doings of a low and obscene import. Here, is soon taught, by some proficient, the art of deceiving guides and teachers, who are answerable to parents (yea to God) for the souls entrusted to their charge. Here, a falsehood is represented as harmless, if it can only be dexterously concealed. At schools (yea, at professedly Christian schools!) prayer is often mocked among youth. Modesty is set at nought. Dishonesty in little or in great concerns, is not unknown. The denouncing curse, the unmeaning oath, is passed from one to another, with a fluency scarcely credible. The Sunday is desecrated by sport or idleness, and proclaimed a nuisance. Jests are uttered upon the word of God, and irreverence indulged in his house of prayer. Acts of oppression are carried on, by the strong against the weak. Indelicate books are read; improper pictures exhibited. The crimes of a man imitated by the vicious boy. And in many cases, no efficient check is presented, by that pastoral superintendance of the

young, which kindly and wisely exerted, would, under the blessing of our Lord, enrich society with a diffusion of Christian grace, no less than scholastic attainment. Thus, is youth too commonly a season of vice contracted: a period of any thing but spiritual discipline to the young Christian, going forth against the enemies of the Cross, and beset by the deceptions of the world. The tablets of the conscience are too often written within and without, with lamentations, and mourning, and woe1. Happy they who have in any wise escaped such pollution! Their foot might have slipped. Thy mercy, O Lord, held them up 2.

3. What shall they do then? Shall they take up the speech of the fool, who sauntering along the precipice of yawning destruction, which he sees not, maintains that too much is not to be expected; that

1 Ezek. ii. 10.

Ps. xcix. 18.

youth is the season of pleasure? that old age will come on fast enough?

Every portion of life is the season of pleasure, to the true Christian. But it must be innocent pleasure; not mingled with irreverence, impurity, and artifice. And this pleasure, so far from being confined to youth, then happily begins; is carried on by grace, and becomes that serene rejoicing of mind, which will end in the sacred raptures of eternal joy. And old age, saith he, will come quickly enough. Will it indeed? Will it come to all? Who art thou, thus admitted within the counsels of the All Wise, that knowest so much of life's duration, allotted to each? That presumest to overturn that great stimulus to repentance, the uncertainty of human existence? Alas! I know not many more painful views of life, than the searching, after some years, for those, with whom we started in our course. How frequently has youth been cut down, like a flower, which in the morning was green

and growing up; in the evening dried withered, mingled with the dust 1.

up,

Abhorred be the plea of the self-justifying. It is to him that before Christ confesseth, and under God's grace, forsaketh his fault, that mercy is promised. Such was the humble plea of the penitent in the psalm. "Remember not the sins

of

There

my youth." He confesses them to be sins. "Remember not my transgressions; but according to thy mercy remember thou me for thy goodness." This is the only plea that will avail. There must be no pretensions to righteousness. can be no claims of doing our best. Nor may we make excuses for error, nor palliate what is wrong. But we must cast ourselves on the loving mercies of God, and make mention of the Redeemer's righteousness and atonement; even of His only 2. To him will I look, saith God, "that is of a contrite and humble spirit If we "confess our sins, God is faithful and

3 "

3 Isaiah lvii. 15.

just to forgive us our sins; and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness'." What joy

on earth shall be compared to that heavenborn feeling, when the Holy Spirit applies this healing balm of grace to the wounds inflicted by sin! How shall we describe the delight, with which the heart regards the reality of such promises! The faithfulness and love in the covenant, whereby these treasures, which cannot decay, become our own! To him, that has sorrowed over the very places where youthful offence was perpetrated; to him, that has shuddered at the name of a companion in early guilt; how sweet the power, of going to the throne of God, with words of contrite prayer, taken from the book of holiness! How comfortable to hear the voice of mercy, in Christ, giving assurance of absolution and remission of sin! A man cannot now, indeed, make some past evening of intemperate mirth a scene of soberness! But 2 "his sin shall not be mentioned" to

11 John i. 9.

2 Ezek. xxxiii. 16.