RULES FOR OBTAINING FORGIVENESS. 291 dealing with God in his distresses, he prays that he would not remember the sins- and transgressions of his youth. Psalm 25:7. Youth is often a time of great vanity and unmindfulness of God ; many stains and spots are therein usually brought upon the consciences of men. " Childhood and youth are vanity," Eccl. 11 : 10, not merely because they soon pass away, but because they are usually spent in vanity : so the advice in the next verse to remember God in those days indi- cates. chap. 12 : 1. The way of many is to put such things out of mind, not to walk in a sense of their folly and madness, and never to make a thorough work with God about them. I speak of the saints themselves; for with others that live under the means of grace, whom God intends any way to make useful in their genera- tion, this is the usual course: by convictions, restrain- ing grace, afflictions, love of employment and repute, God gives them another heart than they had for a sea- son; another heart, but not a new heart. Hence an- other course of life, another profession, other actions than formerly do flow; with this change they content themselves ; they look on what is past perhaps with delight, or as those things fit enough for those days, but not for those they have attained to. Here they rest, and therefore never come to rest. But I speak of the saints themselves, who make not such thorough, full, close work in this respect as they ought. An after-reckoning may come in to their own disturbance, and an unconquerable hinderance of their peace. So was it with Job, chap. 13 : 26. " He makes me to possess the iniquities of my youth." God filled his heart, his thoughts, his mind with these sins; made
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