Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth.--_Eccl. 12,
1._
There is no idea, my beloved, more common among men than this, that
not childhood, nor youth, nor manhood, but old age is the most
suitable period for becoming religious. The argument in support of
this idea runs thus: In old age we have less to do with the affairs
of this world, and consequently shall have more time and leisure for
those of the next; then this world will afford us little enjoyment
and pleasure, and with our passions quenched, with hair turning
gray, hands palsied, limbs tottering, can we fail to recognize these
as the heralds of the grim king and hear his voice that says: "Be
ready, the Judge is at the door"? As a vessel, rocked by storms and
falling to pieces, makes all haste to get to port, so will we. So
runs the argument.
Prevalent as this idea is, it's a wild fancy, a mocking and baseless
delusion. For various reasons: At no time is change of heart more
difficult than in old age. Not as if God's grace were less powerful
then, but because the difficulties of conversion increase with
years; the heart grows more callous, the sinful habits stronger.
Take a sapling, for instance; it bends to your hand, turning this
way or that, as you will. When seventy springs have clothed it with
leaves and the sun of seventy summers has added to its breadth and
height, it scorns, not yours only, but a giant's strength. Every
year of the seventy, adding fiber to its body and firmness to the
fibers, has increased the difficulty of bending it. In the matter
of our everlasting welfare it is much the same. Advancing time
hardens the fibers of man's heart. Of all tasks we know, there is
none so difficult as to touch the feelings and rouse the conscience
of godless old age. Moreover, it is an extremely doubtful matter
whether we shall ever reach old age. Few do, and the probability
is that we shall not. Of all our race, nearly half die in infancy.
Another large proportion sinks into the grave ere the summer of
life is past. Ask that aged man with stooping form and slow gait,
where the playmates are of his childhood; where the boys that sat
by him at the desk in school; where the youths, flushed with health
and full of hope, with whom he started in the race of life; where
his fellow-workmen or partners in business. With one blow of His
hand, one sentence of His lips, God may dash all our expectations
of threescore years and ten to pieces. This night thy soul shall be
required of thee, and then think of the folly that suggests that
old age is the best for getting an interest in Christ, peace with
God, and a meetness for the kingdom of heaven. Do men act with such
infatuation in other and far less important matters? Here is a man
who insures his life,--why? Because, he will tell you, life is
uncertain, because nothing is more uncertain, because the chances
are he may not live to be old; "and if I would be cut off suddenly,
what is to become of my family?" Men regard this worldly prudence.
But, oh, that man would reason as soundly and act as wisely where
high interests are at stake! Let me change but a little the terms of
that question: If you should be cut off suddenly and early, what is
to become of your family, and ask: If you should die suddenly and
early, what is to become of your soul?
Let me this morning, prompted by the Gospel-lesson of this Sunday,
which presents to us the youthful Savior in the temple, ask you,
especially my young hearers, to ponder with me the words of our
text: "Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth." We shall
consider, _I. that youth is the most favorable season in which to
begin a religious course_; _II. point out some of the beneficial
results of early piety_; _III. conclude with a word of general
application_.
Youth, my beloved, is the most favorable time to begin a religious
course, because, we would say, in the first place, it's the critical
time of a person's life. Childhood receives impressions easily, but
these impressions, while lively, are not deep or abiding. How soon
the infant forgets its mother and transfers its love to another, and
the children that stood so pitiful at a parent's casket, a few weeks
afterward are as buoyant and gay at their play as the happiest of
their playmates. Manhood, again, on the other hand, like the solid
rock, retains impressions once made, but does not easily receive
them; what the intellect has gained in ripeness, the heart has lost
in tenderness; and impressibility, lying between these two periods,
is youth; then it is that our minds, like the wax to which the seal,
or the clay to which the mold is applied, possess both the power
of receiving impressions and the power of retaining them. Then the
character is fixed; then the turn is taken either for God or for
the world; then the road is entered which determines our future
destiny. It is an old and trite saying, found in another tongue,
"What the boy does not learn, the man does not know." In youth the
powers are more volatile, the memory is receptive and tenacious.
