“Now, boys, the question is, do you wish to abandon this habit or not?  If you do, all is well.  I shall immediately forget all the past, and will do all I can to help you resist and overcome temptation in future.  But all I can do is only to help you; and the first thing to be done, if you wish to engage in this work of reform, is to acknowledge your fault; and I should like to know how many are willing to do this.”

“I wish all those who are willing to tell me whether they use profane language would rise.”

Every individual but one rose.

“I am very glad to see so large a number,” said the teacher; “and I hope you will find that the work of confessing and forsaking your faults is, on the whole, pleasant, not painful business.  Now those who can truly and honestly say that they never do use profane language of any kind may take their seats.”

Three only of the whole number, which consisted of not far from twenty, sat down.  It was in a sea-port town, where the temptation to yield to this vice is even greater than would be, in the interior of our country, supposed possible.

“Those who are now standing,” pursued the teacher, “admit that they do, sometimes at least, commit this sin.  I suppose all, however, are determined to reform; for I do not know what else should induce you to rise and acknowledge it here, unless it is a desire hereafter to break yourselves of the habit.  But do you suppose that it will be enough for you merely to resolve here that you will reform?”

“No, sir,” said the boys.

“Why not?  If you now sincerely determine never more to use a profane word, will you not easily avoid it?”

The boys were silent.  Some said faintly, “No, sir.”

“It will not be easy for you to avoid the sin hereafter,” continued the teacher, “even if you do now sincerely and resolutely determine to do so.  You have formed the habit of sin, and the habit will not be easily overcome.  But I have detained you long enough now.  I will try to devise some method by which you may carry your plan into effect, and to-morrow I will tell you what it is.”

So the boys were dismissed for the day; the pleasant countenance and cheerful tone of the teacher conveying to them the impression that they were engaging in the common effort to accomplish a most desirable purpose, in which they were to receive the teacher’s help, not that he was pursuing them, with threatening and punishment, into the forbidden practice into which they had wickedly strayed.  Great caution is, however, in such a case, necessary to guard against the danger that the teacher, in attempting to avoid the tones of irritation and anger, should so speak of the sin as to blunt his pupils’ sense of its guilt, and lull their consciences into a slumber.

At the appointed time on the following day the subject was again brought before the school, and some plans proposed by which the resolutions now formed might be more certainly kept.  These plans were readily and cheerfully adopted by the boys, and in a short time the vice of profaneness was, in a great degree, banished from the school.