LECTURE I.

FORMATION OF CHARACTER.

LAMENTATIONS III. 27.-It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.

THE text is taken from a book, which is called "The Lamentations of Jeremiah;" a most appropriate title, for it would seem to have been written in the night-watches, with the wind moaning around the casement, and the black clouds chasing each other across the sky. We can see the prophet looking out from his window in the village of Anathoth towards Jerusalem, only three miles distant, which in former years he had been used to behold glistening with light at night-fall, and shining with brighter splendor at day-break, but now wrapped in gloom, and silent as the grave; and then we hear him breaking out with sobs and tears into the mournful cry, "How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people! how is she become as a widow! all her gates are desolate! the young and the old lie on the ground in her streets."

But, after a season, his thoughts turn from the general desolation around him, to the contemplation of his own individual condition; "I am the man that hath seen affliction," is the prelude to this new strain of melancholy music. In the midst of the intense and bitter misery which fills his soul, the words fall from him, as it were in a parenthesis, "It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth:" as though he said, it is well that the discipline of life should commence in the earlier stages of our pilgrimage; that such a character should be then formed, that we may be prepared for the experience and inevitable trials which await us; that we bend our necks to the yoke, before the habit of licentious freedom is established.

With this somewhat sombre preface, I open the series of discourses, to which I would now ask your candid attention. It is my desire to present to your notice a few subjects of great practical importance, with more especial reference to the condition of young men who are about emerging into their maturity. I cannot promise to say any thing which has not been better said before; and such a course of lectures as the present, might at first seem to be more than ordinarily superfluous in this city, where there has been, from time to time, so much admirable instruction addressed to youth. But it is

to be remembered that, every few years, a new company of young men appears upon the stage of action, and what is spoken to one generation does not reach the next. The style of life is also continually changing; dangers and temptations appear under new forms, and it becomes necessary to adapt our teaching to the actual emergency. The infidelity of the day is not what it was thirty years ago; the mode of doing business is not the same; the popular amusements are not the same; the current literature has been essentially modified. Some things have altered for the better, and others for the worse; but I know of no social improvements which have made the world, upon the whole, any safer place for the young or the old. It is very possible that the attention which is now given to the broad questions of general reform may make us careless, as it respects the correction of our own private sins and the discipline of our own souls. Some have seriously doubted whether the leading impulses now affecting society, are such as will be likely to induce an elevation and improvement in the tone of individual character. We are trying a great experiment in this age, the result of which is not altogether as certain as some imagine. It is to be determined whether or not the renovation of the world can be effected by intellectual culture, philanthropic effort, and scien

tific agencies. We do not undervalue these influences; we do not doubt that man is becoming more humane, more thrifty, more comfortable; but if, at the same time, what may be called the sterner virtues are fading away, if there be less of stern probity and truthfulness in society, if the spirit of self-sacrifice be now abating, if there be nothing to call into exercise that lofty faith which prefers martyrdom to apostacy, if the mechanical take precedence of the spiritual, if men are becoming forgetful of their relations to eternity, there is serious cause for apprehension. It is a very momentous question, what is the style of character which the prominent influences now at work are likely to induce? This inquiry resolves itself into such particulars as these: what is the moral effect of the present mode of conducting business? what is the character of our popular amusements? what sort of books are most extensively circulated and read? what is the style of thought which has the strongest hold upon the rising generation? It is to the consideration of such points as these that the present series of discourses will be directed. And I address myself more directly to the young, not that the formative processes of character cease altogether when we reach maturity, but because the general direction given to these processes is ordinarily determined in the earlier years