THE

The Morning of Life:

AN ADDRESS TO YOUNG MEN.

HE position which I occupy as your lecturer this evening, is, I am fully sensible, one at once of privilege and of responsibility. It is one of privilege, because I know and am persuaded that the highest honour that any man can be invested with is to be given work to do for God; and if, my friends, through the Divine blessing on what I have to say, it shall come to pass that an impression has been made or an impetus given, in the case of any one of my hearers, such as to lead to a Heart and a Life being given to God—to God's holy and happy service-why, a work will have been accomplished-a work for God, greater and more glorious than the taking of a city or the conquest of a kingdom! And it is one of responsibility, becausejust as in the process of photography, for instancethere are certain circumstances-certain states of the atmosphere, for example, and such like-in which impressions are more readily and vividly produced than at other times and under other circumstances; so I believe

B

that just now we are living in the midst of influences so peculiar and potent, we are breathing an atmosphere of thought and feeling, of passion and prejudice, so peculiar, that the mind-especially the young and nascent mind is liable to be impressed and moulded, to be swayed and biassed, more readily than at other and less. sensational periods, and therefore responsibility, grave and solemn, devolves on one who occupies the position which I hold here to-night, who stands up to speak to young men, the hope, under God, of our country and of our Church in years to come, when we of the present generation have passed away.

The subject on which I have been asked to address you this evening is a very suggestive and important one. It is the Morning of Life—the morning with all its vigour, freshness, and power as related to the mature glories of noontide, and the mellowed lights and tranquil beauty of evening. By the Morning of Life we are to understand (I need not tell you) the early hours of our life's short but chequered, passing but momentous, day—the season of youth, with its manifold and all-important advantages, and its varied and peculiar perils and dangers. To us all this is a subject full of interest and signifiSome of us there are who have been young, but have ripened, it may be, into the maturity of noonday, or the declining light and lengthening shadows of evening, and for such, in the words of our poet—

cance.

"'Tis greatly wise to talk with our past hours,

And ask them what report they bore to heaven."

Others of you are still young, you find yourselves tonight in the Morning of Life, in possession of all the advantages (and they are many), of all the responsibilities (and they are tremendous) of youth, to you would I more especially address myself; and oh! that with God's blessing anything I shall say to you may be the means of arousing you to greater zeal in pursuing what is holy and good, greater care and resolution in shunning what is impure and evil.

And first I would have you remember, (1) that the Morning of Life is to the noontide and evening of our short day what the seed-time is to the harvest, the fountain to the stream, the foundation to the building; and just as, if the foundation be unsafe, the building will totter and fall; if the spring be poisoned, the stream will be impure; if the seed-time be neglected, the harvest must prove a failure; even so our life's morning, if misused or trifled with, will surely wax into a noon of misery, and wane into an evening of sorrow and disgrace and ruin. It can only end as its natural result (apart from any interposition, which we have no right to expect, of God's grace on our behalf) in that self-condemning verdict so terrible with eternity before us, and only one life in which to prepare for it.-Perdidi diem, "I have lost the day," and that—for ever.

You perceive, then, the transcendent value of the Morning of Life; how important it is to commence the day well, to secure early in the day that which has "the promise of the life that now is, as well as of that which

is to come;" to make a wise use of early and existing opportunities, when we know for certain that our early life and its consequences are perpetually coming up in our later years, and that such as is the morning, so (it is probable) will be the whole tenor of that life in this world which, in the very same way though far more exactly, will come up with absolute powers of retribution throughout eternity. "The past," it has been said, "and the future are God's; the present alone is ours." And so it is. But remember your "present" to-day will be your "past" to-morrow; and remember too, that what is already past is not surer and more inevitable than is the certainty that what is future will grow out of what is already past or what is now passing. Oh! what a world of misery would it save us in after years were we to learn this great lesson, and to act on it in the Morning of Life, that the very nature of things itself is not more certain than are (humanly speaking) the results and consequences of our voluntary characters and actions!-those characters and actions which depend so much, and oftentimes that for ever, on what we ourselves choose to make them in the Morning of Life! then is the first aspect in which I would have you view the responsibility entailed on you by the Morning of Life, namely, that which springs from the law of consequences as God Himself has enacted it. "The colour of our life (says Cowper) is generally such as the three or four first years in which we are our own masters make it." In this, then, young men, lie at once your peculiar van

Here

tage-ground and your solemn responsibility. You stand at the fountain-head of life; if you pollute the spring, the stream will flow on polluted also. You have, as it were, the cup of life put into your hands, fresh and brimming, and if you pour poison into it now you may go on drinking out that poison to the dregs all your days. You have the seed-time at your disposal, and

as a man soweth so shall he also reap; for he that soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting." How important is this estimate of the value of our life's morning! It is the time of plants and roots; the time of foundations and laws; the time of anticipating bright issues, and guarding against dark contingencies; the time of principles and prophecies, to be developed and to be fulfilled hereafter, in the man or in the angel, in the saint or in the devil, and that for ever! These are undoubted truths, great and acknowledged realities; and yet if anything could teach us our inability to elevate and save ourselves—if anything could show us that we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves— could prove to us our need of a strength not our own— of grace and power and motives such as the Gospel and it alone can offer; it is surely the fact that too often our experience is that of the ancient moralist-" Video meliora, proboque; deteriora sequor;" that we squander the precious morning hours, dally with sin in some delusive form, and suffer ourselves to be decoyed away from the King's highway, step by step, until we are on the