Youth and health are with difficulty made to comprehend how frail a machine the human body is, and how easily impaired by excesses. But effects will follow their causes; and intemperate pleasure is sure to be succeeded by long pains, for which there is no prevention, and for the most part, no remedy. Hence it is that life is shortened; and, while it lasts, is full of languor, disease, and suffering. If by living fast, as men call it, they only abridged the duration of their pleasures, their folly might seem tolerable. But the case is much worse: they treasure up to themselves actual sufferings, from disorders which have no cure, as well as no name. And not unfrequently it happens, according to the strong expression in the book of Job, that a man’s bones are full of the sin of his youth, till they lie down with him in the grave[180].
Or, if health continue, his fortune suffers; it being an observation as old as Solomon, and confirmed by constant experience ever since, that he who loveth pleasure, shall not be rich[181]. His paternal inheritance is perhaps wasted, or much reduced. And his careless youth has lost the opportunity of those improvements which should enable him to repair it. Or, if the abundant provision of wiser ancestors secure him from this mischance; or, if he has had the discretion to mix some industry and œconomy with his vices, still his good name is blasted, and so tender a plant as this is not easily restored to health and vigour. For it is a mistake to think that intemperance leaves no lasting disgrace behind it. The contrary is seen every day; and the crimes which we commit in the mad pursuit of pleasure, bring a dishonour with them, which no age can wholly outlive, and no virtue can repair[182]. It stuck close to Cæsar himself in his highest fortune: All his laurels could neither hide his baldness from the observation of men, nor the infamy of that commerce by which it had been occasioned[183].
All this, it may be thought, is very hard. But such is the fact, and such the order of God’s providence. We have not the making of this system: it is made to our hands by him who ordereth all things for the best, how grievous soever his dispensations may sometimes appear to us. Our duty, and our wisdom is to reflect what that system is, and to conform ourselves to it.
If a young man, on his entrance into life, could be made duly sensible of the dreadful evils, which, in the very constitution of things, flow from vice, there is scarcely any temptation that could prevail over his virtue. But his levity and inexperience expose him to these evils: he thinks nothing of them till they arrive, and then there is no escape from them.
To conclude: if any thing can rescue unwary youth out of the hands of their own folly, it must be such a train of reflection as the text offers to us. Let it sink deep into their minds, that there are indeed bitter things decreed against the iniquities of that early age; that a thousand temporal evils spring from that source; that vicious habits are in themselves vexatious and tormenting; and, that, uncorrected, and unrepented of, they fill the mind with inutterable remorse and horror.
When the sins of youth are seen in this light, it is not by giving them the soft name of infirmities, or by cloathing them with ideas of pleasure, that we shall be able to reconcile the mind to them. Such thin disguises will not conceal their true forms and natures from us. We shall still take them for what indeed they are, for sorcerers and assassins, the enchanters of our reason and the murderers of our peace.
The sum of all is comprised in that memorable advice of the Psalmist, so often quoted in this place (and, for once, let it have its effect upon us): Keep innocency, and take heed to the thing that is right, for that shall bring a man peace at the last[184].
Or, if the scorner will not listen to this advice, it only remains to leave him to his own sad experience; but not till we have made one charitable effort more to provoke his attention by the caustic apostrophe of the wise man: Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth, and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thy heart, and in the sight of thine eyes: but KNOW THOU, that, for all these things, God will bring thee into judgement[185].