Concluding Applications on Sober-Mindedness (5)

Choose sober company. Nothing is of greater consequence to young people than what company they keep, for we insensibly grow like those with whom we converse, especially those with whom we delight to converse. Many that were thought to be soberly inclined, have had their good inclinations turned the contrary way by keeping vain and loose company, by which perhaps at first they were not aware of any danger, but thought their conversation innocent enough. Though ill company perhaps bears more blame sometimes than it deserves, from those who think to excuse themselves by laying the fault on their companions, yet it is agreed to have been of most pernicious consequence to multitudes that set out well. If therefore you would be wise and good, choose such for your associates and bosom-friends as will give you good advice, and set you good examples; he that walketh with wise men, is wise or would be wise, and he shall be wise, when a companion of fools is deceived, and shall be destroyed. Keep at a distance from loose and vain company, for who can touch pitch and not be defiled? Who can converse familiarly with those who are wicked and profane, and not contract guilt, or grief, or both? If you resolve, as David did, to keep the commandments of your God, you must say to evil-doers as he did,” Depart from me” (Psalm 119:115), and be as he was, companions of all those that fear Cod, (v. 63), and let your delight be in the excellent ones of the earth, the sober ones.

Read sober books. Those that are given to reading, are as much under the influence of the books they read, as of the persons they converse with, and therefore in the choice of them you need to be very cautious, and take advice. Nothing more prompts vanity, especially among the refined part of mankind, than romances and plays, and loose poems; and thus even their solitudes and retirements, which we hope might contribute to their seriousness, are lost, make them more vain, and more ingeniously so. Let us therefore take the same method to make us sober, more sober. Converse with those books which are substantial and judicious, out of which we may learn wisdom. The Book of God is given us on purpose to make us wise to salvation. Make it familiar to you, and let it dwell in you richly. Let it lead you, let it talk with you; and do you follow it and talk with it (Prov. 6:22). And many other good books we have to help us to understand and apply the Scripture, which we should be conversant with. Inquire not for merry books, songs, and jests, but serious books, which will help to put you into, and keep you in a serious frame.

Abound much in sober work. Habits are contracted by frequent acts; if therefore you would have a sober mind, employ yourselves much in meditation and prayer, and other devout and holy exercises. And in these let your hearts be fixed, and let all that is within you be employed. Be much in secret worship, as well as diligent and constant in your attendance on public ordinances; those who neglect these cannot but lose their seriousness. And see to it that you be very serious when you are about serious work, that you profane not the holy things. I look upon it to be in young people as happy an indication of a serious mind, and as hopeful as an omen of a serious life, as any other, to be reverent and serious in the worship of God. For it is a sign the vanity of the mind runs high and strong indeed, when even there it will not be restrained from indecencies; and he is loose indeed that is” almost in all evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly” (Prov. 5:14). The greatness of the God with whom you have to do, and the greatness of the concern you have to do with Him in, when you are engaged in His worship, should strike an awe upon you, and make you serious.

And have this in your eye in all religious exercises, that by them you may be made more serious; and that the impressions of other holy exercises may be the deeper, and take the faster hold, let me advise young people that are sober-minded, to come betimes to the ordinance of the Lord’s Supper. Let me press it upon them, not only as a duty they owe to Christ, but as that which will be of great advantage to themselves to strengthen their resolutions, with purpose of heart to cleave to the Lord. Those who keep off from it, it is either because they know they are not sober-minded, or because they are not determined to continue so; but none of you will own either of those reasons. Delay not therefore by that most sacred solemn bond, to join yourselves to the Lord in a perpetual covenant, never to be forgotten.

And how do you like this sober, serious work you have now been about in hearing, or reading this discourse? Have you been in it as your element— or as a fish upon dry ground? Have you suffered this word of exhortation, and bidden it welcome? Shall I leave you all resolved in the strength of God’s grace, that now in the days of your youth you will be sober-minded? If so, the Lord keep it always in the imagination of the thought of your heart, and by writing the law of sobriety there, establish your way before Him!

Rev. Matthew Henry (1662-1714) pastoreó a Presbyterian congregation at Chester, England, for twenty-five years. He is best known and loved for his Bible commentary (1708-10). This article concludes a series taken from his The Young Christian.

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