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slothful, grown over with briers and thorns; in which not one thing of use is permitted to spring.

In this class is found, to a great extent, a subordinate one, who spend a great part of their collegiate life in visiting. These waste their time in displaying their persons and dress to others; and in trifling conversation about subjects of no value; apparently believing, that their souls were formed only to trifle; and that their final account, although made up of nothing but trifling, will be accepted by the Judge of the quick and the dead. How distant an approximation is this towards the character of a rational being a being, formed to know, and love, and serve God; a being, fitted to become a blessing to mankind; and destined, during this period of probation, to secure immortal glory beyond the grave!

But all idlers in this and other seminaries of the same nature, do not spend life in mere trifling. There are those, and the proportion is not small, who employ a great part of their collegiate existence in keeping company with each other. Most of these aim at vice in more solid forms, and on a more significant scale. All do not indeed commence their career with direct designs of this nature. Some are drawn to such scenes merely by social propensities Others, by indisposition to study, and the consequent necessity of finding some employment in which they may spend their time less heavily and less gloomily than in absolute inexertion. The mind is in its nature incapable of being totally stagnant; and instinctively demands some engagement, by which its faculties may in some degree at least be occupied. Those, who in the literal sense are willing to do nothing, are few; are perhaps always diseased; and usually may be regarded as inhabiting diseased bodies. The rest, particularly those of the class now under consideration, although idle with respect to every thing which is good are sufficiently active in doing evil. First or last this becomes the great object of their association. The cluster is originally gathered, perhaps, in the hours of relaxation; but afterwards and at no distant periods, in those of study; and, ultimately, at late and untimely seasons of the night. At first it

is assembled in the Collegiate rooms: ultimately, it is collected in rooms abroad; particularly in those buildings which are unoccupied by families; buildings which in the night become solitudes, where no witnesses of what is passing within approach nearer than the street. In these meetings youths are trained up to sin, in form; with the combined efforts of a multitude sedulously helping each other onward with their united ingenuity, arts, and labours, to corruption and disgrace, beggary and ruin, in this life, and to perdition in that which is to come.

Here profaneness runs speedily through all its changes, from the half formed language of irreverence, babbled by the young adventurer in licentiousness, whose conscience has not yet been stupified, and who still hesitates under the impressions of a religious education, to the rank oath; the curse, which invocates damnation on himself, and his companions; and the outrageous blasphemy, which deliriously assaults the throne of GOD. In these dark retreats, also, pollution is generated in all its malignant forms. Here the tongue learns to vibrate through every degree on the rank scale of licentiousness, from the obscure innuendo to gross, bald, sickening, obscenity. The imagination, at the same time, is here set on fire of hell: and the soul, tainted and rendered putrid with impurity, becomes a lazar-house of corruption, and sends up rank and poisonous fumes to heaven. Here, also, purposes and habits of pollution are formed, which fix the miserable wretch who is the subject of them, beyond the hope of reformation or recall; and invoking on his head a judicial sentence of reprobation, begin his perdition on this side of the grave.

In these cells of sin, also, is begun and carried on a regular course of Gaming. Books, learning and science, character and virtue, are here bartered for cards and dice. The money, given by the parent as the means of supporting the honourable education of his child, earned with his own toil, and often spared from his own comfort, is ungratefully hazarded, fraudulently won, and foolishly lost. Here the spirit of sharping and dishonesty commences: and the fair mind is darkened with the stains of hell. VOL. II. 17

The thoughts become gloomy; the temper morose; the purposes base; the character despicable; the life gross with turpitude; the man hostile to-every thing which is good; and the hope of immortality lost in eternal night.

Finally. In these chambers of death commence habits of intoxication. Strong drink here becomes, in a sense, necessary to sustain the riot; to restore the decaying spirits; to drown the remembrance of his loss; to renew the oath and the curse; to invigorate licentiousness; and universally to keep up the tone of sin. Example, in this case as in others, the serpent, which charms its miserable victim to the jaws of ruin; the magician, which enchants all the rational powers, and benumbs the conscience with eternal sleep; draws the wretched culprit onward from sin to sin, until he crosses the irremediable limit of hopeless transgression, and is lost forever. Fixed beyond recall in iniquity; judicially hardened; he henceforth reels onward to the grave and to the judgment. Such are the characteristics, such the pursuits and such the end, of sloth in a Seminary of Learning.

