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Louise Bushneli reminded her audience that youth is not always “wasted” on the young with these striking facts:

            Let history encourage us.  Alexander the Great was a military hero at eighteen.  He dominated much of the civilized world of his day.  For Alexander the time was now.

            Joan of Arc was nineteen when she completed her mission.  She embraced the immortality of martyrdom.  Isaac Newton at twenty-one had contributed importantly to mathematics.  At twenty-five Cambridge University honored him with a professorship.  Alexander Hamilton at eighteen was famous as an orator for freedom’s cause.  At twenty he was a Lieutenant Colonel on George Washington’s staff … as well as being Washington’s trusted confidential secretary.

Lafayette was a major general in Washington’s army at nineteen.  He left France as a youth to help the revolting Americans.  William Pitt, the younger, one of Great Britain’s top statesmen, won his seat in Parliament at the age of twenty-one.  He became prime minister at twenty-five!  Thomas Edison at sixteen already had useful inventions to his credit.  Winston Churchill, on the eve of going abroad as a foreign correspondent, though not yet twenty-one, gave a farewell dinner party for some of his young friends.  He proposed the toast ...I quote “Those yet under twenty-one who in twenty years will control the British Empire.”

            At twenty-nine, Earl Warren was deputy district attorney for the important county of Alameda.  Our last example gave mankind an ethic for living.  In the last three years of his life he created a unique philosophy of love.  Jesus Christ died at 33.

            For each of this company of illustrious names, dreams and integrity were incitements to action.  For each, the time was now.

Journal of Religious Speaking, C. King Duncah, Jr., Editor