In this sense, therefore, in this practical, scriptural, Christian sense, those many young minds, which we have seen so often, may truly be called empty.  But will they remain so long?  How often have I seen the early innocence of boyhood overcast; the natural simplicity of boyhood, its open truth, its confident affection, its honest shame, perverted, blunted, hardened!  How often have I seen the seven evil spirits enter in and dwell there,—­I know not, and never may know, whether to be cast out again, or to abide for ever.  But I have seen them enter, and, whilst the person was yet within my view, I have not seen them depart.  And why have they entered; why have they marred that which was so beautiful?  For one only reason,—­because the house was empty, because the Spirit of God was not there:  there was no love of God, no thought of God.  Mere innocence taints and spoils as surely before the influence of the world, as true principle flourishes in spite of it, and strengthens.  This, too, I have seen, not once only:  I have seen the innocence of early boyhood sanctified by something better than innocence, which gave a promise of abiding.  I have seen, in other words, that the house was not empty; that the Spirit of God was there.  I have watched the effect of those influences, which you know so well:  the second half-year came, a period when mere innocence is sure to be worn away, greatly tainted, if not utterly gone; but still, in the cases which I am now alluding to, the promise of good was not less, but greater, there was a more tried, and, therefore, a stronger goodness.  I have watched this, too, till it passed on, out of my sight.  I never saw the blessed Spirit of God depart from the house which he had chosen:  I well believe that he abides in it still, and will abide in it even to the day of Jesus Christ.

This I have seen, and this I shall continue to see; for still the great work of evil and of good is going on; still the house, at first empty, is possessed by the spirits of evil, or by the Spirit of God.  And if we do not see the signs of the Spirit of God, we are but too sure that the evil spirit is there.  We know him by the manifold signs of folly, coarseness, carelessness; even when we see not, as yet, his worse fruits of falsehood and profligacy.  We know him by the sign of an increased, and increasing selfishness, the everlasting cry of the thousand passions of our nature, all for ever calling out, “Give, give;” all for ever impatient, complaining, when their gratification is withheld, when the call of duty is set before them.  We know him by pride and self-importance, as if nothing was so great as self, as if our own opinions, judgment, feelings were to be consulted in all things.  We know him by the deep ungodliness which he occasions—­no thought of God, much less any love of him; living utterly without him in the world, or, at least, whilst health and prosperity continue.  These are the fatal signs which show that the house is no longer empty; that the evil spirits have entered in, and dwell there, to make it theirs, as too often happens, for time and for eternity.