WHY GOD CALLS LITTLE CHILDREN EARLY

TEXT: Eccl. xii. 1. "Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth."

Dear Children:-- If the President of the United States should address you today, or write you a letter giving you some good advice, you would all assume that there must be some good reason for the counsel that so wise and great a man gave to you. Well, somebody much greater than the President of our country, even the infinitely wise and holy God, tells us to remember him and seek him early in life. It is safe to say that there are very good reasons for such advice. It is our purpose to give the first reason in this chapter. That reason we believe is this: God knows that even very young children are sinful, not a few of them, but all of them. Little children know it, too. They can not forget that sometimes they are very selfish and want everybody to please them. They sometimes get angry because their mother wishes them to have their faces washed, or asks them to leave their play and stay their books, or go on some errand for her. The little girls quarrel with each other for the possession of the nicest doll, and the little boys quarrel to have the prettiest marbles or the best toy-gun or the finest knife. I have known a little boy to get angry and strike his little sister and make her turn pale with pain and fear. It was very wicked and he knew it, for his father and mother had prayed with him daily and taught him better, but still he did it. I have known children to disobey a good mother and fill her heart with grief over their sin. I heard of a little girl the other day who was told not to touch a beautiful vase on the mantel in the parlor. One day when her mother was away from home she took the vase and looked at it; but in putting it back she let it fall and broke it. She then shut her pet kitty in the parlor to make her mother think that the cat had broken the vase. That night the little girl could not sleep, arose from her bed and confessed her sins to her mother. You see she had committed two very grave sins: she had disobeyed her parent, whom God had commanded her to obey, and she had also acted a lie when God commanded her to be truthful.

Other boys and girls commit other sins; they say bad words, and take God's holy name in vain and think evil thoughts and plan evil deeds and act wickedly at home and in the street, and in the school, and sometimes even in Sabbath-school and church. You may ask: Why do all unsaved boys and girls sin? I am sorry to say it is because our race is a wicked race and tendency to sin is born in every little child's heart. Every little boy or girl is sure to sin if they live long enough, unless God changes the heart and takes the love of sill out of it. This tendency to sin makes boys and girls a great deal of trouble and leads them to do a great many wrong things. It is, I may say, not unlike a very bad disease that is born in one and keeps getting worse and worse until it proves fatal.

The Bible is the book God gave us. It tells of a disease called leprosy. When a person became sick with it he grew worse and worse. No doctors and no medicine could cure him. The disease went on and on until it brought the poor victim down to death. The child does not outgrow it or get over it. It gets worse and worse as the years go by until the life is ruined. The heart gets hard and sinful and very wicked. God's blessed book says: "The wages of sin is death." Sin, when it is full-grown, bringeth forth death. In other words, the heart in time gets to be so very wicked that God can not bear its presence, and it is shut out from God and heaven because everything good in the soul has died.

Now when Jesus was upon earth many poor lepers came to him to be healed of the awful disease of leprosy. All the doctors and all the medicine had failed to heal them. As the last hope they came to Jesus, and he healed them all. The same blessed Savior can heal the disease of sin in every child's heart Nobody else but Jesus has ever been able to cure it. There is no other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved. This is why God calls on the young to remember him in early life. He sees the children's hearts afflicted with sin, and he knows what trouble it will bring them, He begs them to come to Jesus, just as the lepers came in the olden time, and cry: "O Jesus have mercy on us and cast the sin out of our hearts." He wishes them to do it in early life to save themselves from all the sad consequences of sin.

Think how hateful sin is, and how evil are its effects in human lives. It was sin in Cain's heart that caused him to kill his beautiful brother Abel, and made himself a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth. It was sin in the hearts of men and women and children that caused their wickedness to be so great that God was compelled to destroy the ancient world with a flood. It w as sin in the hearts of the people of Sodom that made them so awfully wicked that God destroyed them all with fire. It was sin that led Jacob to. deceive his blind old father Isaac, and cheat his brother Esau, so that he had to flee from home for his life. It was sin in the hearts of Jacob's boys that led them to envy and hate their lovely young brother Joseph, till they talked of killing him, and finally sold him to be a poor slave in Egypt. It was sin that caused the untimely death of Hophni and Phinehas, the two wicked sons of Eli. It was sin that brought sorrow to the old age of David, and led his boys to kill each other and fill their kind father's heart with grief. It was sin that covered the glorious Solomon with shame and divided and ruined his kingdom. Sin led King Jehoram to kill his six brothers, and led his wicked wife to kill her children and grandchildren that she herself might rule. Finally sin destroyed the whole nation, and God had to let enemies come up and punish it and carry off the people into captivity.

