CHAPTER XX.
A FEW OF THE LESSONS I HAVE LEARNED ON MY WAY THROUGH LIFE.
And now for a few of the lessons which I have learned on my way through life.
1. One, alas! is, that it is very difficult to bring young people to benefit by the experience of their elders. It would be a happy thing if we could put old men's heads on young men's shoulders; but no method of performing the operation has, as yet, been hit upon. It might answer as well, if old men could empty their heads into the heads of the young. But this is a task almost as difficult as the former. The heads of the young are generally full of foolish thoughts, and vain conceits, and wild dreams of what they are to be, and do, and enjoy in the days to come, with large admixtures at times of more objectionable materials; so that there is no room for the counsels and admonitions of their elders. Then there are some who do not like to be counselled or admonished. Having set their minds on the attainment of a certain object, they are unwilling to listen to any but such as commend their course, and encourage them with promises of success. There are others who think they have no need of counsel or admonition. Counsel and admonition are proper enough for some people, but they are not required in their case, they imagine. They do not exactly think themselves beings of a superior order, beyond the reach of ordinary dangers; but they act as if they thought so. In words they would acknowledge themselves to be but men, liable to the common frailties of their race; but their conduct seems to say, "It is impossible we should ever err or sin as some men do; we are better constructed, and are born to a happier lot." Their purpose is to do right, and it never enters their minds that they can ever do wrong. And if you tell them that they are in danger of becoming intemperate, or skeptical, or of falling into any great error or sin, they feel hurt, and say, "Do you suppose we are dogs that we should do such things?" Dogs or not, when the time of trial comes, they do them. And then they discover, that men are not always so wise, so good, or so strong as they suppose themselves; that people may be the subjects of weaknesses of which they are utterly unconscious, till assailed by some unlooked for temptation; and they mourn at the last, and say, "How have we hated instruction, and despised the counsel of the Holy One." And now they see that the strongest need a stronger one than themselves to shield them, and that the wisest need a wiser one than themselves to guide them, if they are to be kept from harm.
We have no disposition to be severe with such persons, for we belonged to the same unhappy class ourselves. It never once entered our minds in our earlier days, that we could ever fall away from Christ. We saw that others were in danger, but we never supposed we were in danger ourselves. We preached from the text, "Let him that thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he fall," and we pressed the solemn warning on our hearers with the greatest earnestness; but we never applied it to ourselves. We supposed ourselves secure. And if any one had told us that we should one day cease to be a Christian, and above all, if any man had said that we should fall into unbelief, and be ranked with the opponents of Christianity, we should have thought him insolent or mad. Yet we know what followed. We cannot therefore deal harshly with our too self-confident brethren. But we must give them faithful warning. Be on your guard, my dear young friends. You are not so free from defects, nor so far from danger, as your conscious innocence, or the great deceiver, may insinuate. There may be tendencies to evil within you, and temptations in the mysterious world around you, of the character and force of which you have no conception. It was as great and good a man as you perhaps that said,
"Weaker than a bruised reed,
Help I every moment need."
And he was wise that said,—
"Beware of Peter's words,
Nor confidently say,
'I never will deny thee, Lord;'
But, 'Grant I never may.'"
There are devices of the wicked one of which you are not yet aware; "depths of Satan" which you have not yet fathomed; and terrible possibilities of which, as yet, you have never dreamed. I say again, Be on your guard. "Be not high-minded, but fear." "Blessed is the man that feareth always." None are so weak as those who think themselves strong. None are in such danger as those who think themselves secure.