those in middle life sometimes hesitate and delay, till the opportunity for success is lost.

It is the young who put their hands most readily to every great and good work. Sometimes, it is true, they are rash and precipitate, and do unwise things. But it is better to do some harm, than to do no good. The great obstacle-how often do we see this!—the great obstacle to success and victory is, that we are too faint-hearted to begin. "Who sets about hath half-performed the deed." We want the spirit of John Adams, who, contemplating the Declaration of Independence of the United States, said, "Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, I give my hand and my heart for this vote." The power and determination here shown have been seen in not a few young men, in all ages, and all countries. Aurungzebe, the mighty ruler of Hindostan, a man who had thirty-five million pounds for his revenue, whose empire extended over twenty-five degrees of latitude, and as many of longitude, who put to death twenty millions of people, whose course was said to be "stupendous as the Alps, and sublime as a cataract," was distinguished in his youth for thought, and for deep plans and bold purposes; and in his twentieth year he raised a body of troops, and finally forced his way to the throne of the Decan.

Young men are marked by their love of truth. They are not as yet fixed by prejudice. When Harvey broached his theory of the circulation of the blood, it met with violent opposition; and no one accepted his theory, it is said, who was over forty years of age.

The simple love of truth, regardless of educational bias of parent, friend, or sect, is the rarest of spectacles; and often it vanishes with the appetite of the boy.

So of strict honesty; it is the crown of our early days. "Your son will not do for me," was once said to a friend of mine; "he took pains, the other day, to tell a customer of a small blemish in a piece of goods." The shopboy is sometimes virtually taught to declare that goods cost such or such a sum; that they are strong, fashionable, perfect, when the whole story is false. So is the bloom of a God-inspired truthfulness not seldom brushed from the cheek of our simplehearted children.

I hope and trust these cases are rare; but even one such house as I allude to may ruin the integrity and the fair fame of many a lad. God grant our young men to feel that an

"Honest man's the noblest work of God,"

and, under all temptations, to live as they feel.

To what period of life can we turn for such displays, as this often affords, of generosity, frankness, and magnanimity? True, we differ, from our very childhood, in the possession of these traits. But no one can deny, that, on the whole, these and all the finer feelings predominate in the earlier periods of life. Our Saviour often sought the society of those at this age, and He not seldom exerted on them His miraculous powers. And He poured out, not only on childhood, but on such as the youthful John, and many others of a like early attractiveness, His unexhausted and inexhaustible love.

B

Young men are social, seldom cynical and self-enclosed, like those who, in after life, become absorbed in gain and power. This trait may, and often does, expose them to evil associates and to their degrading vices. Still, it is the basis of much that is highest and noblest in human conduct. It needs only to rest on the Rock of Ages, and it will rise on and on, amid every seduction and snare, winning all hearts, and shedding forth continually a healing fragrance that earth cannot bound.

We look with interest on our young men, because in them dwells a love of perfection. To accomplish anything that is great or good, we must, in the first place, set our standard high. And to do this, we must be fired with a thirst for excellence. Such, I believe, is the desire of every unperverted youth. He would fain possess, not only external graces and commendations, but an interior, genuine, thorough goodness. Pretence, affectation, and insincerity, he should hold in contempt and scorn.

And in regard to a love of the works of nature, they are enjoyed at this age, because they shadow forth that moral beauty toward which the soul then aspires. For the same reason the productions of art and taste are now objects of interest. I do not know who was the author of the prize "Ode to the Greek Slave"-that exquisite piece of statuary by Powers-but I feel confident that only a young man could have penned such glorious lines as these:

"O Greek! by more than Moslem fetters thralled! O marble prison of a radiant thought!

Where life is half revealed,

And beauty dwells, created, not enwrought.
Severe in vestal grace, yet warm

And flexible with the delicate glow of youth
She stands, the sweet embodiment of truth;

Her pure thoughts clustering round her form
Like seraph garments.

Go then, fair slave! and in thy fetters teach
What Heaven inspired, and Genius hath designed.
Be thou Evangel of true art, and preach

The freedom of the mind!"

I regard our young men with hope, because in them lie all the possibilities of the future. They constitute the great link in that interminable chain of forces which binds things past with things to come. The Hebrew seer speaks of an era in 'which the sons and daughters shall prophesy, and the young men shall see visions. This prediction has an ever-repeated fulfilment in the successive generations of our youth. Always, in a higher or lower sense, they see, portrayed on the canvass of the future, scenes to quicken the pulse, to kindle the imagination, and rouse every power and faculty of our nature to its intensest action.

In

Nor is it a mere vision that lies before them. that sacred drama they are to be themselves actors. As its unseen shapes and shadows are evolved into substantial realities, their figures will advance to the foreground, and either shine along the glowing canvass with moral lustre, or, by their fallen and guilty courses, spread the blackness of darkness on its lines.

It is no fiction, but a fearful fact, it is no conjecture, but a solemn certainty, that what one is before the age of twenty-five he is almost sure to be his life long. His

education may have been good,-will it be carried out in his manhood? Or, his early culture may have been defective, who can supply those defects? The finger of destiny, guided by the eternal, all-seeing, and alljudging One, points to his own bosom, with the fearful words, "THOU ART THE MAN." Good or evil, which will you obey? "The heart of flesh," a tender susceptibility to virtue, honour, truth, and religion; or the "heart of stone," dead to every noble aspiration, content to herd with the vulgar, profane, sensual, and selfish; clay, that may be fashioned to a vessel of honour, or made into a demon shape of dishonour and death,-choose between the two. When will the decision come? God help you, my young brother, to say, It shall be to-day.