Do you think there is evidence for the facts, as matters of history?
Are you ever likely to have the time or the talent to test this for yourself?
And, if not, do you consider the authority of those who have done so, and staked everything upon their truth, as sufficient?
Will you receive it as the Creed of your Church?
Make up your mind, my boy, above all things make up your mind! Have _some_ convictions, some real opinions, some worthy hopes; and be loyal to, and in earnest about, whatever you do pin your faith to, I assure you that vagueness of faith affects people's every-day conduct more than they think.

The sort of belief which takes a man to church on Sunday who would be ashamed to look as if he were really praying, or confessing real sins when he gets there, is small help to him when the will balances between right and wrong.

It is truly, as a matter of mere common sense, a poor bargain, a wretched speculation, to be half religious; to get a few checks and scruples out of it, and no real strength and peace; and, it may be, to lose a man's soul, and not even gain the world.

For who dare promise himself that Christ our Judge, who spent a self-denying human youth as our example, and so loved us as to die for us, will accept a youth of indifference, and a dissatisfied death-bed on our part?
And if it be all true, and if gratitude and common sense, and self-preservation, and the example and advice of great men, demand that we shall serve GOD with all our powers, don't you think the devil must, so to speak, laugh in his sleeve to see us really conceited of being too large-minded to attend too closely, or to begin to attend too early, to our own best interests ?" "Ah!" he added after a while, "my dear boy--dearer to me than you can tell--the truth is, I covet for you the unutterable blessing of a youth given to GOD.

What that is, some know, and many a man converted late in life has imagined with heart-wrung envy: an Augustine, already numbered with the Saints, a Prodigal robed and decked with more than pardon, haunted yet by dark shadows of the past, the husks and the swine.