some competent and trustworthy individual, and maintaining with him, as well as with their son, a constant correspondence, to know how he was doing.

They should also have secured his regular attendance at church, and taken pains to have him personally acquainted with his pastor. The moral power exerted over a young man by a personal and friendly acquaintance with his pastor, is very great. Parents in the country, on sending a son into the city, frequently suppose that if they secure for him a seat in church, it is sufficient; that the pastor will of course be at once acquainted with him. But it is not so. Consider how large the congregations are in cities, and how numerous the duties which continually press upon the pastor, and you will not be surprised that, despite of his vigilance, a young man may occupy a seat in his church for a long time, without his knowledge. It is always grateful to pastors, to have young men from abroad come directly to their houses with letters of introduction.

It is also important that a youth, coming as a stranger to reside in the city, should be introduced to one or two good families, where he may occasionally call, and be received with cordiality and treated in some measure as a son and brother. Every individual needs some society. For want

FIRST STEPS OF VICE.

267

of this kind of sympathy and attention, a young man is in danger of losing his self-respect, and descending to base society and vicious indulgencies.

All these conservative means are needed, and they have great moral power over youth in the city, to counteract opposing influences. They may be secured; and the parent is guilty of great inconsiderateness, for which he may expect to be punished in the ruin of his son, if he does not secure them.

In the third place, the moment those parents knew that their son was taking any incipient steps in vice, they should have instantly recalled him from the city and put him to the plough. From the day that a young man begins to shun the society of those to whom he was entrusted; begins to form bad acquaintances, to be fond of the theatre, to be occasionally absent from church, to indulge a little in drinking, and to be out nightsit is certain that he is going wrong. Not an hour is to be lost. He should be instantly placed at the greatest possible remove from all those temptations, which have begun to destroy him.

But others' neglect can justify no individual in doing wrong himself. Let us then notice the sin of the young man himself; 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 favor 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 Sabbath 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 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 favorable opportunity for him, before his acquaintances and habits were formed in his new situation, to yield up his heart to God and join himself to his people. He ought to have done it. It was not without resisting many urgent convictions, that he refused to do 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 first finding himself actually exiled from his home and cast upon his own resources then was one of the sea

sons of God's special visitations with him; then it was, with a great and threatening accumulation of guilt, that he turned from the council 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 youth 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 peculiar adverse influences in the city, which are seldom ever surmounted.

In the third place, his falling a prey to infidelity greatly facilitated his progress to ruin. Had he done his previous duty, reading and hearing something of infidelity would not probably have injured him ; although, as before remarked, it is hardly worth while for any man to punish himself with death in order to ascertain the quality of poison. Let any person begin right, do present known duty, and some acquaintance with error will frequently serve to impart the more clearness and value to truth; as I have shown in the chapter on knowledge. But this young man had not done thus. According to his own confessions, he 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 his situation in business was the last fatal step. From that time his course downward was, as we have seen, very 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 a gentleman-vagabond.

I do not by any means consider the state of one's mind in the last hours of life, as a sure indication of his future condition. It is nearly and perhaps always the lot of the truly good man to die either peacefully, or in the triumphs of Christian faith and joy; it is sometimes the lot of the wicked man, to die under the most burning stings of conscience, and with a "certain fearful looking for of judgment and of fiery indignation," But not unfrequently does the hardened sinner die in a state of moral torpor. Superficial observers call it resignation and calmness; but it is utterly unlike true Christian calmness. It is to the soul that leaves the world thus, like that still and awful repose of nature which precedes au earthquake. It is more painful to see a sinner leaving the world with this blindness and deadness to the realities of judgment