Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them.
—Ecclesiastes 12:1
7638 Ages 15–19
VICTOR HUGO wrote a tragedy at 15, received three prizes at the Academy and the title of Master before he was 20. JOHN DE MEDICI was cardinal at age 15. PASCAL wrote a great work at 16 and died at thirty-seven. RAPHAEL painted his wonderful works as a young man and died at thirty-seven.
CHATTERTON was already well-known at 18, and was unequaled among English poets at 21. TENNYSON wrote his first volume at 18. JOAN OF ARC did all her work and was burned at the stake at 19.
7639 Ages 20–25
ROMULUS founded Rome at 20. GLADSTONE was in the Parliament in early manhood, while PITT and BOLINGBROKE were ministers almost before they were men.
CALVIN joined the Reformation at 21 and wrote the Institutes at 27, thus profoundly influencing the theological thought of later centuries.
ALEXANDER THE GREAT was a mere youth when he rolled back the Asiatic hordes that threatened to destroy European civilization almost at its birth, and conquered the world when he was 23.
ISAAC NEWTON was 24 when he formulated the Law of Gravity and made some of his greatest discoveries before 25. McCORMICK was 23 when he invented the reaper; and CHARLES DICKENS wrote his Pickwick Papers at 24 and Oliver Twist at 25.
7640 Ages 25–26
MARTIN LUTHER was a triumphant reformer at 25, and started the Reformation at 30. FRANCIS OF ASSISI was 25 when he founded the Franciscan order; and JOHN OF AUSTRIA won the Battle of Lepanto—the greatest battle of modern times—at age 25. KEATS the divine singer was only a youth and died at 25.
WHITEFIELD was students with Wesley at Oxford and had made his influence felt throughout England before he was 24.
HANNIBAL commanded the Carthaginian forces at 26, and at that age BENJAMIN FRANKLIN wrote Poor Richard’s Almanac.
7641 Ages 27–29
At age 27, NAPOLEON conquered Italy and was recognized as the foremost commander of any age; PATRICK HENRY cried “Give me liberty or give me death!”; JOHN SMITH staked out a colonial empire in Virginia; and the evangelist SPURGEON built the great Metropolitan Tabernacle in London.
COLUMBUS had his plans all laid to find India when he was 28; and at that age, XAVIER teamed with Loyola to organize the Society of Jesuits. ROGER WILLIAMS was important enough to be banished as a heretic at 29.
7642 Ages 30–37
IGNATIUS LOYOLA at age 30 founded the Society of Jesuits. And CORTES was 30 when he stood gazing at the golden treasures of Mexico.
BILLY GRAHAM was 31 at the time of his now-famous Los Angeles Crusade. HAMILTON was 32 when he was Secretary of the Treasury. And when MAURICE OF SAXONY died at age 32, all Europe owned him to be the profoundest statesman of his day.
BILLY SUNDAY left home plate for the pulpit at 33. JEFFERSON was also 33 when he drafted the Declaration of Independence. And JOHN WESLEY began his real life’s work at 35.
By age 37, BYRON, RAPHAEL and POE died after writing their names among the world’s immortals. INNOCENT III, the greatest of the popes, was despot of Christendom at 37, and so was Pope FERDINAND of Aragon when Martin Luther robbed him of his greatest province at 35.
7643 Diminishing Age Of Salvation
Nineteen out of every twenty who become Christians do so before they reach the age of twenty-five.
After twenty-five, only one in 10,000
After thirty-five, only one in 50,000
After forty-five, only one in 200,000
After fifty-five, only one in 300,000
After sixty-five, only one in 500,000
After seventy-five, only one in 700,000
7644 Chapman’s Converts
Dr. Wilbur Chapman once tested a meeting where 4,500 were present. The result showed: 400 became Christians before ten years of age; 600 between sixteen and twenty; 25 became Christians after thirty years of age; 1,875 were unsaved.
7645 Bonar’s Converts
Dr. Horatius Bonar said concerning the spiritual history of 253 converts with whom he was familiar.
Saved under 20 years of age—138 persons
bet. 20 and 30. … . … . … . … . … . … … 85
bet. 30 and 40. … . … . … . … . … . … … 22
bet. 40 and 50. … . … . … . … . … . … … 4
bet. 50 and 60. … . … . … . … . … . … … 3
bet. 60 and 70. … . … . … . … . … . … … 1
over 70 . … . … . … . … . … . … … 0
7646 Youth And Good Morality
The National Sunday School Association survey of 3,000 teens in evangelical churches turned up these figures on dating and sexual morality!
53% never kissed on a first date.
57.9% never petted and necked.
74.5% never masturbated.
92.8% never had sexual intercourse before marriage.
—Christian Youth
7647 Jonathan Edward’s Resolutions
Jonathan Edwards, who was a great and useful man, made five resolutions for himself in his youth, and lived by them faithfully. They are worth studying. Anyone who will adopt and follow them will greatly increase his usefulness. The resolutions are as follows:
“1. Resolved: To live with all might while I do live.
