Absalom, however foolish and wicked his revolt, however strange his
rebellion against his royal father, notwithstanding his youth and
inexperience, was a stubborn fact, with which the leaders and counselors
and armies of the kingdom found themselves obliged to deal. Otherwise
David would have been dethroned and his authority violently usurped. If
not dealt with so as to suppress him, he must be dealt with in the more
unpleasant capacity of a suppressor and tyrant.
Young men are a fact in society; and as such cannot be without relations
to the church. Not only so, they are an important fact; a prominent fact;
a potent fact. They are a force in the business, the social, the
political, the governmental relations of the community. If they have not
wisdom, they have strength and energy. If they have not caution, they have
enterprise. If they have not experience, they have tact, intelligence and
knowledge. If they refuse to follow old rules, they succeed ofttimes in
the use of their own methods. Society concedes much to them, entrusts them
with serious responsibilities, seeks them for positions of power and
influence, is powerfully swayed in whatever direction they choose, as a
body, to throw themselves, applauds and welcomes their success.
The relations of such a body to the church of Christ must be important.
This mass of manly strength, energy, independence, intelligence and
enterprise must, if set on fire with Christian ardor and enlisted on her
behalf, greatly conduce to her prosperity; while it cannot but be a
serious hindrance to her success if this element is neutral, or arrayed
against her. If neutral, indeed, it is against her. If she have not the
young men incorporated with her membership, at work in her sabbath
schools, in regular attendance on her ordinances, woven into her social
relations, throwing their strength and generosity and enthusiasm into her
benevolent enterprises, contributing their fresh thought to her
assemblies, working, through the closer intimacies which mark their age,
to increase her numbers, she will have to move under the drag applied by
their indifference, resist their fascinations exerted in drawing others
away from her standard, contend sharply against the skepticism to which
youth is naturally prone, and if they are won at last, win them when the
freshness of youth is gone, and by a double expenditure of power. The
church _must_ deal with them as the friends or as the enemies of religion;
must appropriate or resist their power. They come to her in the flush of
their manly strength, like the Roman envoys to Carthage, holding in their
robes peace and war, and offering the church her choice.