nobler elements of character; but with such you can not afford to spend your time, and from such you surely can not afford to form your mature judgment of woman.

Unworthy association with the fair sex has a highly corrupting effect upon the young man himself. He may think he is merely being amused at the expense of these frivolous girls, when he is really destroying the gentler, nobler affections of his own nature, and thus making it impossible for him ever to enter fully into the deep, mysterious joys of a happy marriage.

The Middle Ages, it is true, had their drawbacks; but one thing at least the present generation could learn from that so-called benighted period of the world's history—the reverence for womanhood which lay at the root of the whole of the vast fabric to which we give the collective term chivalry. The knight errant of those days went forth to do great and mighty deeds, but not wholly in his own strength, nor for his own glory. It was a woman who had buckled on his armor, it was a woman who watched over him all through the fray, and it was the love and approval of this same woman that was to be the reward of the battle. And it is largely so to-day if we could but realize it. No man fights the battle of life with all the courage and fortitude of which he is capable whose heart is not cheered, and his arm nerved, by the love of a woman. It was so ordained from the beginning. Woman, weak in herself, has the power of infusing wondrous strength into man. And it is to the boundless credit of woman that she is so willing to pour the richest treasures of her inner life into the lap of the man she loves and honors,—so willing to serve him in the highest sense as well as in the humbler things of every-day life.

But rightly to profit by all this, the man must understand and reverence the opposite sex; and if he would ever be able to love and be loved by a pure, good woman, he must begin by learning to reverence womanhood itself.

We hear a good deal of talk nowadays about the need of educating the girls for wifehood and motherhood; but it seems to me that our young men have equal need of an education which shall fit them to be good husbands and fathers. Certainly the responsibility for the maintenance of a happy married state must be equally divided between the two parties to the contract; and while there are doubtless many exceptions, I incline to think that as a rule the man comes seriously short oftener than the woman. And when he does, it is likely to be because of lack of this knowledge of the real place of woman in the world, and the nature of the relation which the Creator intended the one sex to sustain to the other.

There is no doubt in my own mind that the tendency to think lightly of woman is the first step, and a long one at that, toward downright immorality. However strong the young man's passions, and however alluring the temptations, he can not, while he holds in his heart a sense of respect and reverence for the sex, and of loyalty to the one woman who is sometime to be his wife, tho for the time being he may not even know her—I say he can not, while upheld by these strong supports, make any woman the mere means for the gratification of his unbridled passions. The two things are mutually exclusive. They can not exist together. The young man in every case first learns in his heart to despise not merely a woman, but womanhood itself, before he can taste the forbidden pleasures of a dissipated life; for in so doing his actions affect not only the woman with whom he is immediately associating, but the other one, now unknown to him mayhap, whom he is one day to lead to the altar. He can not lose his own manly purity without rendering himself incapable in some measure of a deep, pure life attachment; and he can not take unlawful liberties with one woman, however low she may have fallen, without by so doing insulting the whole sex.

It is perhaps unnecessary to say more about the vicious life—its momentary pleasures, and its long, long years of bitter remorse. The Bible, that grand old book of the ages, has given a description of it in words that go straight to the mark. I know of nothing anywhere else that in respect of a vivid, truthful setting forth of vice and its results, equals the account in the seventh chapter of Proverbs of the "strange woman," and the "young man void of understanding," who under cover of darkness "went the way to her house." The "woman with the attire of an harlot, and subtle of heart" is unfortunately still with us, and temptation in some form or other "lieth in wait at every corner." And the young man who yields—how feelingly and how truthfully his case is set forth: "He goeth after her straightway, as an ox goeth to the slaughter or as a fool to the correction of the stocks; till a dart strike through his liver; as a bird hasteth to the snare, and knoweth not that it is for his life." How impressive, too, are the closing words of admonition: "Let not thine heart decline to her ways, go not astray in her paths. For she hath cast down many wounded: yea, many strong men have been slain by her. Her house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death."

People have thoughtlessly blamed the Bible for its plain speaking concerning sexual matters; but it is all with a purpose—that sins of this nature, which are so fatal to the health alike of soul and body, should appear exceeding sinful,—that young men especially should take warning in time and escape the grievous snares that lie thick about their feet. There is nothing in the Bible that renders vice in the least degree attractive. Everywhere it and its dreadful consequences are painted in their own true colors; but this is more than can be said of some modern novels. It is well to remember that because the conventions of the age are against coarseness in conversation, and indeed against the use of plain English in speaking of sex matters, this in itself is no evidence of unusual virtue. Impurity thrives as well under cover as in the open, and there are in the literature of to-day passages which, tho free from coarseness, depict vice in such a manner as to make it decidedly attractive. Such books, it need hardly be said, are far more harmful even than books that contain objectionable instances of coarseness but are true to the facts and do not throw a false glamour over that which is at bottom wholly bad. The Bible, however, rightly read, is wholly free from anything like coarseness, but it speaks freely and plainly about certain vital matters which modern society prefers to keep in the dark.

I could write much more on this subject, but I forbear. Keep high ideals before you in everything, my dear friend; but in all your relations with women, keep very high ideals, not only for their sake, but for your own. As a discerning young man you should mark out for your guidance in all these matters about which I have been writing, just as strict rules as you would impose upon your own sister. Nothing less than

this is safe, nothing less is honorable. And while you are thus exceedingly circumspect in your outward actions and in your words, be careful also to think rightly concerning women — yes, and generously. Do not allow yourself in the very morning of life to be chilled and blasted by cynicism. I would have you wise, but not worldly-wise. This is all for to-night, but another time I may have something more to say to you about these matters. Affectionately, L. P.