The Importance of a Well spent Youth. As youth is a period of life, the most favorable for gaining that knowledge and mental improvement which it is desirable all should acquire; and also, for making those virtues our own, which alone can render their possessor, truly good and happy, it is of the utmost importance, that this season should be rightly improved.
Our life may be compared to a building. In youth is laid the foundation of knowledge, habits, and dispositions, on which middle life, and age, must finish the structure - but as that edifice, whose foundation is imperfect, and insecure, is, (notwithstanding its splendid exterior) considered of litle worth, so in moral architecture, no good structure can be raised upon a faulty foundation - and although we may see those in middle life, whose beauties of form, and person at first attract attention, and lead us to forget, what most deserves our notice, yet when a mind uncultivated, and unadorned is exposed fully to our view, at once we turn away from such an object, with a feeling of sorrow, and regret, that so little effort has been made in youth to secure the greatest ornaments of life.
The infirmities of age too, need the reflections of a well spent youth to comfort and solace them - but if this spring time of our existence, is suffered to pass by neglected, or misimproved, the consequences in a life, more advancd, may be unhappiness, or misery.
The importance of a well spent youth, cannot therefore be derived, but the fact that this truth is in many instances, treated with little regard, may well affect our hearts, and incline us to make continual effot for those, over whom we may have an influence, that none, by reason of our unwise example, shall choose the ways of folly, but that many, through our instrumentality shall early be induced to walk in those good paths, which alone will conduct us, to a world where all is wisdom, knowledge, holiness, and joy.
Mount Holyoke Sem. Jan'ry 30. 1847.