Page:Spiritual Reflections for Every Day in the Year - Vol 1.pdf/333

 known to be contrary to all law, human or divine. Sins of youth, are evils brought forth into act in our states of mental inexperience, before the mind is matured by the knowledge and practice of wisdom; and transgressions of the youth are the juvenile trespasses of the yet uninformed and comparatively vacant understanding, before the bias of the will is fixed or determined in its course. If the transgressions of youth are cherished and loved as the understanding becomes matured, then what were but transgressions in the youth, become sins in the man; and should these not be rooted out and put away from the life's love, they become nothing but withered branches, which cannot abide in Christ, the Living Vine, but are cut asunder from the True Life, to perish in sin and its pollution. For what is the life in this world, in mercy given, but to prepare us, by a process of spiritual culture, for the live to come? Is not this life, with all its acquired instruction in the laws and precepts of God, the schoolmaster that brings us to Christ?

O neglect not the wisdom of God, which He has offered in His word! this will indeed bless the early instruction of thy youth, and fill the stronger truths, acquired in after life, with goodness.

David, in a state of humble prayer, calls upon God to remember not the sins and transgressions of his youth: but reader! pause awhile, that you may understand rightly the divine language here used by the king of Israel. Can remembrance, recollection, or forgetfulness be predicated of Him, to whom in reference to man, the past and future are present? God is Omniscient, and sees all things at once! If