Puritan: William Guthrie
Source: To the Rising Generation: Addresses Given to Children & Young Adults
Originally Delivered: ~1734-44, Northampton, MA
The Lord’s Day: November 01, 2026
“And he did what was right in the sight of the Lord, and walked in the ways of David, his father, and declined neither to the right hand nor to the left; for in the eighth year of his reign, while he was yet young, he began to seek after the God of David his father.”
2 Chronicles 34:2-3
“The flower of our life is due to God; the whole of it is due to God, but God especially challenges the prime of life. All that we have we should give to God, but He is especially pleased when we give our best to Him. Our youth is on several accounts the best part of our lives. Then nature is in its bloom, farthest from any decay; then the body is most lively, active, and beautiful, and the powers of the mind are in some respects more sprightly. And it is very pleasing to God when persons offer Him such a sacrifice as themselves in their youth, as it was most acceptable to Him when Abel brought the firstlings of his flock (Gen. 4:4). It is like bringing the first fruits to God. The children of Israel were commanded to bring their first ripe fruits and offer them to God (Exod. 22:29).
There is a peculiar honor done to God when persons devote their youthful age to God. This is more to the glory of God than it is to spend all the best life in the service of Satan, and in slavery to lust, and then to come in our old age and offer to God an old, decayed body and mind that have been almost worn out in the service of sin, so that there shall be nothing left for God but Satan’s leftovers. All things should begin with God, for He is the beginning of all things (Rev. 1:11). To begin our lives with God is but a suitable acknowledgment of our origin. When we are setting out, we ought to set out with God, to fix His service and glory as the scope and aim of our whole lives. And therefore, God so ordered things that He has left the time of youth more free and vacant of other cares and concerns than any other time of life, so that persons might have the better opportunity then to attend to the business of religion, if they will but improve it.
Make religion the business of your youth. Though you are young, yet the remaining part of your life is but a little while; it is but a little while before you will all be in eternity. It may seem a great while to you now, but when eternity comes it will seem a mere nothing, a vanity. All of you have precious souls and in a little time you will be in eternity, some sooner and some later: “Remember now your Creator” (Eccl. 12:1). The world is full of diversions, things that tend to divert and take the mind off from the great concern. The world is so full of one thing or another that tends to fill the minds and draw the hearts of young persons, so that oftentimes religious concerns and serious meditations can find no room.
The time of youth is a person’s forming time. The sins that you now commit will lay a foundation for an abundance of trouble in the future part of your life. Your sins of youth will prove to be a foundation for bitter reflections all your life. How many persons are there who are now past their youth, and who have cause, with great trouble and bitterness, to think of their misspent youth. What would they not give, if they had now such an opportunity as they had when young, to seek their salvation instead of sin away their youth! They who spend their youth in the exercise of true religion may think of old age with comfort.
Religion, instead of being a hindrance to your spending youth pleasantly, will be the most direct way to it. Man was made for higher and more excellent delights. Consider that if you should addict yourself to carnal pleasure, how bitter will be your reflections on it hereafter; it will be bitter to think of it another day. For a short moment’s pleasure you will have a long reckoning. Such kinds of pleasure don’t lay any foundation for peace or comfort in anyone, or for any quietness in the conscience; on the contrary, they lay a foundation for an abundance of trouble and for inward uneasiness and torment.
The young person who lately died did not only die suddenly, but he was, through the greater part of his sickness, very much deprived of the use of his reason, which may show the folly of promising yourselves opportunity to seek salvation upon a deathbed. Now, therefore, you who are yet alive, who are on this side of eternity, in the enjoyment of a day of grace, hearken and take warning; be exhorted this day to now improve your time. Make haste, every one of you, to get into Christ where alone you can be safe. Every one of you, make haste and be violent for the kingdom of heaven.