“2. Resolved: Never to lose one moment of time, but to improve it in the most profitable way I possibly can.
“3. Resolved: Never to do anything which I should despise or think meanly of in another.
“4. Resolved: Never to do anything out of revenge.
“5. Resolved: Never to do anything which I should be afraid to do if it were the last hour of my life.”
—Ohio Sunday School Worker
7648 Guidelines To Be Recited
The Boston School Committee directed that the following commandments be read biweekly to pupils in Grades 7 through 12:
1. Don’t let your parents down; they’ve brought you up.
2. Stop and think before you drink.
3. Be smart, obey! you’ll give orders yourself someday.
4. Show-off driving is juvenile; don’t act your age.
5. Ditch dirty thoughts fast or they will ditch you.
6. Pick the right friends to be picked for a friend.
7. Choose a date fit for a mate.
8. Don’t go steady unless you’re ready.
9. Love God and neighbor.
10. Live carefully. The soul you save may be your own.
7649 “Tremble, We Shall Grow Up”
In the early French revolution, the schoolboys of Bourges, from twelve to seventeen years of age, formed themselves into a Band of Hope. They wore a uniform, and were taught to drill. On their holidays, their flag was unfurled, displaying in shining letters the sentence, Tremble, Tyrans, Nous Grandirons! (Tremble, Tyrants, we shall grow up! ).
May we hear the shout of confidence and courage, uttered by the young Christians of the future, as they say, “Tremble, O enemy, we are growing up for God!”
—Al Bryant
7650 The Jesus Movement
When word got out that the Danish government was helping to fund Jens Jorgen Throsen’s blasphemous new film “The Love Affairs of Jesus Christ,” the Young Christians mobilized a protest march of 5,000 people through the streets of Copenhagen. In Amsterdam, a summertime citadel for hippies, many of Holland’s 10,000 Jesus people joined a throng of young evangelists from overseas in distributing roses and Gospels as they marched to a park service. Some 8,000 youths, most of them from eastern Pennsylvania, descended on a potato field near Morgantown for an exuberant three-day Jesus festival, complete with prophecies and rock bands.
Such gatherings are not large compared with the major rock festivals, but they indicate that the Jesus movement, unlike many aspects of the youth counterculture, has survived the fad phase and is settling down for the long haul. Says Christine Clausen, 22, a Californian who is now evangelizing in Germany: “The trippers, the bandwagon jumpers, the people who were just looking for another high have left.”
A recent directory lists 259 Jesus communities and 49 newspapers in North America, but compilers claim that these are only a fraction of the Jesus groups. Many youths have blended into conventional churches or inconspicuous little house fellowships. Others have departed for rural areas.
YOUTH IN TROUBLE
7651 Aristotle On Youth’s Faults
Aristotle, the great Greek philosopher, wrote this about the young people of his time two thousand years ago:
“Their faults are nearly all errors of exaggeration. They overdo in cases of love and in all other things. They imagine that they know everything and stubbornly stand on their point. They like to crack jokes, for joking is the bad manneredness of the well-mannered.”
7652 “I Try To Forget Her”
San Diego (AP)—”I try to forget her,” the woman said, “but she keeps coming back to haunt us.”
The words are those of an anguished mother in 1975, whose daughter, Sandra Good, was an early disciple of Charles Manson.
Miss Fromme was charged with attempting to assassinate President Gerald Ford.
Her mother, in an interview with the San Diego Union, recalled the time Sandra was alleged to have said she had “finally reached the point where I can kill my parents.” She is still afraid of her daughter.
Sandy’s parents were divorced when she was four, the woman said. Twice, she said, Sandy nearly died of respiratory ailments.
“Those times the doctors told me she was dead,” the woman recalled. “Once I even left the hospital after they told me she died. They called me back.”
“Why did she have to pull through?
“When something like this happens, it haunts you. It hurts so badly. No matter what, you can’t get rid of the blood that flows there in that girl. It’s mine.”
7653 He Lied To Dying Father
Dr. John Todd, the eminent writer never could forget how when his old father was very sick and sent him away for medicine, he, a little lad, had been unwilling to go, and made up a lie that “the druggist had not got any such medicine.” Johnny started in great distress the second time for the medicine, but it was too late. The father on his return was almost gone. He could only say to the weeping boy, “Love me and always speak the truth, for the eye of God is always upon you. Now kiss me once more, and farewell.”
—Cuyler
7654 None Ever Praised Mother
I read years ago of a mother who had raised six boys to manhood and her work done, had lain down to die. The boys came home to see their mother and her oldest son, a great, powerful man, knelt by her and, wiping the death-dew from her forehead, said to her: “Mother, you have always been a good mother to us boys.”
