and in affairs, and you will have to connect them with years of stern
discipline and strenuous endeavour. In no case will you find strength
where there has been no strain, or palm where there has been no dust.
There are levels on which the truth, that "we reap what we sow," admits
of no qualification. Omnipotence itself cannot make it possible for us
to gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles. To attempt after a
given age, and on the strength of a chance impulse, to leave Ur of the
Chaldees with its old habits and associations, its old moral settings,
will carry us far as the impulse lasts, but that in all probability
will be only as far as Haran. And as Terah died at Haran, so shall we.
It will be from moon to moon. Youth is the time to determine whether
old age shall be a beautiful consummation, or a bitter regret. The
threshold of manhood is the place to form resolutions that will have
some chance of being kept, to cultivate the thoughts you would have
ultimately become things. The serious danger is that, with the
impression of a long future before you, you should merely drift in the
present, and forget how inextricably the texture of to-day will be
woven into the fabric of to-morrow.

I am quite aware that what I have so far said is more likely to hinder
than help the purpose I have in saying it. You will not question that
a clear nexus runs through our years, but my teaching about it, you
tell me, is needlessly severe. If as the beginning is, so must the end
be, what are we to say of a man's will? What are we to say about the
power and working of divine grace? While there is life, does there
ever come a time when it is no longer true to say that out of it can
pass the old, or into it can come the new?

Surely to affirm that such a time can be is to give the lie to religion
and experience. Many a young man is having what is called his "fling,"
who is yet quite sure in his own mind that when the time comes to
accept the more serious responsibilities of life, he will change his
habits and turn to ways that befit the new occasion. So we are told.
And is it not true? Have we not known young men cover a considerable
space of life with questionable, and even more than questionable
courses, and yet settle down into exemplary domestic men and admirable
citizens?

Yes, we have known them, and, whatever influences have brought about
the change, let us be thankful for it. But what proportion do they
be