MAIN HOMILETICS OF Proverbs 20:29
THE GLORY OF YOUTH AND AGE
I. Each period of life has a value and a glory of its own. There is a beauty in spring to which no other season of the year can approach. The vivid green of the opening leaves, and the meadows and hedge-banks carpeted with early flowers, give to spring a glory all its own. But the other seasons also have their peculiar charms. It is no less pleasant to look upon the landscape at midsummer, when the woods are in their full dress, and the valleys are covered over with corn, or in the autumn, when the harvest is being gathered in, and flowers have given place to fruit. If spring is the time of hope and promise, autumn is the season of realisation and fulfilment, and we are well content that the one should be lost in the other. So it is with the different periods of our human life—each has its special charm and its special advantages. We love to dwell upon the loveliness of childhood, but we should not like to see our sons and daughters remain children for ever, and it is pleasant to look upon and to experience the energy and hope of youth, but there are good things which cannot be ours until we reach to mature life, and even to grey hairs. We have before considered the glory of the hoary head (see on chap. Proverbs 16:31, page 493); we have only to consider—
II. The peculiar gift and glory of young men. It is, says Solomon, their “strength”—their power to do and to endure in a physical sense, what the aged cannot, by reason of the failure of their bodily powers. When men have passed middle life, they become more and more painfully conscious that if the “inward man is renewed day by day, the outward man is perishing” at the same rate (2 Corinthians 4:16), and although their experience is richer, and their wisdom greater, their physical ability and energy is not what it once was. Their ship is laden, it may be, with a far more precious cargo, but the tide is not so strong, and the breeze is not so powerful to waft it on its way as it was in the years that are gone. It is the glory of the young man that his strength is often more than enough for himself, he is able to bestow some upon the weak and needy. But the aged man is often painfully conscious that he has none to spare, that instead he is dependent upon the strength of others. The consideration of the special advantages of each season of human life ought to cheer the aged man and prevent him from regretting the days of youth, and at the same time it ought to make the young man respectful to the old, and willing to listen to their counsel, and so far as it is possible combine the wisdom of grey hairs with the vigour of youth. It also warns the young man against any abuse of his physical powers—against any unlawful indulgence of bodily appetites, and against the formation of unhealthy and indolent habits—which make so many of our youths prematurely old, bringing upon them the frosts of autumn, before they have brought forth its fruits.