y
promise of splendid manhood, but fade and drop, like poisoned flowers, ere
the age of maturity has dawned! How many are able to pass through the most
critical period of their lives, unshaken and undefiled, full of faith,
hope, love, purity; but who, when the age of security is thought to have
come, lose the grip which seemed so firm, turn to evil, yield to vicious
habits, and die reprobates of God! Look at King Solomon! Who was ever more
promising than he in his youth? Who ever gave fairer prospects of
continued holiness and of a beautiful end? He was so lovely, so amiable,
so favored of God in the morning of life; graced with such high
perfections, not knowing evil, a stranger to vice, a lover of sanctity, of
wisdom, and of grace. It would seem that he could never fall--he who was
the object of such unwonted favors, who dwelt so supremely in the smile of
Heaven. But lo, and behold the end of him who had received so many graces,
who chose wisdom as his handmaid that he might be guided aright! Behold
that youthful figure, so full of promise and goodly hope, praying to God
that he might never deviate from the ways of grace; and then see the
gray-haired apostate tottering to the grave, borne down by the weight of
his sins and of his years! And how many more there have been, like King
Saul, like Renan and Voltaire, and numerous others that we ourselves
perhaps have known, who were great and good in youth, and for a term of
years, but whose end was a miserable failure!

Our perseverance, then, or the favor to die in the state of grace, is not
of ourselves, not the reward of our efforts, or of our good works, "but of
God that sheweth mercy." We must do all in our power to merit eternal
life; we must press on to the mark, waging ceaseless battle in behalf of
God and of our souls, even to the last moment; but for the happy end of it
all we must perforce rely on the tender mercy of God. This is why our
Lord, before He departed from earth, prayed to His heavenly Father for His
disciples: "Holy Father, keep them in Thy name whom Thou hast given me;
... I pray not that thou shouldst take them out of the world; but that
thou shouldst keep them from evil."(75) This same truth the Psalmist also
had in mind when he prayed: "Perfect thou my goings in thy paths, that my
footsteps be not moved."(76)

It is this appalling uncertainty about the end and outcome of life,
together with our own inability to make them secure, that makes death