Youthful Piety, Loveliness of – Charles Spurgeon

AN apple-tree when loaded with apples is a very lovely sight; but give me, for beauty, the apple-tree in bloom. The whole world does not present a more lovely sight than an apple blossom. Painters have declared that there is nothing in the whole world to excel it in beauty. Now, a full-grown Christian laden with fruit is a blessed sight, but still there is a blessedness, a peculiar blessedness, about the young Christian in bloom. Let me just tell you what I think that blessedness is. You have probably now a greater tenderness about sin than some professors who have known the Lord for years; they might wish that they felt your tenderness of conscience. You have now a graver sense of duty, and a more solemn fear of the neglect of it than some who have known the Lord for years; and you have a greater zeal than many. You are now doing your first works for God, and burning with your first love; nothing is too hot for you or too hard for you. To go to a sermon now—no matter what weather it may be—seems to you to be an imperative necessity; you would go over hedge and ditch to hear the Word. But some who are of older growth want soft cushions to sit upon; they cannot stand in the aisle now as they used to do; everybody must be particularly polite when they come in, or they care not to worship at all. At one time they were so hungry that if you had thrown them a piece of meat on a skewer they would have eaten it; but now it must be delicately cooked; and all sorts of sauce served up with it, and it must be well garnished, or they cannot eat it. They hear this minister, and they are tired of the other. They are in the state of the fools in the Psalm, who abhorred all manner of meat, and I fear their souls draw near unto death; but at first there is such a good appetite, such zeal, such hunger, that I am sure you will look back in years to come to your springing, and say, “Ah, God did bless the springing thereof!” Go on, dear friends, to something higher; press forward to something more full and complete, but bless God for what you have.