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The errors and sins of youth do often entail a very fearful responsibility and very heavy misery upon after life. Youth, which is the season of the first, and sometimes of the most violent temptation, is also unhappily the season of the greatest weakness. Of both temptation and weakness they are usually quite ignorant. The entrance of the path of active life is beset with dangers; and many are led away captive by divers lusts before ,reason had fairly become seated upon her throne. These things do not pass over the mind like an idle wind. The stream of sin cuts furrows deep and wide into the very substance of man's moral nature, overturns all that is good and lovely, overwhelms the fair blossoms and hopes of an intellectual harvest, and even if it retires, leaves, like the receding tide, but a barren surface, uncomely to the mental eye, and ungenial to all religious culture. Some of the evil consequences of early sin are found in the natural tendency of such a course of life; or, rather, in the effects which the providence of God causes, even in this world, to follow a deviation from His laws of moral government. Those who are grossly licentious in their youth pay part penalty by a premature and painful decay of their bodily faculties. Those who waste early years in mere frivolity become, in after life, men of confined intellectual views, and disinclined to all serious occupation. But temporal inconvenience and distress are not the only evil consequences arising from the iniquities of their youth. While religion does not discourage cheerfulness in youth, remember how awful is the warning which she utters to those who regard little else than mere amusement and present gratification. The habits formed in youth will mainly influence the whole future life.

(J. Chevalier, B. D.)

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KJV: For thou writest bitter things against me, and makest me to possess the iniquities of my youth.

WEB: For you write bitter things against me, and make me inherit the iniquities of my youth: