imprudence and more advanced years have severely made me acquainted with.

I am from principle and habit the friend of youth, and even not yet the enemy of true pleasure; my advice to you, therefore, will be neither churlish, gloomy, nor unpleasing; but I shall boldly tell you truths, clothed with the ornaments of classical imagery, and the plain simplicity of regained VIRTUE---while VICE, with her painted haggard looks, and tawdry varnish, shall be completely unmasked and exposed to your astonished view; and may the choice of the HERO, whose actions you have been accustomed, in your CLASSICAL researches, with enthusiasm to admire, be warmly adopted by you with all the ardour of youth, and lead you safely, at last, though with its inseparable difficulties, up the seemingly steep and rugged ascent of useful and virtuous life, to the Temple of Fame, which can alone be attained by steadily directing your cautious steps in the path to the Temple of Virtue, through which you must first pass.

You have just left those happy shades and groves of peaceful academic retreat, to which, in the midst of the storms and tempests of life, you will often again wistfully look back, in thought, with longing but unavailing wishes. You will find that, without exception, it was the happiest period of your life, because the most innocent, and the least exposed to the temptations and snares

of

of Vice, which is the many-headed monster that you have principally to dread in your passage through the rugged journey of life, and which, if you can completely avoid, will not only smooth your way, but enable you to hold on your course rejoicing and full of hope.

In the warfare of life thereo middle course to steer; they err, who think or say there is:---you must, like HERCULES, be decided in your choice, and either make virtue the rule and guide of your conduct, or suffer yourself to be ignobly led in chains, enslaved by vice. There are some who call evil, good; and good, evil; but there is a sure and wide distinction to be made between them; nor can you attempt to be virtuously or innocently vicious, nor venially so, however you may gloss over your actions: the BIBLE is your only sure counsellor and guide.

You must either make the well-tried doctrines of DIVINE REVELATION the directors of your actions, words, and thoughts, and the standard of your faith, or you must adopt the erroneous and fallacious opinions of a new and deceitful kind of modern philosophy, invented by designing men, false in its nature, and destructive in its tendency. You must either make the long-tried and unchangeable word of God, which has stood the test of ages, or the flimsy, variable, and unstable notions of weak, frail, and self-deceiving men, the BASIS of your happiness. ---You must not, thereB 3

fore,

fore, be shaken, ingenuous youth, by every wind of doctrine, but steadfastly lay hold of eternal life, through JESUS CHRIST the Mediator, in the way proposed to your as yet unsullied soul, by your MAKER and your GoD, through the channel of that gracious revelation of his will, called the BIBLE; which, whatever you may have read, or heard surmised to the contrary by unbelieving and foolish men, is, beyond all possibility of any wellfounded doubt, the real communication of his will, his intentions, and his wishes, all tending to that one point, ---to make you happy in this life and the next.

This is your only safe counsellor, the only certain guide you can take. The experience of the greatest, the best, and the most learned of men, have stamped it with a value, which all the fallacious arguments of modern philosophy can never effectually depreciate.

Milton, Locke, Newton, Tillotson, Ray, Sherlock, Addison, Rollin, Turrene, Bayard, Fenelon, names of exalted worth, with which you are, no doubt, acquainted, still bear witness to it in the records of their works and history, who, at the close of their useful lives, laid all other learning aside, and, despising pomp, grandeur, human vanity, and fame, devoted themselves principally to the study of the SCRIPTURES: nor is it to be at all wondered at; for, besides their being an unerring guide to happiness in this world and the next," as a col

a collection of Tracts, they contain, independently of a divine origin, more true sublimity, more exquisite beauty, purer morality, more important history, and finer strains both of poetry and eloquence, than could be collected within the same compass from all other books that were ever composed in any age, or in any idiom." SIR WILLIAM JONES, in his Asiatic Researches.

Armed with this shield, far more invulnerable than the fabulous immortal EGIS of MINERVA, you will set out in the career of life with an undaunted manly determination to think and act for yourself, in defiance of the taunts and misplaced ridicule of your companions, as one upon whom the eyes of God and Angels, the spirits of the just made perfect, and the whole assembly of Heaven are fixed; for I need not tell you, I suppose, that we act throughout our whole lives as upon a THEATRE, surrounded with the heavenly inhabitants as spectators of our performance---not imaginary spectators, like the fabulous deities of GRECIA and ROME, whom their poets represented as intently viewing the combats of men and the efforts of heroes, balancing the fate of nations, and turning the scale of battle as their partialities and inclinations led them; but you will act in the sight of Him who is, and is the faithful rewarder of the vanquishers of sin and vice, over whom neither death nor the grave will have any hurtful or lasting power.

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To confirm in you this belief, and an unal terable resolution to spurn at vice, and take virtue for your guide through life, is the first step towards your happiness, and the first duty I owe to society, to you, and myself, to impress upon your perhaps as yet undetermined mind.

It is remarkable in the history of notorious sinners and slaves of vice, that, on their agonizing death-beds, they have generally made the BIBLE their only refuge; and, where they have been toọ ill to read in it themselves, have earnestly besought those about them to pray and do it for them, their hardened hearts and perplexed consciences having closely sealed up the channels of utterance and the powers of resolution.

There cannot be any stronger argument than this of the value and consolatory effects of that precious treasure, since at the hour of death when wicked men necessarily cease to be fools, though they may have lived so, they bear such awful testimony to its divine power and veracity.--

"Men may live fools, but fools they cannot die." Dr. YOUNG,

As a proof of this, I will give you an instance of a very able and learned physician, whom, when I was only fourteen years of age, I had an opportunity occasionally to attend upon his death-bed, Possessed of all the abilities and knowledge common to his profession, with atheistical gravity and seriousness, he had frequently laughed at the