The fourth instructs you to keep the Sabbath holy. Make it your principle then, never to violate the sacredness of that day. Let neither business, nor pleasure, nor indolence, nor irreligious society, tempt you to divert any portion of the Sabbath from the sacred duties to which God has assigned it. Give it all strictly, conscientiously, habitually, to a religious purpose.

The fifth requires you to honor your parents. Make it your rule then, always to conduct towards them with filial affection, respect, obedience; never to do anything which would grieve or dishonor them, and ever to do that which shall make you their honor and their joy.

And "he that haMake it your prin

The sixth forbids you to kill. teth his brother is a murderer." ciple then, never to cherish hatred, ill-will, anger, revenge, envy, or any other feeling towards a fellow being, which would seek his harm; neither to pursue any kind of business or amusement, which tends to injure his property, health, character or usefulness.

The seventh forbids all impurity. Make it your principle then, to disallow every unchaste affection, purpose, and action; and, as far as possible, to avoid whatever might lead to or occasion it.

The eighth forbids theft. A crime so severely condemned by civil law and public sentiment in all Christian countries, that you may seem in little

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danger of committing it. But remember that fraud, deception, overreaching, or any other means by which what were honestly another's is brought into your own hands, is a moral theft. Make it your principle then, to conduct in strict honesty towards all men, and never through any means or pretence, to get or possess what were in justice the property of another.

The ninth forbids false witness. An iniquity loudly condemned both by the voice of law and of public sentiment, in all civilized countries; but still of very extensive occurrence. What a loathsome exhibition of this immorality is made in our civil courts! Aud how extensively it finds a place in the social circle, and around the domestic hearth! Adopt the principle then, never to testify of another what you do not know to be strictly and certainly true; and never to speak even truth against him, unless the good of the community requires it.

The tenth forbids covetousness. An iniquity odious in the eyes of all, and yet one of the most prevalent and tenacious maladies of the human heart. Adopt the principle then, always to be satisfied with the portion assigned you by providence ; never to indulge the incipient risings of desire for what does not belong to you; and to rejoice in the welfare of others, as well as in your own.

These are the great principles of sound morality,

handed down to our world from heaven, to regulate our conduct towards God and towards each other. They are immutably perfect and imperishable. The philosophy, science, arts, customs, and all the human institutions of the day in which these principles were presented to our race by God, have changed or passed away; but these remain precisely as they were, almost four thousand years ago. Not a jot or tittle of them has changed or failed; and exactly such they will continue, as long as the sun and the moon shall endure. Wherever they have been most known and obeyed, men have been most elevated in character and most happy. They are the everlasting principles of sound morality. Adopt them; direct your conduct by them; and you will be sure of forming a righteous character. "Wherewith shall a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed thereto according to thy word. The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes."

CHAPTER V.

EARLY HABITS.

"And when he is old he will not depart from it."

THE power of confirmed habit is

It is a "strong man armed."

almost invinSo the weep

cible. ing prophet considered it, when lamenting over a people that had grown old in iniquity. He did not mean to declare it an absolute physical impossibility to change a natural habit, as it is for the Ethiopian to change his skin or the leopard his spots; but by a strong expression, in the language of poetry, to assert that it is extremely difficult and is rarely done.

In the present chapter, I solicit attention to your early habits. We have considered knowledge as preparatory to the formation of principles; and principles, as preparatory to the formation of character, or settled habits of conduct.

I. In regard to the importance of early habits, it is obvious to remark

1. That they are those most easily formed. Childhood and youth, like the pliant clay upon the potter's wheel, are susceptible of being moulded with comparative ease, to various forms. Or to vary the illustration, if life be compared to a race, youth is the setting forth; before an uncontrollable momentum is acquired, almost any course may be taken. Or if human life be compared to the growth of a tree, youth is the twig or the sapling, which may be easily bent in any direction.

2. Not only are early habits the easiest formed, but the hardest to alter. You can with much more ease change or abandon a habit formed at fifty, than one formed in youth. There is always through life a strong proneness to return to the habits first formed. They are the deepest, firmest, most natural, most unwilling to forsake you.

"Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined."

"Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." And for the same reason, train up a child in the way he should not go, and when he is old he will not depart from it. Hence it is said of the man who has grown old in iniquity, "His bones are full of the sin of his youth, which shall lie down with him in the dust." It frequently happens that men who had formed vicious habits in youth, but had brought them into subjection during the strength of prosperous manhood, as trouble or age advance fall a prey