The tired woman closed her eyes and great tears pushed out under the lids and ran down her wasted cheeks. Then she opened her eyes, looked searchingly into the face of her firstborn and said to him:
“My boy, I prayed more that I might be a good mother to you six boys than for anything else. I was afraid that I should fail in some way to be all that I ought to you, and I never knew whether you boys thought I had failed or not until now. Not one of you ever told me I was a good mother until today.”
—Charles A. Blanchard
7655 Mother’s Ad
Ad in student paper at Southern Illinois University: “Sweet, little old lady wishes to correspond with six-foot student with brown eyes answering to initials J. D. B.—Signed, His Mother.”
7656 A Link A Year For Father
When James IV of Scotland was a boy, he stood in arms against his father. All his manhood was one long bitter penance for that sin. In memory of it he wore under his robes an iron belt, and to that belt he added every year a new link, that his repentance might be heavier every year of his life.
—F. W. Farrar
7657 Youngest Executioner On Record
No small boy has ever held the post occupied by little Charles-Jean-Baptist Sanson who was chief executioner of the French capital with the title of “Master of Paris” at the age of seven. His father Charles, Sr., had been the executioner before him. The office was hereditary.
When Charles, Sr., died in 1726, he was succeeded by his seven-year-old son. As long as the boy was too small to wield the heavy sword, he was given an assistant named Prudhomme who actually performed the dirty work. The solemn-faced youngster stood by at every beheading—to make it legal. When he attained the grand old age of twelve, he dismissed his assistant and henceforth attended to his gruesome duties with his own hands.
7658 Shock Treatment
The punishment for a sixteen-year-old delinquent, Richard Babic of Battle Greek, Michigan, was set at “forty-five days of solitary confinement on a diet of bread, milk, and water.”
The judge ordered that the young man not be allowed visitors, except a clergyman, a lawyer, or a physician and that his reading be limited to religious literature and the Bible.
“It is high time that we attempt to institute new ideas in punishment,” the judge said.
7659 Youth Sentenced To Pig Sty
Judge Manuel Rocker of Shaker Heights, Ohio, sentenced a nineteen-year-old boy to three hours in a pig sty because the latter had referred to a police officer as a “pig.” The judge expressed his pleasure after the boy had served his time and announced that he had learned a lesson. The judge also said: “I hope that none of these kids call a policeman a crocodile.”
—Christian Victory
7660 Spartan School
Maclean’s carries an account of a different kind of educational institution called “Canada’s most Spartan private school.” It is St. John’s Cathedral Boys’ School, north of Winnipeg. The School aims to “make men out of small boys, while they are still boys.” “The boys speak only when spoken to, say, “Yes, Sir,” and stand straight when a teacher or a stranger enters the room.”
The boys are ages 11 to 18, about 100 of them. Even though the school accepts no one who even looks like a troublemaker, “about ten boys leave each year because they don’t like it.”
Of course this school comes under fire. But the leaders put the boys to severe tests: “We think physical exhaustion to a purpose is good.” Boys of 12 to 13 years “are sent on eighteen-mile snowshoe races in twenty-below weather. They race in teams, and the rules are that the whole team has to finish. This way it isn’t easy for a boy to drop out; rather than let the side down, he keeps going until he literally drops.”
—Selected
7661 Parricide
Parricide was by the Roman law punished in a much severer manner than any other kind of homicide. After being scourged, the delinquents were sewed up in a leather sack with a live dog, a cock, a viper, and an ape, and so cast into the sea. Solon, in his laws, made none against parricide, conceiving it impossible that anyone should be guilty of so unnatural a barbarity.
7662 Hold The Phone!
A father found this note pinned to the bulletin board by the phone: “Daddy—I am going to wash my hair. If Tom calls tell him to call at eight. If Herb calls and Tom doesn’t, tell Herb to call at eight but if they both call tell Herb to call at 8:15 or 8:30. If Timmy calls and Tom and Herb don’t tell Timmy to call at eight, but if they both call (Tom & Herb) or one calls tell Timmy to call at 8:30 or 8:40. Tina”
—Advertiser
7663 Saved By Wrong Number
Walter Slezak was pleasantly surprised to see his teenage daughter answer the telephone and then hang up after talking for only 20 minutes instead of the usual hour. Slezak congratulated her for keeping the conversation so brief and asked her which of her friends had cooperated.
“That wasn’t a friend,” she said. “It was a wrong number.”
—American Weekly
7664 Epigram On Youth
• Someone has figured out that the peak years of mental activity must be between the ages of four and twenty. At four we know all the questions; at twenty we know all the answer.
• Remember what an old bishop said to a group of ministers: “None of you is infallible; not even the youngest of you.”
• Our wisdom teeth are so called because they appear between the ages of seventeen and twenty-five, when it is assumed that their owners have reached a state of wisdom.
—David Jefferis
• The deepest loss of youth is the loss of the innocency and trust which belong to childhood.
See also: Births and Babies ; Children ; Juvenile Delinquency ; Middle Age ; Old Age ; Mark 13:12.
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