December 9

"Remember now your Creator in the days of your youth." Ecclesiastes 12:1.

Remember Him who created you, and who created you for His glory—who fashioned your form, who endowed your mind, and who placed you in your present position in life, be it of rank and influence, or of lowliness and obscurity. Remember Him as a holy, sin-hating God, and that you stand to Him in the relation of a fallen creature, impure and unrighteous, impotent and hostile, unworthy to live, unfit to die. Remember what He must have done, and what He must do for you if ever that relation is changed, and you become a new creature, an adopted child, an heir of glory. Remember the strong and inalienable claims He has upon you—claims which He will never relax or revoke. He who commanded that the first of the ripe fruits, and creatures of the first year, to be offered to Him, bids you remember Him in the days of your youth!—your first days, and your best, while the body is in health, and the mind is vigorous, and all the faculties of the soul fit you especially for His service and His glory. Oh, remember Him now, before other things and other objects come and occupy the place which belongs to God alone.

Remember your breath is in His hands; that the axe of judgment lies at the root of the green tree as well as the dry, that the blooming flower and the young sapling are often cut down long before the stately cedar or venerable oak bows itself to the earth. Build not upon length of days; plume not yourself with the laurels which profound learning, or brilliant talent, or successful enterprise, may already have won for you. See how soon they fade upon the brow which they adorn! Think of Kirk White, and of Spencer, of Urquhart, and of McCheyne, of Taylor, of Swain, and of Griffin—those beautiful cedars of God's Lebanon—how verdant and how fragrant were the honors which went down with them to the tomb. But they early lived in the Lord, and unreservedly for the Lord—and the Lord took them early to live with Himself forever. They gave to Him the first and the best, and He took them the first to glory, and has given them the best of glory. Who would not live and die as did they?

Build, then, on nothing beneath the sky, save an immediate and undoubted interest in Christ. Until you are born again, you are in peril; until God possesses your heart, as to any real holiness, usefulness, and happiness, your life is a perfect blank. You live to yourself; and not to live to Him who created you, who upholds you, and who will soon judge you—is a poor life indeed. Oh, give to Christ the golden period of your life. Bind the early sacrifice upon the altar. Lay upon it the first-fruits; Jesus is worthy of your young affections, and of your earliest development of the mind. Oh what a treasure is Christ! To begin life with Christ in the heart, is to begin with a radiant morning—the sure prelude of a smiling day, and of a cloudless evening!