"Alas," said he, "of all this vast multitude not one will be left upon the earth a hundred years hence." That was said more than two thousand years ago. How many generations have followed that, over which he wept and uttered this sad truth! We occupy their places now for a few days, and then we shall lie beside them. Of the congregation that is looking up into my face this morning, twenty, thirty, fifty years, where shall it be? The church bell will be rung out, I hope, from its steeple, but it shall be rung by other hands, and for other worshipers. This pulpit will be filled by another preacher and the pews by other listeners. As you would pass in your way home from its door, in your family and social circles, how you would miss the old and once familiar forms, yea, perhaps our very homes will be occupied by strangers. As the prophet says: "We all do fade as a leaf." Lest our subject should be rendered useless by being too general, I will proceed, without further delay, to apply our text and this by addressing the various classes of persons among you, so that all, by the baptism of the Holy Ghost, may derive some spiritual benefit. That our text refers not to one class, but to every, is evident from the word "all,"--"We all do fade as a leaf." It applies itself, then, first to the young. Not only in autumn and winter, but even in the spring and early months of the year, leaves are seen to fall. And similarly, as the inscriptions upon the many tombstones in our last resting-places will testify, so many of the human family disappear in infancy and youth. It is a mournful sight to see them thus carried off in the vigor and tenderness of opening bloom, but it's one that ought to convey solemn teaching to those of youthful years. And what teaching? Wise King Solomon has expressed it in these words: "Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth." And why? Because it is the most favorable time, the most God-honoring time, the most profitable. At no other time is the soul so capable of deep and abiding impressions, are the affections more easily touched and moved, are we more accessible to the influences of emotions and truth. It is preeminently the choosing time, the valley of decision, in which at almost every step we do or leave undone something which has its effect, for good or ill, upon one's future habits and character and eternity; and you can only be prepared to determine matters that call for decision when you have made the great decision; you can choose and act safely and wisely in all the other departments of life, the social, the intellectual, the moral, only when you have taken a decisive stand upon the subject of religion. Hence, our Savior urgently entreats young people: "Seek ye first," first in point of importance and first in point of years, "the kingdom of heaven." Ah, my young members, if the sun does not dispel the mists pretty early in the morning, you may look with reasonable certainty for a foggy day,