principles and his are too dissimilar ever to admit of intimacy. He may use various arts and stratagems to dislodge you from your position, but stand the more firm and erect on your principles. Let whatever he does to gain you be met by a dignified inflexibility. O, could the history of the ruined youth of our land be rehearsed in your hearing, it would make every ear tingle. Quite likely nine tenths of the cases would be found to be the result of the influence of bad associates. How does the moral youth become a Sabbathbreaker, or a profane swearer, or a liar, or a lewd person, or a drunkard, or an infidel? By means of the example and influence of companions, who are addicted to those vices, or hold those principles. "Evil communications corrupt good manTake care, then, whom you choose for your associates. Your respectability, peace, usefulness, salvation; the happiness of your friends, the well-being of society, all, all are involved in the choice you make.

ners."

4. Christians should take special pains to become early acquainted with those youthful strangers, who come here to reside, and endeavor to give them a right direction. The first acquaintances which strangers make are generally the most durable and influential. They never forget

those who first take them by the hand, and manifest a deep interest in their welfare. One kind, encouraging word has often won the affections of a stranger's heart, and laid the foundation of an intimacy, which could never be dissolved. Now, who shall secure all the advantages of this early acquaintanceship with strangers? the Christian, or the infidel? the moral, or the immoral man? It has been often remarked, that unprincipled men take more pains, than Christians do, to form these early acquaintances with strangers, and interest them, and secure their confidence. However that may be, good men are doubtless very delinquent in this duty. While they are purposing to obtain an introduction to a stranger for the sake of doing him good, another has actually done it with a very different motive, and has probably secured his object. The favorable moment for making the first impression is now irrecoverably gone; and those who purposed well, but did not immediately act, are often compelled to stand by, and behold the progress of the youth in his precipitous career to destruction, without being able to arrest it. Let those, then, who wish well to the rising generation, thoroughly understand the principle in human nature, that first impressions are generally the deepest and most durable. Let them

endeavor, in all cases, to make those impressions themselves; and by so doing, they will rescue multitudes of youth from the power of the destroyer-from temporal and eternal ruin.

5. The last thing, which I would recommend to the youth as a defence against temptation, is to choose God for your Father and Protector. Are you far removed from friends and relatives? "The Lord is nigh unto all them that call upon him, to all that call upon him in truth." Are you orphans, with no parents to counsel and protect you? Say with Christian confidence, "When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up." Do you feel your inexperience and danger? Lift up your eyes to Jehovah, and acknowledge, "My Father, thou art the guide of my youth." Give your hearts and your lives to him, and you will be safe. If you stand on the rock of his defence, the highest mountain billow of temptation shall break harmlessly beneath your feet. He loves his children with an everlasting love, and not a hair of their head shall perish. If, in times past, he has divided the sea to give them a passage from their enemies ;-if he has rained manna from heaven, and brought water out of the flinty rock to supply their wants ;if he has stopped the sun to aid their victories,

and reproved kings for their sakes, saying, "Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm;" -if he has done all these things for them, what have you to fear, if you flee to the sanctuary of his power? Accept, then, accept to-day the proffered protection of Almighty God. Do this, and though you live in a corrupted and corrupting world; though temptations beset you, and ten thousand ills betide you; though the heavens gather blackness, and the rains descend, and the floods come, and all your prospects are veiled in darkness, and all your hopes seem lost in the commingling fury of the storm ;-your Father will look out of his holy habitation upon the raging elements, and say, "Peace, be still, my children are there!" And suddenly there will be a great calm—and the sun will shine out again— and it will be to you a prelude of CLOUDLESS

EVERLASTING DAY.

LECTURE V.

ORIGIN, OBLIGATION, AND PROPER OB

SERVANCE OF THE SABBATH.

EXODUS XX. 8-11.-Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work; but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God; in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day; wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it.

THE importance of the Christian Sabbath to the present and future well-being of man, is very generally, if not universally, admitted. By its weekly recurrence, it offers him timely and needful rest from labor, perplexity and care. It promotes cleanliness, and health, and intellectual improvement. It divides time into portions the most convenient for the transaction of worldly business, and thus regulates the various intercourse of communities. It recruits the exhausted strength of working animals, and thus makes them more ser