"This young man died, and found his grave among strangers. No mother was present, to watch the last struggles and catch the last words of her dying son. He could not ask her forgiveness, nor know that she forgave him. No sister was there to wipe the cold sweat from his pale brow. His father had been dead some three or four years. The conduct of his son might have hastened his end. The residence of his mother was ascertained, and the facts respecting him communicated to her. She had for some time given him up for lost, supposing that he had gone off to sea, and was probably dead. Again were a mother's tears and sorrows called forth afresh; but she, too, has since died, and gone, we trust, to that better world, which sin has not invaded, where the wicked cease from troubling, and where the weary are at rest.' Some family connexions are however still living, on whose account no name and no further particulars will be given.

"Excepting the two or three last sentences, I have not given the young man's conversation exactly in his own words, but as nearly so as I can recollect them; except that I have in some instances mitigated or withheld expressions which I deem unprofitable to repeat. I question the expediency of introducing into the minds of young people, even for the sake of administering to them a salutary warning, the more profane and blasphemous language of those that have grown ripe in sin. 'O my soul, come not thou into their

secret; unto their assembly, mine honour, be not thou united.'

"In reviewing the sad history of this youth, let us notice more particularly the leading steps in his progress to ruin. In the first place, he should have hearkened to the voice of God when a child. Committing himself to his care and guidance, and seeking his favour before all other things, he should have said to him, 'My Father, thou art the guide of my youth.' The lessons of his mother, and of his school, had taught him to do this; and a voice of known authority had said to him, 'Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them.' It was in resistance of conscience and of known duty, that he refused obedience to this command. Had he obeyed it, he would have had sure and unfailing protection through life; his feet would never have been thus left to slide.

"In the second place, after he began to reside in the city, and was in attendance upon a faithful ministry, it was a favourable opportunity for him, before his acquaintances and habits were formed in his new situation, to yield up his heart to God, and to join himself to his people. He ought to have done it. When he found himself separated from the guardians of his youth, and in circumstances of untried temptation; when he felt the occasional loneliness and despondency which every young man feels, on being first actually exiled

from his home, and cast upon his own resourcesthen was one of the seasons of God's special visitations to him; then it was, with a great and threatening accumulation of guilt, that he turned from the counsel of his mother, of his pastor, and of other Christian friends, saying to them, 'Go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient season, I will call for thee.' You may observe that irreligious youths coming from the country into the city, usually become pious soon, if ever they do. If they resist religion for a considerable season in their new situation, and under the peculiar and urgent convictions which they then have, they become hardened and fall under the power of those peculiarly adverse influences which are seldom or ever surmounted.

"In the third place, his becoming the prey of infidelity greatly facilitated his progress to ruin. Had he before been faithful to his obligations, his reading and hearing something of infidelity would probably not have injured him; though it is certainly not worth while for any man to punish himself with death, in order to ascertain the quality of poison. But this young man, according to his own confessions, had sinned, as all who become infidels do, against clear convictions of truth and duty, before he was given over to 'strong delusions to believe a lie.'

"In the fourth place, losing business was another fatal step. his course downward was, as we

his situation in

From that time, have seen, verv

rapid. His ambition was broken, his spirit subdued, his pride mortified; he left off writing to his parents, gave himself up to low vices with more fearless restraint than before; and at last became one of the most hopeless and dangerous of all characters."

8*

CHAPTER VI.

DANGERS OF A MINOR KIND TO WHICH YOUNG MEN AWAY FROM HOME ARE EXPOSED.

BESIDES the formidable and appalling perils which have been already enumerated, as awaiting the young man on his quitting the house of his father, and entering into the business of life, there are others, which, if they do not expose him to the same moral jeopardy, are of sufficient consequence to his well-being to deserve attention. Character may be injured by many things which can scarcely be called immoralities; and misery, yea vice also, may grow out of indiscretions and imprudences.

1. Absence from home may beget forgetfulness of home, and indifference to it: and such a state of mind, where there is much at home worthy to be remembered and loved, is not only unamiable in itself, but injurious to its possessor. Home is not only the scene of enjoyment to the youthful mind, but it is the soil in which the seeds of the social charities and virtues are first sown and grow; so that the child who, with much reason for loving his father's house, is destitute of this affection while there, or loses it when he leaves the spot long trodden by his infant and boyish feet, is a most unpromising character. He that, upon crossing the threshold of the house that has