Young Men; Or an Appeal to the Several Classes of Society in Their Behalf

Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1838. Excerpt: ... ed by your repeated addresses, Christians in general will respond to the call; parents feel their own immense responsibility; employers practically avow the connexion between superiority in manual labour and mental improvement, between scriptural morality and the divine benediction; while the public at large will step forward and recognise their superior claims. None are better qualified, because none are, perhaps, better acquainted with practical life, or oftener frequent those scenes where truth, if ever, is sure to be elicited. Whose eye painfully observes the first wrong step of the wanderer? Whose ear listens to the declaration of the infidel as to what first distorted his views of moral truth, and first subverted his moral principles? or whose ear, again, listens to the dying, but penitent, confession of that which first led the young man from the path of virtue ?--It is the christian minister's. It is his eye that wept, and his ear that was pained. The quicksands have been pointed out to him, let him fix a buoy upon them. The place where the insidious, because unseen, rock lies has been shown to him, let him erect a beacon. At the entrance of that path down which the listless, or uninformed wanderer strolled, let him place a finger-post, with this broad inscription upon it--This leads to misery and to death. And without, of course, mentioning the party, let the facts thus elicited be publicly announced for the benefit of all. Of the claims of young men upon ministers there can, then, at the present time especially, be no doubt; the only questions are, what is that line of conduct which ought to be pursued in reference to them, and by what means may they most effectively promote their interests? These questions can, perhaps, be most accurately answered by themselves, for the r...