All these persons by the courses of vice, which they voluntarily pursue, are driven also to others. These courses, in many ways, in a sense compel them to be disorderly in their attendance upon their collegiate duties. They are absent from their recitations, from prayers, and from public worship. For these transgressions they are obliged to invent excuses; true, perhaps at first, in some respects, and as they are capable of being understood; but certainly false, as they are intended to be understood. Here the youth sometimes begins, and, if he has already begun, always strengthens, the spirit of prevarication. Here he loses the high reverence for truth which this eminently sacred object demands of every child of Adam. Here he chills the susceptibility of conscience; that apprehensiveness of guilt, under which the soul thrills with an electrical alarm, whenever temptation and sin are presented to its eye, and which is the first and chief security against transgression, inwoven into the constitution of our nature.

Here he learns to look at falsehood with an eye

less and less trembling, until it becomes cool, steady, and satisfied. Finally, here the habit of falshood is often riveted; and the melancholy career begun, which ends only in perdition.

At the same time, the idleness, the profaneness, the riot, and the gambling, compel the Instructors, if they have sufficient integrity to discharge the duties of their office faithfully, to animadvert in various modes upon his conduct. He is reproved, warned, and rebuked. This rouses his resentment; awakens a spirit of revenge; and prompts him to new and more violent perpetrations. He is then formally and solemnly censured. The same spirit, stung into new hostility, endeavours to reek its resentment in new crimes. Detected again, he is finally sent away, with disgrace to himself, and extreme mortification to his parents.

Into the world he carries nothing, but wasted time; abused talents; an empty mind, shrunk by sloth and polluted with vice; and a life, in which conscience finds nothing to approve, and God sees every thing to condemn. His habits have now become too fixed to permit any reasonable hope of a change for the better. Knowledge he has none, to qualify him for those kinds of business, for which learning and science are the indispensable preparation. Study he cannot; because his idleness in these walls has rendered the employment loathsome. For active business of every kind, he is unfitted, both by his ignorance and his inclination. He, who has been idle here, will ordinarily be idle wherever he is: and he, who has spent so much of life in sedentary idleness, is peculiarly disqualified for the exertions of activity. Besides, he leaves this place under a cloud. He has acted in such a manner, as to be driven from these walls. The reason, whatever it may be, will always be believed to have been an unhappy one for him; and usually will be the true one. The subject has been so long under the eye of the public, and has been so often illustrated in the experience of ages, that it is well understood by the community at large. All men know that vice is the regular object of collegiate censures: and most men entirely believe, what thirty years experience enables me to know, that idleness is that bitter and prolific stem, of which all rank and poison

ous vices are the fruits. Of twenty students who leave this Seminary in disgrace, nineteen are ruined by sloth. So long, and so regularly has this been the fact, that it is in a sense proverbially as well as generally known.

With these stains upon his character the miserable youth enters the world. The course, by which alone he can recover a decent reputation, is all ascending, steep, and difficult. Who can wonder, that to him habitually slothful and vicious it should seem too long and too hard, to be resolutely encountered. Sloth, according to ancient fable, had charms even for Hercules. What must be its power over a youth, who was fascinated by it at first, and has regularly chosen for a succession of years to bow himself under the yoke, without opposition or reluctance. Hardly ever are the exertions made, which, in the case before us, are indispensable to success. Idle here, he is idle every where. Vicious here, he is vicious through life. Without reputation here, disgrace accompanies him to the grave.

As he is useless to mankind; it cannot be supposed, that they will regard him either with esteem or affection; or that they will take any measures to render his life pleasant. But he is not merely useless. He is a common nuisance. Too indolent to provide for himself an honest subsistence, he is obliged, if he subsist at all, to derive the means from a succession of tricks and frauds; or to receive them from the hand of charity. His character at the same time is contemptible, and his example contagious and baleful. Of course, he becomes an object on the one hand of contempt, on the other of loathing. Want, with shrivelled cheeks, and haggard eyes stares him in the face wherever he goes. Wherever he goes, he is followed by the finger of scorn, the jeer of derision, and the hiss of infamy.

In the mean time he has a soul; and, in spite of his sloth and his wishes, is accountable and immortal. He, who is idle in his temporal concerns, will be lazy in those which are spiritual. In the case before us, vice, of many kinds and in gross degrees, combines with riveted sloth, to render the work of salvation doubly difficult. To a slothful mind the way to eternal life is

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