Sowing Wild Oats
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There are steps away from Heaven, as well as towards Heaven, and a warning word cannot be wholly out of place, and so we give this earnest admonition to the young and thoughtless, and implore them to keep their minds pure.
Many a young man has been lured from the path of virtue, and enticed into the road that leads, by an easy descent, into the accursed valley of destruction — through the thoughtless speech of some thoughtless person, talking flippantly about sowing wild oats, as a thing to be expected in youth.
"I had one lesson on this subject from the lips of an aged counselor," said a valued friend to me, not long ago, "which has never been forgotten. The timely warning saved me. I was nineteen years of age, and had just entered college. Young men were there from nearly every State in the Union, and some of them already sadly corrupted. I was social, in high health and spirits, and with an imagination forever carrying me beyond the actual and the present. Before I had time for reflection, and before even a consciousness of wrong had peached me — I was afloat on a dangerous sea, my boat gliding swiftly forwards, and the Siren's songs already in my ears.
"One night we had a wine party in the town, which ended in excesses, the thought of which has called a burning blush to my cheeks a hundred times since. I had not been very well for some days previously, suffering from constant headache and low febrile symptoms. The dissipation of a night, turned the scale upon the wrong side, and I was so ill the next day, that it was thought best to call in a physician. He was an old man, of the old school of gentlemen, and wise, thoughtful, and kind. He commenced, at once, the business of finding out everything in regard to my habits, principles, and modes of thought, and there was something in him that so inspired me with confidence, that I concealed nothing. He looked grave, and offered a remonstrance.
"'Oh,' said I, almost lightly, 'young men must sow their wild oats. The ground will be so much the better prepared for seeding wheat, after the crop is taken.'
"'An error of the gravest character,' he replied, seriously, 'and one that has ruined its thousands and its tens of thousands of young men. Is a garden, better prepared for the reception of good seed, for having been first permitted to grow weeds? I put the question to your common sense. Are there not some soils so filled with all manner of evil seeds, that the gardener, with his utmost toil and care, can scarcely remove the vigorous plants that spring to life in the warm sunshine and rain? It is no mere comparison, that of the human soul to a garden.
"'It is, in reality, a spiritual garden. Truth is the good seed which is sown in this garden — and false principles are the evil seed, or 'wild oats,' which the enemy's hand scatters, if permitted, upon its virgin soil. Now, is it not as much an insult to reason, to say that the man will be a wiser, truer, better man, for having false principles, leading at once to an evil life, sown upon the ground of his mind in youth — as it is to say that a garden will be more thrifty in after years, for being first permitted to grow weeds?
"'My friend! I have lived almost to the completion of life's earthly cycle, and have seen a sad number of young men lost to the world, lost to themselves, and lost, I fear, to the eternal company of God, in consequence of that single false idea sown into the soil of their minds. Oh, cast it out at once! Keep yourself pure. Let right principles, chaste thoughts, noble purposes, manly aims, grow in your garden — not the accursed wild oats! Be temperate, prudent, virtuous, obedient to superiors, honorable, kind. Aim to be a man — not a sensualist. Govern yourself as a man, instead of letting passion, appetite, or any sensual desire rule you as a tyrant. Sow no more wild oats. You will find trouble enough in your after life, with the seed already scattered in your fields.'
"The scales," said my friend, "dropped at once from my eyes. I saw that the good old physician was right, and that this cant about sowing wild oats involved one of the mostdangerous fallacies into which the mind of a young man could fall. It was my last folly of this kind."
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