Your time of life is full of ebullient feeling, and sees freshness,
glory, and beauty everywhere. Even the least enthusiastic men are
enthusiastic in their early days. You have physical strength, the
keenness of unpalled senses, the delights of new powers, the
blessedness of mere living. All this springs partly from physical
causes, partly from the novelty of your position. Thank God! all young
creatures are happy, and you among the rest.
Now, I do not ask you to restrain and mortify these things. But I do
ask you to remember the end. It is as certain that joys will pall, it
is as certain that subjects of interest will be exhausted, it is as
certain that powers will decay, as that they now are what they are. All
these grave, middle-aged, careful people round you were like you once.
You, if you live, will be like them. The spring tints are natural, but
they are transient; the blossoms are not always on the fruit-trees.
Think, then, of the End: to make you thankful; to stimulate you; but
also to lead you to take for your object what will never pall. All
created things go. Only the gospel provides you with a theme which
never becomes stale, with objects which are inexhaustible.