I.

HOW TO ENJOY.

VERY life that is at all healthy and happy

EVER

must have its enjoyments as well as its duties. It can not bear the constant strain of grave occupation without losing something of its vitality and sinking into feebleness. Asceticism may have construed life as an unceasing routine of duty-of work done for some grave or solemn purpose. But asceticism has neither produced the best work nor the noblest lives of which our world can boast. In its effort to elevate human nature, it has risen at the highest to a barren grandeur. It has too often relapsed into moral weakness or perversity. Human nature, as a prime condition of health, must recreate itself-must have its moments of unconscious play, when it throws off the burden of work, and rejoices in the mere sensation of its own free activity.

And youth must especially have such opportunities of recreation. It thirsts for them-it is all on the alert to catch them; and if denied to it, it dwindles from its proper strength, or

pursues illegitimate and hurtful gratifications. A young man without the love of amusement is an unnatural phenomenon; and an education that does not provide for recreation as well as study would fail of its higher end from the very exclusiveness with which it aims to reach it.

Yet it must be admitted that the subject of recreation is one attended with peculiar difficulties. Not, indeed, so long as youth remains at school, and under the guidance of external authority. It is' then little more than a matter of games and healthy exercise, in which the animal spirits are chafed into pleasant excitement, and the physical frame hardened into healthy vigor. The proportion which such school recreation should bear to school workthe best modes of it-the games which are best fitted for youth in its different stages-and the organization necessary to give them their happiest effect-are all points which may require attention, or involve some discussion. But the peculiar difficulties of the subject do not emerge so far. It is only when youth has outgrown the scholastic age, and begun life on its own account-when it has tasted the freedom and the power of opening manhood-that recreation is felt to run closely along side of temptation, and that the modes and measures in

which it should be indulged are found to involve considerations of a very complex and delicate character.

Neither here nor any where is it the intention of the writer to lay down formal rules, but rather to suggest principles. Nothing, probably, less admits of definite and unvarying rules than amusement. Its very nature is to be somewhat free from rule. It is the gratification of an impulse, and not the following out of a plan. To lay down plans of amusement is to contradict the very instinct out of which it springs, and to convert recreation into work. No man, certainly, can be kept safe from harm by inclosing himself in a palisade of rules, and allowing himself to enjoy this, and refusing to enjoy that. Moral confusion, and, consequently, weakness, is more likely to come from such a course as this than any thing else. The best and the only effectual guide we can have is that of a rightly-constituted heart, which can look innocently abroad upon life, and which, fixed in its main principles and tendencies, is comparatively heedless of details. It is from within, and not from without-from conscience, and not from law, that our highest monition must come. Young men must seek freedom from temptation in the strength of a Divine communion that guards them from evil. This

is primary. Secondarily, there are certain outward occasions of temptations which it may be incumbent upon them to avoid, and to which we shall give a few words in another chapter.

Primarily and essentially, the heart must be rightly fixed in order to innocent enjoyment. Nothing else will avail. "Whether ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do," says the apostle, "do all to the glory of God." There is a profound significance in this text. Our lives, not merely in some points or relations, but in all points and relations, must be near to God. Not merely in our solemn moods, or our grave occupations, but in our ordinary actions, our moments of enjoyment, our eating and drinking— the emblematic acts of enjoyment-must we recognize and own the presence of God. The grand idea of the glory of God, and the most common aspects of life, are in immediate relation to one another.

And this points to an essential and distinguishing characteristic of Christianity. It is no mere religion of seasons or places; it is no mere series of things to be believed, nor of duties to be done; it rests upon the one, and prescribes the other; but it is more characteristically than either a new spirit and life pervading the whole moral and mental activities, and coloring and directing them at every point. The Christian