V.

MORAL DANGERS.

N PREVIOUS chapters, I have dwelt on the

IN

power of the young man in the various spheres of home, business, the community, and the country. But power is always accompanied with danger. The steam-ship outstrips all the sail-craft of the seas; and yet the more steam she generates, and the swifter her course, the more liable she is to break her machinery, to be enveloped in flames, or to dash against other vessels, and go to the bottom. And the very energy and celerity of youth, if ill-directed or unrestrained, may only involve its possessor in the speedier ruin.

He is the truest benefactor of that age, therefore, who opens for it the chart, and points out to it beforehand, not only the good lights and the safe harbors, but also the rocks, reefs, and shoals.

The first rock I name, is inexperience. It has been said that we learn nothing truly valuable except from experience. If so, what perils must lie on the threshold of life? A single misstep, as we cross it,

may cause us to stumble and fall; it may be, never to rise, hopelessly excluded from the high niche we might otherwise have filled in the temple, not only of honor and gain, but what is far more important, of personal purity. In the morning of life, imagination and passion run their widest rounds; while reason, latest developed, and yet all-controlling and all-decisive, is as yet immature. That self-poised vigor, which age alone can impart to perfection, is as yet wanting.

I am anxious, by a few plain words, to throw a pebble against what seems to me an incoming tide of guilt and woe. And I would address myself, not to those alone, who, like Peter, when walking on the water, are "beginning to sink," but to such as tread the waves of life's opening sea, as yet self-reliant and firm.

I am to speak of certain moral dangers; and the first I name, as besetting the young man, is that of corrupt companions. The social feelings, at this age, often lead to the hasty formation of acquaintances and friendships; while the influence these exert on the opinions, tastes, and habits, is immense. Man is, to a great extent, the creature of imitation; easily he catches the tone of thought and conduct, and conforms to the manners of his associates. The process may be insensible; but it is as certain to go on as the chameleon is to conform his hue to whatever he

touches. And if the wise and good mould others to their own likeness, so do the low and unprincipled.

This is especially true in early life. Our partialities are then quick and tenacious; we glide rapidly into the great stream that flows nearest us. In the material world there is a constant tendency of the electric fluid to an equilibrium. So it is morally among the young; they either give or take wherever they are. Let them mingle most with the good, and they soon join the phalanx of virtue; and the career of vice is seldom commenced except in youth. Hence, the company we choose and keep at the outset of life, will probably, under God, decide both our character and our whole destiny.

First,

The danger from this source is twofold. there are those who determine to lead, wherever they go; and this resolution puts their own virtue in peril. Not that a desire of influence is in itself wrong; if it result from a wish to do extensive good, it may be the spring of noble and Christian efforts. But if the motive is a mere love of power, it is decidedly criminal. He who has no higher principle than this, will stop at no expedient whatever, to make himself popular. He will go beyond any one else in raillery and ridicule; making light of vice, and ready, if the jest prove acceptable, to sport with truth, honesty, kindness, and even religion itself. And no young man is

secure in his character one moment after he has trifled with the sacred names of God and duty.

The tendency, too, of such a habit is to gather round one a set of companions inferior in force to himself. And thus, whatever is low and weak in them, becomes the great element in which he moves and breathes. He lets himself down to the level of the lowest; his whole aim is to be as much like them as possible, in any deviation from truth and purity, honor and honesty, which they manifest. So are they reacting upon him, and bearing him constantly downward. Corrupt, and being corrupted, his selfrespect tarnished, and finally destroyed, he rushes at last through the gate of perdition.

The other branch of exposure in this quarter, is the evil of being easily enticed, into error and sin, by unprincipled companions. Pythagoras, before admitting pupils into his school, inquired, "Who are their most intimate friends?" And he did wisely; for they who seek the society of the vicious by choice, usually become vicious themselves. And this, probably, with no such thought either in the beginning.

They met them, perhaps, at first by accident. And, through fear of being thought over good, they did not frown on what they then felt to be wrong. By degrees, it appeared less and less heinous to themselves. They smiled at the vulgar jest, the obscene

allúsion, and the profane word. And so it went on ; until at length they would laugh as loud as the loudest at expressions which once shocked them; and they could say and do things which, in the day of their purity, they regarded with horror.

Among the several kinds of bad examples that do us harm, — namely, those we imitate, those we proudly exult over, those which drive us into an opposite extreme, and those which lower our standard, this last is the most hurtful. For one who is corrupted by becoming readily as bad as a very bad example, there are ten that are debased by being content with the idea that they are better than the worst. Nothing is so dangerous as to be perpetually measuring ourselves by what is beneath us; and being satisfied at feeling a superiority to that with which, despite ourselves, we more and more assimilate.

A great principle is involved in this statement, on which I must for a few pages dwell. In judging things outward and secular, we act always in view of some particular standard. When we speak of an article as good or bad, there is a scale in our minds, by which we measure it; and hence, what is sufficient in one estimate, is insufficient in another. This principle applies equally to moral and spiritual things. To say of one that he is a good man, implies that we judge him by some determinate standard. By