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 pail, 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. Here is a lesson for
(a) Thinkers: Knowledge, it shall vanish away.'
(b) Sensualists: Man delights me not, nor woman either.' How old was he who said that?
(c) Ambitious, self-advancing men.
Is it worth your while to devote yourself to transient aims?
Is it congruous with your dignity as immortal souls? Is it innocent or guilty?
Is the gospel not a thing to live by as well as to die by?
