phetic dreams and oracles; instead of achievements, high aims and strong resolve.

To this period there attaches something of the same importance that belongs to the youth of every individual. It is the forming period-the period on which the unwritten future depends the period that determines whether the maturity that is to succeed shall be a desirable one, or only the ripening of mortal disease-the beginning of premature age and decay.

God has not failed to give the most significant testimony to its importance. The time was, when the race of man was young, and God gave them a paradise and bowers of the tree of life. And even when sin had begun and Eden was no more, he still bestowed the most earnest culture upon the undeveloped energies of a youthful world. What volumes of admonition were uttered in that approval which he gave of the piety of Abel. So in his punishment of its opposite in Cain; and still more, in walking with Enoch on earth and taking him bodily to heaven! Here were visible displays of deity and miraculous interposition, and a longevity which man has not since known. All that the most convincing testimony, both divine and human, the most impres sive miracles, the intensest culture and a long life could do to form the race for a happy maturity, was done.

But, instead of this, there came on a maturity of vice, of iniquity, of rottenness, and premature decay. And what does God do now? He sees the earth filled with violence and crime. An old age of moral decrepitude and impotence has overtaken the race of man. There is nothing hopeful or promising, as in the days of its youth-nothing to invite the cultivation that was then bestowed. All progress, is progress downward, and every token of a brighter future is withheld. Noah is commissioned to utter warnings of an impending danger. The ark which he rears in their sight is a standing intimation of coming ruin. Every story which he adds, and every timber which is brought, are vocalprophetic of the approaching doom. The clouds gather, the storm bursts forth, the floods roll on, and the effete, worn-out, decaying mass of corruption is buried in a watery grave.

Now, what makes the difference? It is not simply, that the earth is, in the latter case, filled with violence; for in proportion to the number of its inhabitants, there was violence enough in the earth when Cain imbrued his murderous hand in his brother's blood. The difference was, that in one case the race was young, and gave the promise which especially attaches to youth, that this early waywardness would be thrown off, and all that was vicious and wrong, corrected by the culture and experience that were to succeed. And in the other case, the season of youth was past, and a premature old age of corruption and moral disease had poisoned all the streams of life and cut off the last hope of recovery or reform. There was all the difference

which there is between an experiment begun and an experiment completed; between some apparent promise of success, and the result of a total failure. How striking the language in which the Most High speaks out its feelings in view of the hopeless state into which a period of less than 2,000 years had plunged the diseased mass of mankind! "I will destroy man that I have created, for it repenteth me that I have made them." "It repented the Lord," says the sacred historian, "that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart."

I might trace the same great lesson in that Second Youth with which the race of man was renewed in the family of Noah. But I prefer to draw my next illustration from the youthful history of the Hebrew Commonwealth. A few centuries sufficed to bring upon the post-diluvian world, a maturity of atheistic and idolatrous corruption, from which nothing was to be hoped; and the great experiment of Providence was next renewed with a youthful fragment of the race-the single family of Abraham. And how carefully was that early bud of promise guarded and kept! What more efficient or wonderful than the discipline by which Abraham was prepared to become the father of the faithful! How paternal, and tender, and faith-inspiring the dealings of Jehovah with Isaac and Jacob and Joseph! The germ of the future nation was withheld for three successive generations, from expanding itself and throwing upwards its branches toward heaven; and this was that its radicles might have time to strike downward and reach the vital springs that never dry; that the anticipated growth might in due time be fed with full supplies from the Source of Life.

And when that growth was visibly begun, the nation in its very infancy was brought to know its dependence upon God as its deliverer from famine and bondage. And when this was found insufficient to create a proper sense of that dependence, there was added the forty years' discipline under Moses; the miracle of the cloudy and fiery pillar; the manna from heaven; the living water from the rock; the passover; the fiery serpents and the sacrifice of that entire generation of murmurers against God who were forbidden the land of promise, and whose carcases fell in the wilderness. Such were the discipline and care that were bestowed by the Most High upon his chosen people in their youth. He most aptly compares it to the efforts of the parent bird, when the time has come for her young to forsake the nest. "As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings," so Jehovah "led his people about, instructed them, kept them as the apple of his eye." How different was all this, a few centuries later, when the hopeful season of their youth was past! Instead of bearing with their waywardness and idolatry, how did he lift against them the threatened rod of war, and dash them in

pieces like a potter's vessel, and lay desolate their cities, and burn their temple, and send the remnant of their tribes into captivity! Mere discipline was now of no avail. The tree had become too strong by the growth of centuries for any culture to mold or to sway: and it only remained for it to be torn up by its roots and cast out into another land; and there, in process of time, a youthful scion was derived from its most vital portion and planted again in the vineyard of the Lord. Thus the youth of his people was renewed and enough of purity retained to admit of the timely ushering of the Messiah upon the stage.

II. Such is the testimony of God's early providence to the superior promise of the youthful period, in bodies or communities of men, as compared with those that are more advanced. I might bring out and illustrate several distinct elements of this superior promise, and thus show that it is in accordance with sound philosophy and general laws, that God has treated the youthful period in the history of nations and communities, as the more hopeful one. I shall confine myself to two.

