And now, my young friends, which will you choose?  If you love life and desire to see many days, let me exhort you to choose the former, and to drink freely out of that golden cup in which every earthly joy of unbroken felicity is mingled by the unerring hand of divine mercy; and let me warn you to reject the latter, for in it are mingled the bitter drugs of misery.  Be temperate in eating and drinking.  Be temperate in all your pursuits in life, and in all your desires.  Be temperate in your conduct; and (as an able writer observes) pitch upon that course of life which is the most excellent, and habit will soon render it the most delightful.  Avoid not only every word and action that may lead to discord and contention, but, as our text says, depart from evil and do good, seek peace, and pursue it.  Let us do good to all our fellow creatures, and endeavor to overcome their hatred with love, and their evil with good.

Yes, my young friends, affectionately and solemnly would I urge you to begin early to curb your passions, and to study sweetness of disposition.  It will soon become to you perfectly natural, and thus you will lay the foundation for a virtuous and tranquil old age.  But, asks the youth, shall I live longer for subduing my passions and doing good, for seeking peace and pursuing it?  Certainly.  Our text teaches this; so does philosophy, and the scriptures generally.  Jesus Christ says, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”  That is, they shall long enjoy it.  “Blessed are the peace-makers for they shall be called the children of God.”  The fifth Commandment says, “Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.”  By honoring our parents, we are to understand a filial and submissive obedience to their precepts by not departing from that way in which with many exhortations, prayers and tears, they sought to train us up.  In this case, honoring them would of course require us to walk in the paths of virtue and temperance, and to live an honest, quiet and peaceable life which would ensure the promise, and give us many days.

Not only do the scriptures promise long life to the peaceable, temperate and meek, but they on the other hand just as solemnly declare that “the wicked shall not live out half their days.”  This passage has occasioned much dispute among religious denominations; one affirming that every man’s time is appointed in the counsels of heaven by the decree of God, who “declares the end from the beginning;” and another affirming that it is not, for the above passage teaches that the life of man may be shortened.  But there is no occasion for dispute on this point, for they are both right, as we have seen in the course of our remarks.  This passage is but the counterpart of our text.  It is the decree of God that the wicked, the abandoned shall not reach the extreme of human life, because