et again. Has it ever happened to any of you, to have
done a mischief to yourselves which you could not undo? It need not be
one of the very highest kind; but has it ever happened, that, by
neglect, you have lost ground in the society in which you are placed,
which you cannot recover; that your contemporaries have gained an
advance upon you, while you have not time left to overtake them? Does it
ever happen that, from neglecting some particular element of learning in
its proper season, and other things claiming your attention afterwards,
you go on with a disadvantage, which you would fain remove, but cannot?
Does it, in short, ever happen to any, that his complete success here is
become impossible; that whatever prospects of another kind may be open
to him elsewhere, yet that he cannot now be numbered amongst those who
have turned the particular advantages here afforded them to that end
which they might and ought to have done?

To whomsoever this has happened, the truth of the words of the text is
matter of experience, not in their full and most dreadful extent, but
yet quite enough to prove that they are true; and that just as he now
feels them in part, so, if he continues to be what he is, he will one
day feel them wholly. He feels that it is possible to seek God, and not
to find him; he has learnt by experience that neglected good, or
committed evil, may be beyond the power of after-regret to undo. It is
true, that as yet, to him, other prospects may be open: prospects which,
probably, he may deem no less fair than those which he has forfeited.
This may be so; but the point to observe is, that one prospect was lost
so irretrievably by his own fault, that afterwards, when he wished to
regain it, he could not. Now God gives him other prospects, which he may
realize: but as he forfeited his first prospect beyond recovery, so he
may do also with his last: and though ill-success at school may be made
up by success in another sphere, yet what is to make up for ill-success
in the great business of life, when that, too, has been forfeited as
irrecoverably; when his last chance is gone as hopelessly as his first?

Now, surely there is in all this an intelligible lesson. I am not at all
exaggerating the importance of the particular prospect forfeited here:
but I am pressing upon you, that this prospect may be, and often is,
forfeited irrecoverably; that when you wish to regain it, it is too
late, and you cannot. And I press th