SERMONS TO YOUNG MEN.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIV, Issue 8063, 26 September 1887, Page 5

SERMONS TO YOUNG MEN.

The committee of the Y.M.C.A. having arranged for a monthly series of special sermons to young men, requested the Rev. William Tebbs, incumbent of St. Matthew's Church, and a vice-president of the society, to deliver the inaugural number of the course. In compliance with this invitation Mr. Tebbs preached to a large congregation last evening. tie commenced by saying at the outset of such a series of addressee as these he would ask them to make their own the aspirations of David expressed in a verse of one of the evening's Psalms (cxix., 88). "O, quicken me after Thy lovingkinduess, and so shall 1 keep the testimonies of Thy mouth." Pausing at the word "testimonies," he asked them to notice the imagery of Scripture. as illustrated by painting and music—a few broad but graphic touches conveying an image to the mind, —as » few simple chords, majestic and grand, struck by the hand of genius, conveys a message from soul to soul. Thus the picture of the Gospel, with its grand but simple harmony, carries God's message to the human soul. Thus is His Word sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing asunder even to the very joints aud marrow." Passing on, in a few simple words, he brought the scene on Hermon's slope, at the entrance to ain, before the mind of his hearers, with its central figures, the widow, crushed and heartbroken, and the compassionate Christ. He then depicted what would be the young man's thought in after life whilst he viewed the world—now grasping, now frivolous—around him, and he led on his hearers to fancy themselves in that young man's place in the busy Auckland of to-day. The pursuits of our young men from early morn to midnight hour were then sketched out, each picture eliciting the inquiry whether the result was a good exchange for an immortal soul. He then adjured them in the Master's Name to "arise from worldliness and sloth." Lastly, he urged them as they would pray in the hour of death, "0, quicken me with Thy loving kindness " to pray it now, in order that they might "arise" from the death of their material nature to the keeping of the consequent promise, "So will I keep the testimonies of 1 lay mouth." At one part of the address lis* preacher asked his hearers if they did not taiuk that the young mao would seek to tknow Jesus and model his future life on His, »ad (as time then would be too short for the purpose) he invited them to come on Sunday • veiling next and view Him 88 "The way, the truth, the life."