Edwards:
It is fitting that we should begin our lives with God; and the first business persons should enter upon should be getting into a converted state and condition. Therefore God has so ordered it in providence that in the beginning or morning of our lives there should be room left for it. There is a vacant space left in the beginning, a time of leisure not filled up with the other cares and business, to give the better and freer opportunity for this business; for God expects that we should do this business first. Persons have ordinarily abundantly freer opportunity, freer from those cares and hurries that come upon persons afterwards. Providence has filled up all the rest of our lives with cares, but here it has left, as it were, a vacant space on purpose that we might begin in the first place with that great business.
They who dedicate themselves entirely to God early give their whole lives to God, which must be more acceptable to Him than to dedicate only a small part at the latter end after they have given the greatest part of their lives to sin and Satan. Make religion the business of your youth. Improve this opportunity for seeking your God and your salvation. You are all children of wrath, since you came into the world, not at peace with God. The great God is angry with you; you are exposed to eternal destruction in hell with the devil and his angels. Be beseeched to improve this opportunity in good earnest to be engaged in that great work of seeking your salvation.
Experience teaches that when persons spend their youth in sin, God often leaves them to hardness of heart all their lifetime after. God is provoked by how many sin away their youth and flatter themselves that they will seek God when their youth is past. But God is provoked by their presumption and leaves them to go on as they have been.