[While this talk is intended primarily for Junior Endeavor societies and others that have a pledge, it may be made a general talk on promises.]
Once there were four travellers who set out to journey together. They had not gone far before they came to a very dark woods. It grew blacker and blacker, till they could not see one another and could just barely keep the path. One of the travellers proposed that they tie themselves together for fear one of them might get lost, and this was done. There was one of the company, however, who made fun of this. He did not wish to be bound, he said. He wanted to feel himself free to walk as he pleased. So he would have nothing to do with the rope; and it was not long, as they trudged on through the blackness, before he was missing. They shouted and hunted and did their best to find him, but he was never seen again, and undoubtedly he perished miserably by himself in the forest.
The three who were left went on till they came to a great ice field which they had to cross, and again one of them proposed that they bind themselves together for fear of falling through the ice and snow. Two of them agreed, but the third ridiculed the idea. He did not intend to be bound by any rope out in broad daylight. He wanted to be free to walk where he pleased. It was not long before this foolish man slipped into a great chasm that was hidden by the snow, and there he died. Though the other two often slipped in the same way, yet the rope kept them from going down entirely.
They went on a little further, and came to a lake they had to cross. As they were sailing over, there came up a great storm, and the captain of the boat wanted to lash them to the mast to keep them from being washed overboard. One of them willingly submitted, but the other made fun of the proposal. As if he could not hold on to the mast without being tied to it! Soon, however, there came a monster wave which washed him overboard, and that was the last of him. And so it happened that only one of the travellers ever reached his journey’s end. And this was because the others were so silly as to refuse to be bound, preferring to trust to their own unaided strength.
Now our pledge, children, is a strong rope tying us to our duties, and keeping us from straying away from them into carelessness and foolish ways. Some people think they do not need this rope of a promise, but can hold to their duties without it; but they will meet the fate of the three silly travellers I have told you about. The only sensible way is to use the rope whenever the rope will help us. And that is why we believe in the Christian Endeavor pledge.