AN

ADDRESS:

YOUNG GENTLEMEN,

MOST affecting to a parent is the moment when his children, commencing masters of their fortune, leave their paternal home and enter on the world. The disasters which may dissipate their property, the temptations which may corrupt their virtue, and the maladies which may assail their persons present themselves in clusters to his eye and crowd upon his mind. Were it possible, gladly would he accompany, counsel and direct them on their way. But it is not possible. He can, therefore, only vent his full heart in benedictions, and looking up to GOD, commit the inexperienced adventurers to His care.

Parting with a class endeared to me by a course of the most filial and affectionate conduct, my situation and my feelings resemble those of a parent parting with his children.

Dear pupils -Thus far your instructors have accompanied and directed you in your studies and pursuits. But the time of separation has arrived -we have reached the point where our ways divide. Before we part, indulge a word of counsel, the last to be communicated by him who now addresses

you.

The end that each of you has in view is HAPPINESS. To be informed, before hand, of the course that will conduct to it, must be infinitely important. Because, should you mistake the means, with however much ardor and constancy you may pursue the end, your efforts will be vain and your future experience prove but the sad disappointment of your present hopes. How then may success be ensured; what manner of life will conduct to happiness? To answer this interrogation, the character of man must be developed, his constitution analyzed, his capacities of enjoyment ascertained and the correspondencies between those capacities and their respective objects developed.

What then is man? Man is a being in whom are mysteriously combined a sensible and intellectual and a moral nature: each of which should be kept in view in the present inquiry, and the comparative claims of each should be considered in making a decision.

You have been told by an author, more esteemed for the benevolence of his heart than the profoundness of his doctrines, "that human happiness does

not consist in the pleasures of sense, in whatever variety or profusion they may be enjoyed." It is true that human happiness does not consist exclusively or principally in these. The senses, however, are a real source of enjoyment, nor would I wish you either to despise or undervalue them. The God of nature has not thought it derogatory to his wisdom, his goodness or his sanctity to bestow on you this class of enjoyments, and surely it cannot be derogatory to yours to receive them at his hand.

No inconsiderable part of the happiness alloted to man is conveyed through the medium of the senses-at least in the present world, and, perhaps, in the world to come. For the bodies we inhabit, the sleep of death being ended, will be rescued from the tomb. And it is not easy to perceive why they should be rescued, if their recovery is to have no influence on the pleasures and pains of eternity; to add nothing to the amount of endless misery or immortal bliss.

True they deposit in the grave, (I speak of the bodies of the redeemed,) all their present grossness, pollution and corruptibility. For they are to be raised from thence spiritual bodies. But whether this transformation, this refinement, this sublimation, which the renovated body undergoes, puts an eternal end to its influence on the happiness of the exulting soul, which at the resurrection enters it, or whether this mysterious change do not rather exalt

its powers and render them capable of communicating a happiness equally more refined, more sublimated, more transcendant, is an article, on which, though revelation were silent, it should seem that reason could scarcely entertain a doubt.

sense.

I know that there are men, and good men too, who calumniate indiscriminately all the pleasures of I say calumniate, for the language they utter is neither the language of reason nor revelation. The finger of God is too manifest in the sensitive part of human nature, to admit a doubt concerning the innocence of the bliss which springs from it. Christianity, instead of abjuring, approbates the pleasures of sense. She claims them as her own, and bids the possessor indulge them, to the glory of the God who gave them. And the author of Christianity, that great exemplar of righteousness and model of perfection, came eating and drinking. Again and again he graced the festive board with his divine presence; he delivered his celestial doctrines amid the circles of social friendship, and the first of that splendid series of miracles which signalized his life was performed at a marriage supper.

But though the pleasures of sense constitute a part, and an innocent part, it is but a very humble part of human felicity. While they are restrained within the limits and conformed in all respects to the decorum of gospel morality they are perfectly admissible. But if this decorum be violated; if these limits be transgressed order is subverted and guilt as well as misery ensues.

On this article nature herself coincides with religion, and fixes at the same point her sacred and unalterable boundary. She has stamped on the very frame of man her veto against excess; and the apathy, the languor, the pains and disgusts consequent upon it, are her awful and monitory voice, which "Rash says distinctly to the devotee of passion, mortal forbear-thou wast formed for temperance, Hither for chastity; these be the law of thy nature. to thou mayest come, but no further, and here must all thy appetites be stayed."

Attend to the voice of nature-obey her mandate. Consider, even in the heat of youthful blood, consider thy frame; "how fearfully, how wonderfully made." How delicate its texture, how various, how complicated, how frail its organs; how capable of affording thee an exquisite and abiding happiness, and at the same time how liable, by one rash act of intemperate indulgence, to be utterly deranged and destroyed for ever.

And let me forewarn you, that the region of innocent indulgence and guilty pleasure border on each other a single step only separates between them. If you do not regulate your pleasures by principles fixed and settled; if you do not keep in your eye a boundary that you will never pass ; you do not impose previous restraints, but leave your hearts to direct you amid the glee of convivial mirth and the blandishments of youthful pleasure, it requires no prophetic skill to foresee, that im

if