which they possess of resisting external evils. Everything has its process of education-dew, sunshine and gentle showers for the fragrant parterre, frosts, storm-winds and thunder-gusts for majestic oaks. Man, too, enters the world a mere bud of being, a germ containing stupendous capabilities, as an acorn contains the expanded tree. His blossoms must unfold, his leaves must spread, and his branches must shoot forth, nourished by free gales and genial sunshine, or rich fruits will never descend therefrom. The artificial appliances of the hot-house are not adapted to this sort of cultivation, but natural elements rather, as they come down from the open heavens, in alternate summer and winter, gentle zephyrs and whirlwinds dire. Temptations are not only the tests of our allegiance to virtue, but, when resisted, they furnish the chief aliment of our noblest strength. The religious games of ancient Olympia had a useful tendency and a high moral aim; they cherished a popular respect for voluntary efforts of manly vigor and the sacrifice of selfish gain. They taught aspiring youth to pass joyfully and with uncorrupted spirit through peril and toil to a goal, where a speedily withering crown was the reward, or rather the symbol of the reward of victory. All the competitors were carefully examined as to their personal worth. Conducted to the foot of the statue of Jupiter, where was a plate of brass containing terrible denunciations against the perjured, they solemnly declared themselves to be free from all infamous and immoral stains, and that they would employ no unfair means in trials of skill. After this, they returned to the stadium and took their stations by lot, and then the herald publicly demanded, "Can any one reproach these athletae with having been in bonds, or with leading an irregular life?" This was in times of paganism; how would citizens of Christian lands pass the test?

Said the excellent bishop Leighton, "It is the pure whiteness of the soul to be chaste; to abhor and disdain the swinish puddle of lust, than which there is nothing that doth more de

base the soul; nothing that more evidently draws it down below itself, and makes it truly brutish." Voluptuous habits speedily bind all the powers of the soul in loathsome vassalage, and exclude every thought except such as relate to the beastly pleasures of which it is the slave. Distracted by cravings as inexorable as they are base, and in their vileness perpetually reproduced, tantalized by the impure fountains of a diseased imagination, and oppressed with its own effeminacy,—the mind loses its vigor and its productiveness. Every faculty rapidly deteriorates and decays; memory becomes extinguished, inanity destroys resolution, and the heart is as cold and callous as a cinder extinct. It ceases to love, to sympathize, and diffuse the delicious tears that sanctify friendship's shrine. The whole countenance assumes an expression of obdurateness and repugnance. The features, marked with premature decay, proclaim that the source of gentle sentiments, pure emotions, and innocent joys, is exhausted, like a limpid fountain invaded by the scoria and flame of a volcano. All the elements of life seem to have retreated into their abused organs only to perish there. Even the organs themselves are withered, and worse than dead; their infirmities, maladies, sufferings, rush in a multitude upon the degraded victim and overwhelm him in awful retribution. It is in vain that the voluptuary hugs the scorpion that consumes him, and attempts to drown his remorse by plunging deeper in his filth. Soon

"The slumber of intemperance subsides,

And conscience, that undying serpent, calls
Her venomous brood to their nocturnal task."

Who that has ever contemplated the wretched ruins of a man involved in the miseries of premature old age, can ever forget the disgusting image they present. The cadaverous or bloated countenance, pimpled skin, and blood-shot eyes, cheeks sunken and wan, the whole aspect full of stupid sadness, the frame trembling and bent beneath its load of vice, exhausted

of life, of intellect, and of love, already a hideous prey to dissoluteness, and doomed to a perpetuity of woe.

"The future is dreadful, and the present is spread

Like a pillow of thorns for his slumberless head."

At the sight of such, one almost hears the footsteps of gravediggers and the flappings of vulture-fiends, coming to inter the putrid corpse, and plunge in the caverns of despair the still more hideous soul.

What a dignified and godlike appearance, to be sure, is presented by a group of rational, immortal creatures when, as Thomson says, they

"Set, ardent, in

For serious drinking. Nor evasion sly,
Nor sober shift, is to the puking wretch
Indulg'd apart; but earnest, brimming bowls
Lave every soul, the table floating round,
And pavement, faithless to the fuddled fool.
Thus as they swim in mutual swill, the talk,

Vociferous at once from twenty tongues,

Reels fast from theme to theme; from horses, hounds,

To church or mistress, politics or ghost,

In endless mazes, intricate, perplex'd."

