“He’s going the wrong way—straying from the true fold; going off the track,” said old Deacon Green, shaking his head ominously, as he saw young Neff enter a church to hear an infidel preacher. “Can’t understand it; he was taught his catechism and ten commandments as soon as he could speak; he knows the right way as well as our parson; I can’t understand it.”

Harry Neff had never seen a day pass since his earliest childhood, that was not ushered in and closed with a family prayer. He had not partaken of a repast upon which the divine blessing was not invoked; the whole atmosphere of the old homestead was decidedly orthodox. Novels, plays and Byronic poetry were all vetoed. Operas, theatres and the like most decidedly frowned upon; and no lighter literature was allowed upon the table, than missionary reports and theological treatises.

Most of his father’s guests being clergymen, Harry was early made acquainted with every crook and turn of orthodoxy. He had laid up many a clerical conversation, and pondered it in his heart, when they imagined his thoughts on anything but the subject in debate. At his father’s request, they had each and all taken him by the button, for the purpose of long, private conversations—the old gentleman generally prefacing his request by the remark that “his heart was as hard as a flint.”

Harry listened to them all with respectful attention, manifesting no sign of impatience, no nervous shrinking from the probing process, and they left him, impressed with a sense of his mental superiority, but totally unable to affect his feelings in the remotest degree.

Such a pity! they all said, that he should be so impenetrable; such wonderful argumentative powers as he had; such felicity of expression; such an engaging exterior. Such a pity! that on all these brilliant natural gifts should not have been written, “Holiness to the Lord.”

Yes, dear reader, it was a pity. Pity, when our pulpits are so often filled with those, whose only recommendation for their office is a good heart and a black coat. It was a pity that graceful gesticulation, that rare felicity of expression, that keen perception of the beautiful, that ready tact and adaptation to circumstances and individuals, should not have been effective weapons in the gospel armory. Pity, that voice of music should not have been employed, to chain the worldling’s fastidious ear to listen to Calvary’s story.

Yet it was a pity that glorious intellect had been laid at an unholy shrine; pity “he had strayed from the true fold.” How was it?

Ah! the solution is simple. “Line upon line, precept upon precept,” is well—but practice is better! Religion must not be all lip-service; the “fruits of love, meekness, gentleness, forbearance, long-suffering” must follow. Harry was a keen observer. He had often heard the harsh and angry word from lips upon which the Saviour’s name had just lingered. He had felt the unjust, quick, passionate blow from the hand which a moment before had been raised in supplication to Heaven. He had seen the purse-strings relax at the bidding of worldliness, and tighten at the call of charity. He had seen principle sacrificed to policy, and duty to interest. He had himself been misappreciated. The shrinking sensitiveness which drew a vail over his most sacred feelings, had been harshly construed into hard-heartedness and indifference. Every duty to which his attention was called, was prefaced with the supposition that he was averse to its performance. He was cut off from the gay pleasures which buoyant spirits and fresh young life so eloquently plead for; and in their stead no innocent enjoyment was substituted. He saw Heaven’s gate shut most unceremoniously, upon all who did not subscribe to the parental creed, outraging both his own good sense and the teachings of the Bible; and so religion, (which should have been rendered so lovely,) put on to him an ascetic form. Oh, what marvel that the flowers in the broad road were so passing fair to see? that the forbidden fruit of the “tree of knowledge” was so tempting to the youthful touch?

Oh, Christian parent! be consistent, be judicious, be cheerful. If as historians inform us, “no smile ever played” on the lips of Jesus of Nazareth, surely no frown marred the beauty of that holy brow.

Dear reader, true religion is not gloomy. “Her ways are ways of pleasantness, her paths are peace.” No man, no woman, has chart or compass, or guiding star, without it.

Religion is not a fable. Else why, when our household gods are shivered, do our tearful eyes seek only Heaven?

Why, when disease lays its iron grasp on bounding life, does the startled soul so earnestly, so tearfully, so imploringly, call on its forgotten Saviour?

Ah! the house “built upon the sand” may do for sunny weather; but when the billows roll, and tempests blow, and lightnings flash, and thunders roar, we need the “Rock of Ages.”