The mind is lively and vigorous, the affections are more easily
touched and moved, we are more accessible to the influence of joy
and sorrow, hope and fear, we engage in an enterprise with more
expectation, ardor, and zeal.--Moreover, the season of youth will
be found to contain the fewest obstacles, and is most free from the
troubles which afterward embitter, cares which afterward perplex,
and the schemes which engross, and engagements which hinder one in
more advanced and connected life. And, hence, it has been the advice
of the wise men: "In the morning sow thy seed." It is the young
and tender root that penetrates the soil; it is when the fibers
are delicate that, entering the fissures, it passes into the heart
of the rock; and the earlier the mind is brought in contact with
religion and becomes acquainted with its great and immense objects,
the more thoroughly in after life will it comprehend and, like a
root wrapped around the rock, the more firmly hold to it. It is the
young recruits that become the best soldiers, and young apprentices
the best mechanics, and the best Christians, in like manner, are
those who have been so early. Run, in evidence of that, over the
list of names which God so honorably distinguished in history,
Joseph, Samuel, David, Solomon, Jonah, Timothy, John,--and you will
observe that in almost all cases they are examples of early piety.
And if we come to later times and read the biographies of those that
have been eminent in God's kingdom, like our great reformer, Dr.
Luther, and his colaborers, of Dr. Walther, and scores and hundreds
of others, the Almighty seems to have acted almost invariably by the
same rule, and appears to have seldom conferred distinguished honor,
with very few exceptions, except on early piety. They were all men
that feared the Lord in their youth. How important and reasonable,
then, is youth to begin a religious course.
And, again, we would remark, it is, of all others, the most
honorable period in which to begin a course of godliness. Religion
is an ornament. Piety in any situation or age is pleasing to the
Most High. It is well, when the world cannot fill our hearts, to
turn our trembling steps from its broken cisterns to the fountain
of living waters. It is a grand testimony to religion to see a
gray and bent old man standing by the door of mercy and with loud
and urging knocking imploring God to open and let him in; but it's
exquisitely more attractive and noble to see a youth in the beauty
and dew of his age giving himself to Christ and a life of high
and holy virtues. Would you thank any one to offer you the shell
without the kernel, or the stalk without the flower, or a purse
without the money? And think you God is pleased with the dregs of
the cup, the refuse and few declining years of a man's life? Is it
fair and reasonable that men should employ their time and talents,
their health and their strength, and their genius to serve Satan,
the world, and the flesh, God's degrading rivals, and then ask Him
to gather among the stubble of life after the enemy has secured the
harvest? In the Old Testament God commanded that green ears had
to be offered; the _first_ had to be chosen for His services: the
_first_-born of man, the _first_-born of beasts, the _first_ fruits
of the field. It was an honor becoming the Lord they worshiped to
serve Him first. And, correspondingly, it is your duty in the New
Testament that you should give Him the first-born of your days,
the first fruits of your reason, the prime of your affections. It
is with such sacrifices that God is well pleased. The Apostle John
was the youngest disciple; he was called the disciple whom Jesus
loved. It's the most suitable and honorable, and it is the most
profitable and advantageous. It has its reward. That is our second
consideration, _viz._, the beneficial results of early piety.
Here we would note, as the first advantage, that to serve God in
youth is a safeguard, a defense against vice and temptations. No
age, indeed, is secure. Till we arrive in heaven and have laid off
this body of sin and infirmities we are never safe. Here, like
travelers in the mountains, where a coating of snow hides the
treacherous ice, and one false step may prove the Christian's ruin,
we walk in slippery places, and have need to lean on an arm stronger
than our own. Still youth is of all ages the most dangerous.
With its ardent temper, its inexperience, its credulity, taking
appearances for realities, its impatience of restraint, its unbroken
passions, and feeble hands to control and guide them, it requires
the utmost care and vigilance. "Lead us not into temptation," should
be its daily, constant, earnest prayer. We read at times in our
public prints of the wrecks that happen on the shores of our great
lakes or the ocean, of vessels gone down in disaster and storms.
