HAVING now, my young friends, endeavoured, though faintly, to describe the sufferings of the Lord of Glory when for our sakes He became man, and having also, in passing, hinted at the design of those sufferings, allow me now, in plainness and faithfulness, to speak to you a little concerning yourself; for I have your character and condition described in the volume which now lies open before me.
“Your foundation is in the dust, and you dwell in a house of clay” (Job iv.); and a body thus made of clay, and founded in the dust, oh how frail! Young, blooming, and healthy as you may be now, this sentence is written on your forehead, “Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return.” You are “the child of a day;” the longest life is but a short span, and compared with eternity is nothing. It is a swift “day,” “swifter than a post” (Job. xi.), running his appointed distance; “swifter than a weaver’s shuttle” (Job vii.), that you see plying with the utmost rapidity, and hastening the more the nearer it approaches the end; the past is now like the tale you heard last night; and the future that you build so much upon is every instant becoming the present; and the present, ere you can speak of it, is become the past. But it is also an uncertain “day”; you cannot trust to one moment, you may be “crushed before the moth” (Job iv.), light and soft as the touch of the moth is; nay, some die in a moment, so that we can find no cause for their death, save that God has in sovereignty said, “Return” (Psal. xc.). And it may be to some reader of these lines, whilst yet reading them, that this voice may have gone forth, “Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee” (Luke xii.). Tell me, nay, rather tell that conscience which is even now restless within you at the thought, why may not that one be you?
Now what is it that makes this frailty, this swiftness, this uncertainty of life, so awful? Just this, you are a sinner. Ah, you are tired of hearing that, are you not? The more I pity you; for I fear that they who are most tired of hearing that they are sinners, are the most likely to drink deepest of everlasting misery. You are made in order to glorify God in everything (I. Cor. x., 31), by loving and obeying Him. Now look back to
your earliest remembrance, and point to one thing you have done purely from love to God, that is, for His glory. What a man loves best, that he thinks most about. Now, what have you been thinking most of? Have you not been most engaged with your play and play-fellows, your dress, silly books, and idle stories? Have you not had many thoughts about being clever, and rich, and great in this world; but none seriously about being holy, and good, and eternally happy in the world to come? Is that like a creature made to glorify God? You have been angry, and in a passion you have called names and spoken bad words, you have been cruel to God’s creatures, you have told lies, you have done mischief, and sought to conceal it, as if there were no God, or sought to excuse it, as if that God could not read your heart. Is all that like the conduct of one created to glorify God? You have mocked this God a thousand times by praying only with your lips, by reading His holy Word only as a form or a task, by trifling, speaking, laughing, staring or sleeping, in that holy house where He was present; and even in your Sabbath-days, by saying that then you ought to love and obey God, and afterwards showing by your conduct on His holy day that you hated Himself and hated His law? Can you, dare you, deny these things? Let that whisper of conscience within you speak out, and answer. What saith it? “Verily I am guilty.” How runs the Law: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind.” Dare you say that you have done so? Your conscience again says, “No;” and the God of that Law and your conscience saith, “No!”
(To be continued.)