1. That which presents itself first and attracts the notice of the most superficial observer, is the element of youthful enterprise. Notwithstanding the obscurity that hangs about the origin of the early nations, we can affirm, as a general truth, that with them, the period of enterprise was the period of youth. Nimrod and Semiramis reigned over a youthful people; and those were the days of enterprise in the valley of the Tigris. There was the enterprise of youthful communities in the project of Babel. Egypt, in the vigor of her youth, excavated the catacombs, built the hundred-gated Thebes, wrought collossal sculptures, hewed out monoliths, reared the towering pyramids. But when her enterprise had expended itself, she became an easy prey to the conqueror. And for nearly thirty centuries her imbecile sons have walked amid the monuments of her youthful greatness, as the traveller wends his way amid Alpine summits, with no thought that those snow-capped peaks have any lessons of human enterprise for the beholder.

Rome had a youth of republicanism and a youth of despotism; and in both she was enterprising and strong. She trode down the nations, almost at will, with her iron foot, or held them in hopeless vassalage with her giant arm. But as she became old and corrupt, her enterprise was gone. She ceased to reach abroad. She needed more than all her strength at home. She sunk down and fell asunder from pure senility and internal dis

ease.

I might draw the same great lesson from the empire of the Saracens, and from various passages in the history of modern Europe. Where there are apparent exceptions, as in the case of the English nation, it would be easy to show that the vigor of

youth has been renewed by an infusion of vitality and strength from their young and flourishing colonies. But for these, English enterprise had long ago exhausted itself, and an old age of weakness come on.

I shall regard the point as established then, without further argument, that in nations and communities of men, the period of enterprise is the period of early life.

2. I propose to show, secondly, that another element of importance and promise pertaining to this youthful period, is a strong, inherent, vital energy that operates to throw off the disease of malignant vices, and resist the tendency to internal decay. This is well illustrated by the early annals of Rome. If her own historians have done her justice, no nation ever took its rise from more unpromising material or a lower stage of character. Its foundation upon the banks of the Tiber was laid by a band of barbarians and criminals, and Romulus himself, their leader, was the murderer of his own brother.

And yet such was the pressure of the necessity that was laid upon them, and such was the vitality of that youthful period of their community, that in less than two generations, they acquire a character of more than ordinary rectitude and purity. And there is an emphasis in the phrase, Roman virtue, as retained in our own times. Much the same is now said to communities of transported criminals in the vicinity of Botany Bay.

But this department of the subject admits of an illustration from the history of religious communities. The seven churches of Asia were purest and most hopeful in their youth. The church of Ephesus had already fallen from their first love when the apocalyptic message was sent them. And they were assured that their only hopeful period of recovery was an early one. "Quickly, "—such was the language of the spirit. Quickly their candlestick was to be removed, unless they stirred up their youthful energies to the work of repentance and the performance of their first works. Very similar were the warnings that were addressed to the churches of Pergamos and Laodicea. Their only hope was in waking up the vital power that remained, and throwing off the disease that was upon them while they were young. This, all but one of the seven churches, failed to do, and the work of decay with them was rapid and sure. The church of Rome, in the days of its youth, was so exemplary and pure, that Paul told them their faith was spoken of throughout the whole world." A maturity of a few centuries, however, rendered it so corrupt that every effort to reform it has proved abortive, and its vices and heresies have become the scourge of the whole world.

The church of the Nestorians when young was pure and evangelic, and enterprising. Her missionaries spread the gospel and its triumphs from Damascus to Pekin, from Ceylon to Siberia.

Her cumbrous organization and machinery were like Saul's armor upon the stripling son of Jesse. But the energy, and zeal, and fire of youth rose superior to every obstacle, and spread the knowledge of the Savior over the continent of Asia. But in her crippled and weary old age, she has not been able to hold fast that which was her own. The emissaries of Rome have stolen away a large share of her strength, and but for the timely aid that has been rendered her by the American churches, there would be reason to fear that the papacy would soon engulf the whole. In her youth, with only the dim light that had come down through eight centuries, with the burden of an unscriptural hierarchy upon her, and without the printed bible to aid and confirm her conquests, she aspired to the conversion of the vast empires of Persia, Tartary, India and China. In the old age which she has now reached, with the printed bible in hand, and learned missionaries to aid her, she is scarcely able to reclaim and save her own wandering sons.

I trust that the point has now been rendered sufficiently clear, that with communities and bodies of men, as well as individuals, the season of promise-the time to lay a desirable foundation for the future is the period of youth. The providence of God clearly indicates this, and the obvious predominance of enterprise and healthful vital energy in the youthful period, discovers to us the most ample reason why it should be so.

III. The subject as now developed has a three-fold application to us. It addresses us, as citizens of this youthful republic,-as patrons of the youthful religious enterprises of our land,—and as members of this local community.

1. God has given us in this land a goodly heritage, and a youthful one. For thousands of years, he kept back the knowledge of this continent with its large resources, and its wide domain from the civilized nations of the old world, that when its colonization should begin, it might be under the best auspices, and with the largest promise of good for the race of man. And when the time had come for lifting the veil,-the mariner's compass having been discovered, and the art of printing having come into use, and the reformation just ready to flash its broad sheen of light over Europe, still this rocky cradle of liberty was not given to the Spaniards, nor to the French, but reserved another hundred years, until the Puritans could be disciplined amid the storms and fires of persecution, and prepared to begin an empire of freedom for the world. The work assigned them, was not to take an old decrepit nation, and hew away its rottenness, and infuse into it the spirit of life and youth anew-but to begin with the infant, and make it strong, and active, and pure, amid the invigorating influence of New England storms and snows, and under the simple Christianity of the New Testament.