What is that list of wrecked vessels to the number of men and women
who year by year are wrecked in their youth on the dangers and vices
of our towns,--our town? What a graveyard of virtue, honor, and
honesty! Let the places of business where employers show no regard
to the welfare, but only to the work of those in their service; let
the houses where no friendly interest is taken in their domestics;
let the halls of public amusement, the haunts of drunkenness, and
the hells of vice, give up their secrets, as the sea does the
drowned cast upon the beach, and we should have a roll like the
prophet's, "written without and within with lamentations, mourning,
and woe," as shocking, if not more so, as the field of battle,
covered with the carnage of war. And out upon the scene, from the
virtuous influence of home and school, steps the unsophisticated
youth, a thousand avenues of seduction opening around him and
a siren voice singing at the entrance of each. Evil companions
surround him, erroneous publications ensnare his eye, means and
opportunities of temptation and sin. He may flatter himself that
his own good sense and moral feelings will render him secure, but
as the wise King Solomon says: "He that trusteth in his own heart
is a fool." The force of examples, the influence of circumstances,
the voice of railing and ridicule, the fascinations of the pleasure
party, stifle the finest resolutions, and often render us an
astonishment to ourselves, as the old proverb says: "Give the devil
an inch, and he will take an ell." No, depend upon it, there is
nothing that will do to keep you virtuous, noble, and happy but a
hearty consecration of soul and body to the God that loves you, and
the Savior that redeemed you, nothing else than the restraints which
that God inspires in His holy Law, and the helps that He provides in
the rules and ordinances of His Church. Let a young Christian love
the habitation of His house, the place where His honor dwelleth, and
let Him follow the Savior's direction to watch and pray, and he will
retain an undefiled soul in an undefiled body.
Nor only thus before God, but as it says of the youthful Savior in
to-day's Gospel. He increased in favor with God and _man_. Early
piety is honored, commands the respect of every right thinking
person in this world. You will remember how the sterling piety of
the youthful Joseph was honored by Potiphar and afterwards by the
King of Egypt himself. Nor need I remind you how Daniel and the
other three Hebrew youths, because of the excellent spirit of piety
that was in them, was promoted to the highest post of dignity and
responsibility in the Chaldean empire, and whilst God does not
promise you that if you seek Him in your youth, you will be advanced
to sit among princes and to rule kingdoms, He promises you honor and
respect, in whatever station you may be placed. The most worldly
people and religiously careless people would rather have the godly
lad in their employ, the young man who is loyal to his conscience
and of genuine integrity of character, who will do his duty, "not
with eye-service, but in singleness of heart, as unto the Lord,"
than any other kind. In brief, as the Apostle says, you will find
that "Godliness is profitable for all things, having the promise of
the life that now is, and of that which is to come."
Let me, then, in conclusion, charge you, my dear hearers, to
consecrate to the Lord the first fruits of your days. "Remember,"
says our text, "thy Creator in the days of thy youth." What though
frivolous men and thoughtless women ridicule your devotion,
and scoff at your churchgoing and professions! What though
some shallow-minded companions charge you with fanaticism or
singularity, hypocrisy or pride! The day is fast coming when they
will be compelled to justify your conduct, to confess that you have
chosen the better part, and to mourn that they neglected to seek the
Savior in the morning of their existence.
And to those among you who have feared the Lord from your youth, and
are now glorifying your Redeemer in the maturity of life, I would
say: "Go on, earnestly pursue the glorious course which you have
begun; be not weary in your religious life, grow in grace as you
advance in years, be illustrations and stimulating examples unto
others, and thus spend your life usefully for God and man, before
the evil days come and the years draw nigh, when you will say: "I
have no pleasure in them," when eternity stands at the door, and you
will face your Maker. God strengthen you in this determination for
Christ's sake. Amen."