as, deserted of God, he fought his last battle with Death.

"I feel the weight of God's wrath burning like the pains of hell within me, and pressing on my conscience with an anguish which cannot be described!" cried the apostate Francis Spira, when writhing in the agonies of death.

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My dear, you appear as if your heart were breaking," said a weeping lady to her dying infidel husband, whose distress appeared to be unendurable.

"Let it break! Let it break! but it is hard work to die!" he replied. Then directing a glance toward heaven, he cried,

"Lord, have mercy! Jesus save!" and died.

Now, all this is most shocking to contemplate. What, then, must its endurance be? And it is nothing more than the harvest gathered from a vicious life. Every illicit enjoyment is a seed of such torment as this. The guilty revel over the · wine-cup, the scoff at religion, the sneer at piety, the hilarity of the dance, the embrace of lust, the violated Sabbath, the profane expression, are each

and all the substances of those images which rise up, grim and ghostly, to torment the remorseful sinner. If, then, my dear young friend, you tremble at the consequences, shun the cause-sow not the seed-touch not the sin-stray not from the side of virtue ! But if you will, despite of all warning voices, seek to know the mysteries of vice, then I say to you, in the language of inspiration:`

"Rejoice, oh young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes; BUT KNOW THOU THAT FOR ALL THESE THINGS GOD WILL BRING THEE INTO JUDGMENT. THEREFORE, PПT AWAY EVIL FROM THY FLESH!" Seek the aids of pure religion. Cleave to purity, quiet, and virtue, and thus you "shall dwell safely, and shall be quiet from fear of evil."

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CHAPTER XI.

VICE AND ITS SEDUCERS.

"Come home! - there is a sorrowing breath
In music since ye went;

And the early flower-scents wander by,

With mournful memories blent.

The tones in every household voice

Are grown more sad and deep,

And the sweet word-brother-wakes a wish
To turn aside and weep."

HESE exquisite lines, by MRS. HEMANS, give a beautiful expression to those tender affections which plead with every young man to maintain his affinity with home and its virtuous pleasures. They show the strength of those restraining influences with which God would fain hold the young sinner back from vice. All its love and all its friendship plead with him, weep over him, wait for him.

Though by his profligacy he has dug a gulf

between it and himself, yet it maintains an unalien

ated regard, and with open arms and unutterable emotion, cries, "Come home!" Holy love! Affection almost divine! How strange, that the voices of lust and infamy should ever exert a more controlling power over a young man's spirit than these loving voices of home!

Yet so it is in every instance of youthful delinquency. The false-hearted victims of foul iniquity sway his soul, and render him deaf to the pleadings of his best and purest friends. His foolish heart yields itself up to vicious seducers, whose only aim is his destruction. A fashionable popinjay, a foppish blackguard, a gambler, a filthy harlot, is permitted to silence and push aside a venerable father, a fond mother, a pure sister, and a noble brother! This fact alone exhibits the hatefulness of vice, and should cause a young man to seriously pause before placing a foot on the accursed threshold of its infamous temple. To describe the seducers to vice, and to caution my reader against them, are my aims in this chapter.

Bad books and impure pictures are among the first

corrupting instrumentalities which debase a young mind. With the former may be ranked the innumerable novels which are perpetually issuing from unprincipled presses; all kinds of amorous poetry; and a class of filthy books, pretending to be medical, physiological, and instructive, while in reality they are only disgusting stimulants to unholy, prurient desires. Among the latter are those engravings and paintings, whether in books or papers, or on the covers of snuff-boxes, &c., which, from their immodesty, are calculated to defile the mind and call the latent depravity of the heart into action. These vile

productions of misdirected art the young man who values his moral character must refuse to see. If they are brought under his notice, he must resolutely turn away his eyes from gazing upon them; for as sure as he takes pleasure in them, he will be undone. So of novels; they must be rejected with invincible determination.

But are all novels to be eschewed? Are not some of them pure both in style and tendency? To this last question I reply, it is true that some novels are