And what auspices greet and attend the unfortunate offspring of such bestial creatures, always poor and dependent, forever marked with the infamy of their parents, compelled to drag to their graves the infirmities they have inherited, and content to seek, in dying, a covert from the languishing ills of life.

Persons who start in the race of life under such inauspicious circumstances, are not likely to exhibit either the brightest glory of young men or the noblest beauty of old age. A virtuous youth and frugal manhood always create a Pisgah for the veteran in righteousness, from which he may calmly survey the stars and read his title clear to mansions in the skies. While yet in the flesh he can soar on the wings of meditation above the clouds and catch glimpses of the heavenly world

that lies in the placid and everlasting orient before him. With noble pride he can say,

'Though I look old, yet I am strong and lusty:

For in my youth I never did apply

Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood;
Nor did not with unbashful forehead woo
The means of weakness and debility ;
Therefore my age is as a lusty winter,
Frosty, but kindly."

The best preventive of matured evils is the practice of that divine virtue that guards against their smallest beginnings. Observing the law of chaste frugality, one verifies in his happy and protracted life the promise of his Bible, "Even to your old age I am he; and even to hoar hairs I will carry you, and deliver you."

On the contrary, while virtue inspires solace in suffering, and is its own best reward, vicious pleasures are full of stinging regrets and prospective remorse. In the language of Solomon, "I said of laughter, It is mad; and of mirth, What dost thou?" The masters of the world's revels are challenged to produce one fruit of lascivious mirth that is satisfactory to the soul in its more thoughtful moments. How abject is the condition of that man whose highest abilities are made the slaves of his basest powers. The talented Colton, whose intemperate life and violent death was a sad commentary on his own laconics, said, “When I hear persons gravely affirm that they have made up their minds to forego this or that improper enjoyment, I often think in myself that it would be quite as prudent, if they would also make up their bodies as well. He that strives for the mastery, must join a well-disciplined body to a wellregulated mind; for with mind and body, as with man and wife, it often happens that the stronger vessel is ruled by the weaker, although in moral, as in domestic economy, matters are best conducted, where neither of the parties are unreasonable, and where both are agreed.”

It requires many prudent cautions to make pleasure safe, but a single neglect of watchfulness will soon render passion fatally inordinate. Thenceforth, impelled by the terrific momentum of combined vices, the circles of hell are rapidly descended, and he who has thus bound himself to the millstone of destruction soon finds the end and reward of his career in the lowest abyss of despair. To prevent all this accumulation of suffering in the decrepitude and diseases of this life, and the infinitely more dreadful doom that awaits the wicked hereafter, one must from the beginning of his physical and mental development strictly regard the laws of virtue. He must be temperate and chaste in all kinds of gratification. In the language of old bishop Hall, "God gives order for competency, not for wantonness; not out of the dainty compositions in Jezebel's kitchen, nor out of the pleasant wines in her cellar, would God provide for Elijah; but the ravens shall bring him plain and homely victuals, and the river shall afford him drink: if we have wherewith to sustain nature, though not to pamper it, we owe thanks to the giver. Ill doth it become a servant of the Highest to be a slave of his palate.”

Old age owes a portion of its dignity to the authority it has won from experience, and a still greater degree consists in its proximity to that great future which will soon resolve the eternal destinies of men. Peace of soul beams uneclipsed from the brow of those devotees of excellence, who have preserved unstained the sacred treasure of moral virginity. Especially is its radiance majestically serene, as a halo of heavenly beams, around the head of old age, when adorned with the attractiveness of frugal virtue, and crowned with the memorials of a beneficent life. The termination of such an earthly sojourn is a repose calm and impressive, but a repose full of sublime vigor, like a mountain relieved against the clear evening sky, and radiant with the sun's richest splendors. The smile of heaven and the sweetest dews descend on brow and bosom, with the assurance that, though the shades of dun