acters for life are forming. Enlightened heathens, as well as Christians, have noticed that the impressions imbibed by youth, "grow with their growth, and strengthen with their strength." Hamilcar, the Carthaginian general, understood this principle and acted on it, when he brought his son, at the early age of nine years, to the altar, and there made him swear eternal vengeance against the Romans. It was because prejudice was thus early instilled into the youthful mind of Hannibal, that he became the most inveterate, the most uncompromising, the most terrible foe of Rome. The arch infidel Voltaire understood this principle when he said, "give me the making of the ballads, which are read and sung by the youth, and I care not who has the making of the laws."

The present, then, my young friends, is the season of your education-of your education in its most comprehensive and important sense. Those influences which are now forming your manners and your minds, cannot, if you are at all awake to the subject, fail deeply to interest you. They are insinuating themselves into your very habitudes of thought and feeling. They are interweaving themselves in the very texture of your mental constitution.

The present is with you an important period of life,

3. On account of its peculiar exposure to temptation. The dangers, to which young people in manufacturing and all other densely populated villages are more particularly exposed, are those arising from intemperance, profaneness, Sabbathbreaking, licentiousness, and erroneous religious sentiments. In this connection, it gives me sincere pleasure to be able to state, that it is believed this village will bear comparison, for purity of morals, with any other similarly situated community in New England. And it is devoutly hoped, that in future years it will even more than maintain its present elevated position in this respect. But a faithful exhibition of the high importance to yourselves of your present period of life, requires a distinct reference to those vices and errors to which young people are always more or less exposed. No person is too strongly fortified against temptation. The celebrated Fisher Ames was accustomed to say, "we have but a slender hold of our virtues; they ought therefore to be cherished with care, and practised with diligence. He who holds parley with vice and dishonor, is sure to become their slave and victim. The heart is more than half corrupted, that does not burn with indignation at the slightest attempt to seduce it." Happy, indeed, will it be for every youth here, if it can be said of you, as it was beautifully remarked of that pure-minded patriot, " he did not need the smart of guilt to make him virtuous, nor the regret of folly to make him wise." I appeal then to your self-respect, and to your regard for the public weal, and exhort you to untiring efforts to uproot the last vestiges of immorality which may exist among us. If the youth will but resolve upon their extermination, the work is done.

Your season of life is of indescribable importance to you,

4. Because your religious principles are now forming. You have already been sufficiently conversant with the world to know, that religious opinions are almost endlessly diversified, and frequently contradictory. Almost every sect, too, except atheists and deists, profess to derive their sentiments from the Bible. Now it is perfectly obvious that all these sentiments cannot be right, and also that most of them must be wrong. And when we recollect the intimate and inevitable connection between faith and practice, it cannot be a matter of indifference to you what religious opinions you embrace. As your present peace and future felicity are concerned, this subject is fundamental-it is vital. I purposely abstain from entering upon its merits at this time, because it is intended to exhibit it more at large in a future lecture. But the criticalness of that period of life, when the religious sentiments are imbibed, and matured, and wrought into the very structure of your moral being, is beyond the power of language to describe, or the imagination of an angel to conceive.

5. But the last and crowning circumstance which gives importance to your present time of life, is, that it is the season when nearly all become Christians who ever do. The statistics of revivals of religion exhibit facts in relation to this subject, of overwhelming interest to persons of all ages. Probably nine tenths, if not ninety-nine hundredths of the present members of the churches became hopefully pious, while under the age of forty. The term youth, in its most enlarged sense, may be said to embrace all persons up to that age. But, according to the Scriptures, there is something fearful in the thought of passing that limit without repentance. What else can be meant by such passages as these?" Your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works forty years." "But with whom was he grieved forty years? was it not with them that had sinned, whose carcasses fell in the wilderness?" "Forty years long was I grieved with this generation, and said, It is a people that do err in their heart, and they have not known my ways; unto whom I swear in my wrath, that they should not enter into my rest." Around what other epoch, in the progress of human life, can you find so many terrors clustering? Although there are occasional instances of conversion in later periods of life, there is something tremendously appalling in the idea of passing that extreme limit in the period of youth, in a state of enmity against God.

But that is not all. It is well known, that a vast majority of those who embrace religion, do it at a much earlier age than this. "Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings," God often perfects praise. Some of you, it is hoped, have "remembered your Creator in the days of your" early "youth." To all who have not, let me say "Now is the accepted time, behold, now is the day of salvation." Your present time of life is, of all others, the most favorable for attending to the great concern. Let these tender, susceptible years pass by unimproved, and the loss is remediless-they are gone forever. Beyond all question, so far as your immortal interests are concerned, the present is by far the most important part of your life. Whatever you do-whether you accept or reject the "great salvation," you will feel the