I.
The Joy of Youth.
•' Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth."
God does not grudge us joy. God's own life is a life of joy. Although His life is a life of calm, unruffled joy, yet it is a life of joy none the less. It is not the calm of stagnation; it is not the calm of a life in which there is nothing to move it. It is more like the calm of that great tide of which Tennyson speaks, " too full for sound and foam." It is the calm of an intense joy, so great, so unbroken, that it is always still. And God who has Himself this fulness of joy desires to see that joy shared by His creatures. That was the very reason why He made them, and He made them with that capacity for joy and that desire for joy, and He set all round about them in this wonderful world the things that might help them to be joyful.
^ Dante and Virgil, as they traverse the gloomy circles of the Inferno, come upon a stagnant and putrid fen, and there, buried in the black mud, they see the souls of the gloomy-sluggish,
* J. J. S. Perowne.
4to AFTER THAT THE JUDGMENT
who in expiation of their sinful gloom in life, are ever forced to mutter —
We were sad In the sweet air made gladsome by the sun, Now in this miry darkness are we sad.
To be sad in the sunshine was a crime in the great poet's eyes, and the poets and prophets of Scripture were herein at one with him. For the Psalmist says, " Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice, ye righteous " ; and Isaiah, " Thou meetest him that rejoiceth and worketh righteousness " ; and St. Paul, " Eejoice in the Lord alway : and again I say, Eejoice." *
1. To be young is itself a privilege and a joy. The blessing of youth is joy : the blessing of mature life is work : the blessing of old age is peace. The young are all for enjoyment ; the middle- aged all for achievement ; the aged all for rest. It is the highest wisdom of young people to retain their youthfulness of heart and life as long as possible. It is no reproach to be young ; it is one of those priceless privileges which are all the more precious because we can none of us be young for long, and we can never be young more than once. Half the miseries of youth come from the undue haste of those who wish to leave it behind them — so missing the vigour of their manhood, and the peace of their old age.
^ Pitt, who was Prime Minister of England when twenty-four, was once taunted by an old man with his extreme youth. " The atrocious crime of being a young man," he said, " I shall not attempt to palliate or deny, but content myself with wishing that I may be one of those whose follies may cease with their youth, and not of that number who are ignorant in spite of experience." Therefore, let all rejoice in their youth, who have their life before them ; let them not rob youth of its chief charm by despising it, and hurrying out of it before their time.^
2. A peculiar joy belongs to youth, because of the novelty and vividness of early sensations, feelings and perceptions. It is indeed one of the features of youth that we are able to find pleasure in so many things, whereas older people are able to find pleasure in fewer things. This is at once our glory, and our peril. Every sensibility and faculty of our nature is richly stored with
> F. W. Farrar, /n the Days of Thy Youth, 92. " E. GriflSth-Jones.
ECCLESIASTES xi. 9 411
vital force, and with the power to realize life vividly and fully. The process of growing old usually involves the gradual loss of this freshness. But there are some people who do not seem to grow old in this way ; they retain to the end the faculty of realizing the freshness of life; happy are they. And we shall find that those who do retain this power longest are just those who, when they were young, were careful with their pleasures as with their health; feeding their mind on the simplicities of life ; taking care not to pall their appetites with too prodigal a feast ; entering into the enjoyment of pleasure with a self-contained heart ; and, above all, thinking not so much of enjoyment as of something higher and better, which brought enjoyment in its train unsought — as a gift thrown in to those worthy to receive it.
^ " Live as long as you may," said Southey, " the first twenty years are the longest half of your life, and they are by far the most pregnant in consequences." It was Eobert Burns who sighed :
0 man ! while in thy early years,
How prodigal of time ! Mis-spending all the precious hours. Thy glorious youthful prime !
3. Another source of joy in youth is found in its idealism. Every healthy-minded youth is an idealist. This power of the ideal runs through the whole of life. It is found in the friend- ships of youth, giving them a warmth and an unselfishness that we do not often see in older people — unless in the case of friendships that date from boyhood and girlhood, which are among the richest possessions of life ; for " blessed are they who can boast of old friends." It is to be seen in the ambitions of youth, surrounding the objects of desire like a halo. And it is the most beautiful element in the religion of young people, that it fills them with innumerable ideals, and makes the unseen, the immaterial, and the Divine glow with a reality of beauty and a pulse of power which are at the root of almost everything worth talking of in the history of mankind. On every side human life sinks to the level of mechanism when it ceases to establish and declare the ideals by which it lives. It is not so much the embodiment of the ideal and the actual attainment of the end as it is the assertion of the ideal, the positing of the goal — "the