In the fullness of time Jesus came to the world on an errand of love to save it. He was pure and holy and gentle and kind. His heart was full of love for every poor sinner; his only purpose was to bless and help men. Yet so wicked were the people that nobody seemed to have any place for Jesus. When he was a lovely little babe the king tried to kill him. When he was grown to be a man his own neighbors tried to cast him over a precipice. Sin in their hearts led men to hate him and plot against him and lie about him. Finally wicked rulers hired false witnesses to testify against the dear Savior. He was arrested and cruelly whipped until he was almost dead. Then they also wove a crown of thorns and pressed it down upon his beautiful brow, and smote him, and spit in his face with malignant contempt. At last, though they could find no fault with Jesus, men were so wicked that they stood around the blessed Savior and yelled: "Crucify him, crucify him," until he was led out of the city followed by a cursing rabble, who looked on with glee while he was nailed to the cross and hung up to die in most awful agony.

That was the darkest crime of all the ages. But there is no depth of infamy to which any one may not descend who allows sin to remain in his heart. Every boy that takes God's name in vain has the beginning of the same spirit that crucified the Son of God. Every little girl that deceives or lies has the same evil spirit that bore false witness against Christ. Every little child that performs a cruel, wanton deed has in him the germ of that same wickedness that clamored for the crucifixion of Jesus, and at last drove the nails into his hands and feet.

Nobody can tell to what a terrible degree of sinfulness any boy or girl may come who allows sin to stay in the heart. History tells us of a Roman emperor named Nero. When he was a little child he was surpassingly beautiful, and so tender-hearted that he could not bear to see anybody or any creature suffer. But, like all other little boys, he had sin in his heart, which he did not ask Jesus to take away; and it kept increasing until he became a very monster of iniquity, one of the wickedest men of all the ages. Cruelty became his joy and murder his pastime. He covered holy men and women with pitch and set fire to them, and by the light of those living, burning torches practiced archery at night in his gardens. He set fire to Rome, then the greatest city in the world, and amused himself by the sight of the rolling, devouring flames, unmindful of all the suffering and loss of property and life he had occasioned. At his command very many thousands of noble Christians were put to death, eaten alive by the wild beasts in the amphitheater or dying by every kind of torture. As a crowning act of wickedness he had the beloved apostle Paul, who wrote so much of the Bible, beheaded. Now this monster of sin was once as gentle and innocent a child as any boy who reads these lines; but the sin in his heart made him all that he became. The writer once saw a woman on trial for murder. She was found guilty. She then confessed that she had at different times poisoned to death seven persons, several of them being innocent little children. She was a nice-looking woman, and it was hard to believe she could have been so wicked. No doubt she was once a beautiful little girl, and as pure and innocent as any little girl who hears this story. But she had the moral disease of sin in her heart, and it kept getting worse and worse until it made her very, very bad. The fact is, nobody can tell how very wicked any boy or girl may yet become unless God takes out of them the love of sin.

I once addressed an audience of four hundred boys in Ohio, and all of them had committed crimes for which they had been taken from homes and shut up in confinement: and yet their average age was only eleven years. I once went through a prison where there were eleven hundred prisoners who had committed awful deeds -- thefts and murders and other crimes. It was a solemn thing to look at them and think what they had done, and then reflect that once they were no worse than the boys in our Sabbath schools and Christian homes.

Oh, sin is an awful thing in human hearts! It makes all the wasted, blighted lives, and all the darkened, ruined homes in the world. It fills all the saloons with drunkards. It fills all the prisons and jails with criminals. It makes all that vast army of blasphemers, liars, thieves, idolaters, adulterers and covetous people of whom God says in infinite sorrow -- they shall not enter heaven. Is it any wonder that he is concerned about it, and asks all boys and girls to remember him in early life, and seek his help who alone can pardon and cleanse from sin?

Rev. C. L. Goodell was a famous pastor of St. Louis. He loved the children of his flock. One New Year's Day he sent each of them a prayer for them to commit to memory, and repeat each morning on rising from their sleep. You can repeat it as a prayer to Jesus to save you from sin:

CHILD'S MORNING PRAYER

The morning bright with rosy light
Has waked me from my sleep.
Father, I own, thy love alone
Thy little one doth keep.
All through the day, I humbly pray,
Be thou my guard and guide:
My sins forgive, and let me live,
Dear Jesus, near thy side.

" Help me today, in work or play
To do thy blessed will;
In holy ways, with prayer and praise,
My duties to fulfill.
Oh, make thy rest within my breast,
Great Spirit of all grace:
Make me like thee, then shall I be
Prepared to see thy face." Amen.

QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW

1. Why does God tell young children to remember him?
2. In what ways do children sin?
3. What disease that was incurable is sin like?
4. Who alone can save from sin?
5. Did sin make Cain trouble. And the sons of Jacob and Eli?
6. What did it do in David's family, and Jehoram's family?
7. What did sin prompt men to do to Jesus?
8. What did the beautiful boy Nero become and finally do?
9. What did it cause a woman to do?
10. What is it doing in general in human hearts?
11. Is it not plain why God wishes children to seek his help in early life?

Sing the Morning Prayer Song.

Other songs for Chapter 1, "Christ Has for Sin Atonement Made," and "Rock of Ages."