The

fascinations; you will see the pedestal on which genius has been lifted up into notoriety; you will find there the charms of music, the eloquence of a mimic oratory, the power of fervid declamation, the most exciting scenes of blood, and the most laughable representations of the follies of our fallen race. But after all it is mere acting; it is mock life; it is an unreal scene. The man, who personates a king, is a poor player and may be destitute of a single quality to command your respect. woman, who acts as if she were a Lucretia, may be lost to virtue and unworthy to receive a moment's thought. The whole assemblage before you; the scenery, the actors, the musicians, and the abandoned ones who form an essential part of it and properly belong to the theater, for what is it all? Is it to form a healthful recreation for your bodies or souls? Is it to improve and adorn your minds? Is it to enlarge your views of life and its great ends? Is it to cherish in you the principles of virtue, and prepare you to resist evil, and fit you to enter upon life respected and beloved, strong in rectitude, pure in feeling, manly in action? Not one of all these things belongs to its aims or is included in its results. It is a time-waster, a money-waster, a character-waster. No man comes from such an assemblage purer and better fitted for the work of life. Thousands come forth debauched in principle and utterly unprepared for the duties of time.

But you are not only to live here; you are not a brute to perish in the earth; you have a soul sublime in its faculties, vast in capacity, fearful in destiny. Time is given you as a space in which to prepare for eternity. These passing hours, are pregnant with immortal issues. Is the theater the place for him, who, ere the night is

gone, may pass into eternity? Is the play-house a fit school in which you can educate your heart for heaven? Is the place where religion is travestied, the name of God profaned, and the virtues of a Christian life dishonored, a fit position for a soul that, erelong, must meet that God and account for all its life. Oh! let me entreat you, flee these dens of vice; dishonor not your immortality and your hope of heaven by subjecting yourselves to such influences. There is a life that derives its vitality from the things that are invisible; from the throne of God, the mediation of his Son, and the revelation of his will. This life, in harmony with all its faculties, and the only state in which they can be successfully unfolded, is the one that befits the dignity and value of the soul. You possess an immortal jewel too precious to be hazarded amid these scenes of folly; you are looking forward to a destiny too grand and noble to be put in jeopardy amid the temptations of this profane revelry. It is not here, in such a place, you can learn to pray; it is not where the indecency of the stage excites the warmest applause from pit to gallery that you can educate yourself for the responsibilities of time; for the scenes of temptation to which you must necessarily be exposed; for the stern conflicts of your probation; for the happiness of domestic life; for hours of social enjoyment and usefulness; for your personal advancement in every excellence that men most admire. It is not here, under the guidance of such teachers, the affections can be cherished and the faith confirmed, that will serve as an anchor to the soul amid the tempests of time. And when at length, the solemn hour of death shall come; when all the travail of life will be reviewed, and the follies and sins, in which men have indulged, will be a pillow of thorns on their

dying couch, then it will bring no thought of joy, no emotion of tranquil satisfaction to know, that you have abetted this masterpiece of Satan's art and wasted some of life's most precious hours within the atmosphere and amid the revelry and the dissipation of a play-house.

THE WEB OF VICE.

ECCLESIASTES Xi, 9.—Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth, and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the sight of thine eyes: but know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment.

THERE are two paths which open before the young man as he enters upon the perilous responsibilities of life, and, leaving the roof of his parents, commences a course of independent action. The one is the path of self-indulgence, in which the earthly passions seek the fullest gratification; in which the sight of the eyes inflames the native desires of the heart, and the pleasures and thrones of time are the visions that bound the efforts and the hopes of his soul. It is the broad, the beaten, the flowery path, along which, by a natural proclivity, men love to walk. And it is a peculiar characteristic of it that its windings are all among the scenes of time, and that no man who is walking upon it can well see the end toward which it is leading him. There is so much of the illusive mist resting upon it ahead, and it turns often so suddenly, that those who travel it never know into what scenes, or face to face with what terrors it may not suddenly conduct them. But at length, when the man has traveled all the way, he finds that it has an end-an end at which the bright and the beautiful disappear; at which the gorgeous visions vanish, the music and the revelry cease, and the light that has played about the objects on

either side, departs. Then cometh the future for which the soul is unprepared, terrible as the grave, and fearful as the judgment; a future which has been sedulously concealed from the eye, and never suffered to affect the heart, or mould the spirit into a fitting state for the life beyond. This is one path in which young men are invited to walk.

The other is narrow, and straight, and well-defined by the commandments of the Lord. It is ascending, and so open that even from its very commencement, a youth may see just where it ends, and keep that end in view. Indeed, he cannot well walk in this path without constantly seeing before him the magnificent and glorious conclusion. It is remarkable, too, that this path is higher than the first; so elevated that he who walks in this can always look down upon the other, and see at its end the thunderings and lightnings which envelop the miserable souls who, seduced by pleasure and the love of earth, have blindly walked in it toward their doom. This narrow path hath its crosses and its trials, and although at first it looks forbidding, yet no sooner is it entered upon than that which looked dark becomes light; that which seemed formidable ceases to awaken fear, and the traveler finds his yoke easy and his burden light. The first path is the one which is described in the text, the end of which is there so faithfully declared.

Now, it is obvious from the text and from reason, that those circumstances which fall in with all the depraved and earthly passions of our nature, and encourage the development of selfish desires-those circumstances which give the fullest scope and opportunity for the indulgence of our grosser nature; which tend to keep out of view the fearful end of this course of life, and almost inevitably stop the ears to the sounds of future judgment that are