for ourselves and for each other that the taint does not eat out the good, by growing into sins of boyhood or of youth, or by hardening into depraved habits in our manhood. If we let our youth take an unhappy downward course, whether in taste or habit, every day puts salvation farther off from us, because every day any fault which is indulged or nursed tends to grow deeper and more inveterate; and yet, forgetting this, how many, while their early years are running to waste, nurse the vain hope that some day they will receive the sudden baptism of a new birth.
So, then, instead of vaguely trusting, any of us, to the hope of what some future call or help or happy visitation may do for us, let us obey the Divine injunction, which, when rightly understood, is very pressing, urging us, as we hope to see good days, to be very jealous of our present life and its tendencies; let us do this, standing always firm and immovable in the things that are pure and of good report.
However it may be in some other matters, in this matter of our moral and spiritual life, the greatest, the most important, the most serious thing of all, it is almost invariably true that the child is father of the man, and we feel that we have no right to expect it to be otherwise. In our everyday consideration of life, we recognise all this: we speak of growth in character and formation of habit as facts which no one would ignore, and which cannot be overestimated. But to acknowledge these, and at the same time to trust that God will hereafter arrest any stream of sinful tendency in us which we ourselves do not attempt to stop now, is to add presumption to sin.
When we speak of Heaven and Hell, we have in our thoughts the vision of those ultimate points towards which the diverging courses of men’s lives are slowly tending day by day. And the question rises: “On which of these lines is my life travelling at the present time, and
towards which side of the impassable gulf?”
At present we know that the way of Christ is still open before us, and that He calls us with a voice which never grows weary; but we feel equally that the future is dark, if we waste or misuse the present, and we do not know how long the heavenward path may be as open, or as easy, as it is to-day. For the question is not a question of God’s untiring patience or the never-failing love of Christ. It is not how long will His Spirit continue to strive with us, as it has striven hitherto, through the care and love of parent or friend, through the exhortations or efforts of a teacher, or the example of a companion, or in a thousand other ways. The question is rather whether it is not folly to expect that God will send upon us some other more powerful regenerating and strengthening influence, if we are now neglecting all this care and love and patient striving on our behalf. “If
they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.”
Consider these things while life is fresh, and good influences are present with you. Whatever our faults may be, they all come under this one rule, that to-day is given us to win our freedom from their power—to-day and not to-morrow. The question which is pressed home through the warning of this parable is thus a very plain one: “What is my future hope or prospect, if I let this or that particular sin lurk and linger in my heart, feeding upon me every day, and growing stronger in consequence? What if I do not resist any fault that has a hold upon me? What if I do not pray to be delivered from it? What if I do not flee from it?”
If you hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will you be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.