racter is passing from that state of fusion in which it was left by boyhood and youth, into the cold, hard solidity and fixedness of manhood. It depends chiefly upon the time that is now passing over you, what you are to be, and to do, through all time and eternity. The next two years will very likely determine the great question, concerning the character of your whole existence. The observable tendencies of boyhood and youth, the significant prognos. tications from the pupil and the apprentice, the declaratory signs of earlier years, will now receive their full and perhaps final confirmation, Your character, which has been growing, like your body, through the previous stages of existence, now, like that, arrives at the full shape and maturity which it will hereafter retain and exhibit. Can you be thoughtlessly and carelessly indifferent at such a crisis? Is it possible? Can you help saying, "Is it so, then? Am I really now, just at this period, becoming my permanent future self? Am I determining for all time, and for all eternity, what kind of moral, social, and intellectual being I am to be? Am I now casting my lot, forming my destiny, choosing my character ? What thoughtfulness, seriousness, devotedness, and prayer for God's Holy Spirit to assist me, ought I to manifest! What do I wish to habitually be in and through all future life, and through all eternity? What I am now, that, in all probability, I shall be, I am entering upon life, and as I begin so am I likely to continue." Yes, dwell upon that consideration. It is of immense importance to start well. He that at the beginning of his journey takes the wrong road, diverges at every step farther and farther from the right path; and though return is not impossible, yet at what an expense of time and comfort is it made! Take care, then, to begin well. Solomon says, “Better is the end of a thing than the beginning;" especially if it be a good end of a bad beginning. But how rarely does a thing end well that begins ill! The fruit is better than the blossom; the reaping than the sowing; the victory than the battle; home than the journey to it; the reward than the service, but then all these better endings depend on good beginnings. There can be no rich fruit in autumn without a good blossom in spring; no plentiful reaping without plentiful sowing; no victory without a well-fought battle; no returning home without a journey along the right road. So there can be no rational expectation of a good end without a good beginning of life. II. I will now remind you of the dangers that attend your entering into life. Yes, dangers; and I really wish to excite your fears by the word. I am anxious to awaken your apprehension by thus ringing an alarm bell. Not indeed by raising spectres which have no real existence; not by calling up spirits from the vasty deep of a gloomy imagination. No, there is no need, in order to excite your fears, of passing before you the dark shadows and the ghosts of romance. The sober and dread realities of daylight and of every-day existence are sufficiently numerous and appalling to justify the use of the most solemn, impressive, and earnest warnings I can give. Young men, it is a truth, and a dread and anxious one for you, that the moral dangers of life stand thickest around its entrance. The most perilous rocks and shoals in the voyage of life are at the mouth of the river where it enters the ocean; and notwithstanding the lighthouse which, in the Holy Scriptures and the faithful labours of authors and preachers, ever holds out its friendly warning over these dangerous places, more shipwrecks are made there than any. where else. These dangers are so numerous that they must be classed. There are some which may have been thrown in your way, perhaps, by the injudicious conduct of your parents. They may have altogether neglected your moral training, and left you to go forth into the world without any fixed principles, any good habits, or any rightly formed character. By a system of false and weak indulgence, they may have partially unfitted you for the trials, the difficulties, the roughness, and self-denial of life. I will not dwell upon their conduct with the severity it deserves; but be you aware of their mistake, and call up your own wisdom to correct it. They have left you something to undo, as well as to do. Supply, by your own resolute will, the deficiency of hardihood with which they have left you. Abandon the soft and effeminate habits in which they have trained you, and determine to be men, and to acquire a manly character. You can, if you will, make up their deficiencies; but it will require much effort and more perseverance. There are next the dangers that are inherent in yourselves, and these are the greatest of all. You not only go to meet perils, you carry them forth with you. Now at the head of all this class I must place the corruption of your own hearts. "Know thyself," was supposed by the ancients