Or, again, in trying to turn from evil to good, have you ever found your resolutions give way, the ground which you had gained slide from under your feet, till you fell back again to what you were at the beginning?  Has this ever happened to us?  If it has, then in that case, also, we sought God, but failed to find him; the victory was not yours, but the enemy’s; the Spirit of Christ did not help you so as to conquer.

Take another case yet again.  Has it ever happened to any of you, to have done a mischief to yourselves which you could not undo?  It need not be one of the very highest kind; but has it ever happened, that, by neglect, you have lost ground in the society in which you are placed, which you cannot recover; that your contemporaries have gained an advance upon you, while you have not time left to overtake them?  Does it ever happen that, from neglecting some particular element of learning in its proper season, and other things claiming your attention afterwards, you go on with a disadvantage, which you would fain remove, but cannot?  Does it, in short, ever happen to any, that his complete success here is become impossible; that whatever prospects of another kind may be open to him elsewhere, yet that he cannot now be numbered amongst those who have turned the particular advantages here afforded them to that end which they might and ought to have done?

To whomsoever this has happened, the truth of the words of the text is matter of experience, not in their full and most dreadful extent, but yet quite enough to prove that they are true; and that just as he now feels them in part, so, if he continues to be what he is, he will one day feel them wholly.  He feels that it is possible to seek God, and not to find him; he has learnt by experience that neglected good, or committed evil, may be beyond the power of after-regret to undo.  It is true, that as yet, to him, other prospects may be open:  prospects which, probably, he may deem no less fair than those which he has forfeited.  This may be so; but the point to observe is, that one prospect was lost so irretrievably by his own fault, that afterwards, when he wished to regain it, he could not.  Now God gives him other prospects, which he may realize:  but as he forfeited his first prospect beyond recovery, so he may do also with his last:  and though ill-success at school may be made up by success in another sphere, yet what is to make up for ill-success in the great business of life, when that, too, has been forfeited as irrecoverably; when his last chance is gone as hopelessly as his first?

Now, surely there is in all this an intelligible lesson.  I am not at all exaggerating the importance of the particular prospect forfeited here:  but I am pressing upon you, that this prospect may be, and often is, forfeited irrecoverably; that when you wish to regain it, it is too late, and you cannot.  And I press this, because it is a true type of the whole of human life; because it is just as possible to forfeit