C PLACES

"I have written unto you, young men, because ye are strong." This
description "young men" probably indicates that those to whom this part
of St. John's letter was addressed were seriously engaged in the work
of grounding their character, forming their habits, disciplining their
inclinations, and confirming the election all must make between good
and evil. He was not writing to those who had failed in the struggle,
and had accepted their defeat. He was not writing to those who,
beaten, knew that they did not intend to try again, and had thus
written themselves out of the progressive forces of the human world.
He was writing to those who had shown promise of better things, who
were evidently pressing "toward the mark for the prize of the high
calling of God in Christ Jesus." I do not take it that the Apostle
credits the young men to whom he wrote with having won a victory which
is never finally decided on this side the grave, or with having
attained to a moral altitude outside the reach of their years. When he
says, "I have written unto you, young men, because ye are strong," he
may be understood as referring to a strength consistent with, and yet
peculiar to, their years--a strength the whole force of which was set
in a right and healthy direction.

I want now to deal with the first part of this particular reference to
the strength of young men. It would be away from my present purpose to
weight this address with any attempt to say what the writer means when
he tells them that, "The word of God abideth in you, and ye have
overcome the wicked one." I shall take the words of our text out of
their context, and use them as a topic: "I have written unto you, young
men, because ye are strong." Strong in what sense? How may we give
the words a useful setting, as a remembrancer and a call to the young
men of to-day?

In the first place, one great constituent of strength which is, or
ought to be, the special possession of young life is--Hope. It is a
common remark that as we grow older we become chary of convictions, and
content ourselves with opinions. I should be sorry to believe it, but
I am obliged to admit that age, even with good people, changes to a
large extent their centre of gravity from hope to faith.

It is suggestive to mark the order of these in St. Paul's famous
procession--faith, hope, love. Love, he says, is the greatest. But he
ranks hope before faith. Why? The passage in which this