ble and humane employment than to endeavor to take from virtue its support, from affliction its consolation, from existence its value, leave them, leave them! to their chosen folly. Go not a step with them in that dark way. Commit yourself

NOW and WHOLLY to truth and religion. Have as little to do with infidels and infidel writings as possible. Is it necessary to drink a whole hogshead of vinegar, to learn that it is sour? or to take all the arsenic ever made into your stomach, to learn that it is poisonous? And is it necessary to read all the infidel books and hear all the infidel preaching in the world, to learn that infidelity is sour and poisonous? If you have learned what is the natural and healthful nutriment of the soul, USE IT; whatever injures and destroys, LET IT ALONE.

This may be called bigotry, fanaticism, priestcraft, ignorance, illiberality; but no matter for that. If men will call you by these hard names because, with your eyes open, you choose what is good and refuse what is evil, be content to bear it. "If you be reproached for the name of Christ, happy are you; for the spirit of glory and of God resteth upon you. On their part he is evil spoken of, but on your part he is glorified." Give yourself cordially, confidently, firmly and wholly away to Jesus Christ and his service, and although infidelity may scowl, and ignorance cavil, and sin blaspheme, you will have all heaven upon your side,

ETERNITY OF TRUTH.

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and the final issue of the contest between the powers of light and of darkness, will be your certain victory and your exceeding great and precious reward.

It is but the echo of the united voices of the wisest wisdom, the loftiest virtue and the noblest benevolence that has adorned humanity in all ages of the world, which declares that the Bible contains the most true, needful, healthful, nourishing and enduring of all instruction for the accountable and immortal mind. Its lessons of wisdom are from the deep fountains of eternity. They will continue to flow as from a well-spring of everlasting life, even after all the sources of natural science shall be dried up. Yea, when the stars of heaven shall fall like autumnal leaves, and when yonder glorious orb shall go out in darkness, the everlasting truths unfolded in the word of God will impart ever-growing light, life, and joy to the soul, as it shall range the sweet fields of paradise in the world of spirits bright.

CHAPTER X.

DANGERS OF YOUNG MEN.

"And thou mourn at the last."

I HOPE the present chapter will prove to be unnecessary. It has been my object to prevent you from doing evil, by exhibiting means and motives to do well. It is not my wish to assume the position of an alarmist. But as my reader may not have yielded assent to truth and duty, or at least may not have actually commenced a life of obedience to God; as the love of sloth, pleasure, and sin may be so great as to have resisted all the motives to knowledge, virtue, and religion drawn from a consideration of the good to be secured, it may be well, before proceeding to further particulars respecting the good which young men may do and the means of doing it, to urge some motives drawn from another source. I propose to set briefly before you the evils you may do to your self and others, by a life of irreligion and sin.

In order to appreciate the evil which it is in your power to do, it is necessary to consider the

circumstances of responsibility in which you are placed; the physical, intellectual, social, and moral constitution with which you are endowed; the nature and amount of your obligations, as they respect yourself, your parents, your family, your Maker, civil society, the divine government, the temporal and everlasting welfare of all to whom you stand in any way related, or whom your influence can ever reach; the good which you may do, and the ultimate amount of good which you may destroy. Consider also what high authority it is which has said, "one sinner destroyeth much good."

Capacity to rise high in excellence and glory, is capacity to sink correspondently deep in ruin and perdition. The lobster has not capacity to rise much; for the same reason he has not capacity to sink much. The brute is incapable of procuring to himself, on the one hand, anything more than a few physical and transient benefits; for the same reason he is incapable of procuring to himself, on the other hand, anything more than a few physical and transient evils. Not so with man. The same capacities and opportunities which enable him to rise to the everlasting character and enjoyments of angels, enable him to sink to the everlasting character and miseries of devils. Let us then notice some of the evils which it is in your power to do to yourself and to others.

1. To yourself.

1. You can ruin your physical constitution. You can do this, even by many means which the the humble brute cannot command. You can employ your superior intellect in inventing and contriving ways to enervate your body, induce incurable disease, and conduct you through a course of severe sufferings to an early grave. Some of the most intense physical sufferings which I ever witnessed, were those which a young man brought upon himself by sensual vices. Many a young man has, in a very short time, inconsiderately and wickedly ruined the finest constitution ever framed; so that he has either dug for himself an early grave, or compelled himself to drag out an existence so useless and miserable as to have considered death itself almost better.

2. You can ruin your pecuniary interests and prospects. By a course of indolence, inattention, waste, prodigality, amusements and pleasures in your early years, you may fatally exile yourself from all the means and hopes of ever rising from a state of abject and servile dependence. And even if you have begun and proceeded well for a season, you are not secure. It may cost a man years of toil to obtain the means of a comfortable and honorable subsistence; but a few short hours may decoy him into those improvident measures, to which that man is exposed, who "hath an evil eye," or