Lecture XX. Instruction for Young Converts (5)

It is necessary that the church should take hold of her young converts at the outset, and set them to work, and set them to work right. The hope of the church is in the young converts.

4. We see what a responsibility rests on ministers, and elders, and all who have opportunity to assist in training young converts. How distressing is the picture which often forces itself upon the mind, where multitudes are converted, and yet so little pains taken with the young converts, that in a single year you cannot tell the young converts from the rest of the church. And then to see the old church members turn round and complain of these young converts, and perhaps slander them, when in truth these old professors themselves are most to blame. Oh, it is too bad. This reaction that people talk so much about after a revival, (as if reaction was the necessary effect of a revival,) would never come, young converts never would backslide as they do, if the church were prompt and faithful in attending to their instruction. If they are truly converted, they can be made thorough and energetic Christians. And if they are not such, Jesus Christ will require it at the hands of the church.