to be a maxim so replete with wisdom as to have descended from heaven. No man can properly exercise self-government without self-knowledge. False notions on this subject must, of necessity, lead to practical errors of the most momentous kind. I cannot, I dare not, I will not, flatter you by speaking highly of the native goodness, the moral dignity, of human nature. Scripture, observation, and experience combined, must prove to any impartial mind, that man is in a lapsed condition, alien from God, and estranged from righteousness. This is a first principle, not only in all true religion, but in all sound philosophy. Leaving out this, it is impossible satisfactorily to account for the present condition and general history of the human race. Forgetting or denying this, your whole system of religion and morals will be wrong, and your whole course of action defective and erroneous: you will not, cannot know, the chief source of your danger, and that which alone can account for the exist ence and power of other dangers: nor will you know how to begin or proceed in watching and guarding against them. There is, you know it, you feel it, and perhaps some of you lament it, a fatal propensity to evil, which, though inclining to what is wrong, yet, as by divine grace it may be resisted and removed, is neither an irresistible tendency nor an invincible necessity, but a voluntary choice, and is therefore no excuse for actual sin, though it may account for it. It is not danger from without only you have to fear, but also from within; not from others merely, but from yourself. You carry your tempter in your own heart; you are your own tempter. You will be surrounded by external seductions, and you will expose to them a nature too willing to be seduced. There is in you "an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God." You have more need to be afraid of yourself than even of Satan or of the world. They cannot tempt you but through your own corruptions. Hence the imperative need of your seeking first of all the entire renovation of your own hearts, and keeping evermore a constant watch over yourselves. You will be most inadequately prepared to grapple with temptation, unless you know what it is that gives it force. But the corruption of the heart assumes a different form in different persons, and shows itself in manners appropriate to their age, circumstances, and temptations. In your case there are those "youthful lusts," from which by apostolic injunction you are exhorted to flee. In addition to an inflammable and prurient imagination, the rashness and impetuosity of temper, the thoughtlessness and recklessness of disposition, the pride of independence, and the headstrong waywardness which are all too common in youth, there are the animal appetites and propensities exhibiting themselves in all their force: those promptings of licentiousness and impulses of sensuality, to which there are so many incentives, and which require 66 so strong a restraint from reason and religion; I mean, young men, the vices which form the drunkard and the debauchee: those illicit gratifications which degrade the man into the brute. The danger here exceeds all the alarm I can possibly give. No warning can be too loud, no entreaties too importunate, in regard to this peril. Voices from the pulpit, from the hospital, from the hulks, from the workhouse, from the lunatic asylum, from the grave, and from the bottomless pit, all unite in saying, Young men, beware of sensuality." Flee from this as from a serpent or a lion. Read what Solomon says, who could speak on such a subject from his own unhappy and dishonourable experience : The lips of a strange woman drop as an honey-comb, and her mouth is smoother than oil: but her end is bitter as wormwood; sharp as a twoedged sword. Her feet go down to death, her steps take hold on hell: let not thine heart decline to her ways, go not astray in her paths. For she has cast down many wounded: yea, many strong men have been slain by her. Her house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death." Prov. v., vii. Read these chapters, and, in connection with them, Job xx. 11-14, 1 Cor. iv. 15-20, Thess. iv. 2-5, Heb. xiii. 4, Rev. xxi. 8. 66 There is also another form which the corruption of our nature assumes, and which the apostle calls "the deceitfulness of sin." "Exhort one another daily, lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin." Deceitfulness is not only one of the characteristics of sin, but is its most dangerous one; and none are so much in danger of being imposed upon by it as the young; nor are they at any period of youth so much so as when just entering upon it. You have never perhaps looked upon it sufficiently in this view of it. You have dwelt upon its exceeding sinfulness, but its deceitfulness has escaped you. Yet this is what you have chiefly to guard against. Sin is a most cunning and artful foe. Observe what pains it takes Ꭰ |