SERMON

XXII.

LAMENTATIONS OF JEREMIAH III. V. XXVII.

It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.

THE best days of life are soon gone; and time, that stayeth never for man, seems then to fly with greater speed: Death lingers to the old, the night is long to the sick man, the freshness of the morning will not bring him his strength, and he crieth out, in vain, for the peace of the grave. To all these, the sun is slow in his course, and they bear the burthen of their days;—but youth is a dream of gladness, which comes but to vanish; it is sweet, as a smile that perishes; it is bright, and rapid as the arrows of God

when he shooteth his lightnings in the

heavens.

If youth, then, is the season when the foundation of wisdom is to be laid, and if that season passeth away thus rapidly, we must not suffer occasions to escape us, which admit of no substitute; nor neglect improvements, which no other period of life will ever enable us to attain.

By the yoke, I understand the sacred writer to mean, in general, a state of discipline; every thing which education teaches; the restraint of passions, the formation of habits, and the cultivation of faculties. It is not my intention, at present, to launch into so wide a field, as that to which this explanation would seem to lead; but in pointing out a few of the characteristic faults of youth, to shew in what manner the young are most likely to prove intractable to that yoke, which the prophet admonishes them to bear, and to make it clear what those sins, and infirmities are, which present the most serious obstacle to their progress in christian improvement.

The first error I shall notice, and to which I consider youth to be more exposed, than any other period of life, is conceit; that which our Saviour characterises under the name of high-mindedness, an overweaning opinion of our own good, and great qualities.

The reason of this is very obvious; the comparisons the young have made between themselves, and their fellowcreatures, are few, in proportion to what they must make hereafter; absolute standard of excellence there is none;-we only think ourselves great, because we think others little; and the more human beings we mingle with, and the more frequently we institute the comparison, the more probable it is that we shall find our equals, and our superiors in every accomplishment, and in every virtue.

We often observe men, whose sphere of life has been extremely confined, to be conceited through every period of their existence, for the same reason that the

young are conceited in its earliest period, because they have measured themselves 'with very few of their species, and mistaking all that they have seen, for all that there is, have so confirmed themselves in habitual conceit, that the delusion is totally impregnable to all future conviction.

Growing experience, forces upon the young a perception of their unjust pretensions; they begin to discover that the world had made some progress in knowledge before their existence, and that their birth will not be hailed as the great æra of wisdom, and of truth.-It is necessary to live for a considerable time, and in various scenes, to perceive fully the wisdom of those practices which the world has established, not at the suggestion of any one individual, but from the gradual conviction of all, that they were best adapted to promote the general happiness. Our fathers, in their youthful days, questioned with as much acuteness, and decided with as much temerity, as we can do in ours; if the progress of life has taught them to respect, what in its origin

they despised; if they have traced to the dictates of experience, many things which they at first attributed to prejudice, and ignorance; if they have learnt to mistrust themselves, and confide more in the general feelings, and judgments of the world,-we ought not to suppose ourselves protected from the same revolution of opinions, or imagine, that those early conceptions of human life shall be permanent now, which never have been permanent before.

These remonstrances against conceit, (a failing, as injurious to the acquisition of Christian, as of human improvement,) are by no means directed against the spirit of free enquiry; from which a strong mind cannot, and ought not to be debarred, any more than a strong body ought to be, from perfect activity of motion; only the young should consider that it is not a necessary consequence that no reason can be found, because they can find none; or even obtain none, from a few persons to whóm they have proposed their difficulty; and who, perhaps, can see, and practice right, without the power of explaining, or defending it.