Let it be the aim of every youth to lift aloft this glorious banner, and soar upward to a surpassing excellency.  Let them seek to excel in all tilings high, and good.  Let them never stoop to do an evil act, nor degrade themselves to commit a wrong.  But in their principles, purposes, deeds, and words, let their great characteristics be Truth, Goodness, and Usefulness!

         “Be just and fear not! 
     Let all the ends thou aim’st at, be thy country’s,
     Thy God’s, and Truth’s!”

LECTURE III.

Selection of Associates.

    “Be not thou envious against evil men, neither desire to be
    with them; for their heart studieth destruction, and their
    lips talk of mischief.”—­Prov. xxiv.  I, 2.

There is nothing more important to the youthful, or that should receive more serious consideration at their hands, than the selection of Associates.  We are by nature social beings.  We desire, we seek, and enjoy, the society of our fellow-creatures.  This trait is strongly developed in the young.  They yearn for each other’s companionship, and they must have it, or they pine away, and sink into misanthropy.  This disposition may properly be indulged; but great care and prudence should be exercised in regard to it.

While mingling in each other’s society, it is natural, almost unavoidable, that the youthful should imbibe much of the leading characteristics of their associates.  Being highly imitative in our nature, it is impossible to be on social and familiar terms with others, for any great length of time, without copying somewhat of their dispositions, ways, and habits.

Let a young man, however upright and pure, associate habitually with those who are profane, Sabbath-breaking, intemperate, and unprincipled—­who are given to gambling, licentiousness, and every low, brutal and wicked practice—­and but a brief space of time will elapse before he will fall into like habits himself, and become as great an adept in iniquitous proceedings as the most thorough-paced profligate among them.  When a young woman associates with girls who are idle, disrespectful and disobedient to parents—­who are vulgar, brazen-faced, loud talkers and laughers—­whose chief occupation and delight is to spin street-yarn, to run from house to house and store to store, and walk the streets in the evening, instead of being at home engaged in some useful occupation—­whose whole conversation, and thoughts, and dreams, relate to dress, and fashion, and gewgaws, and trinkets, to adorn the person, utterly negligent of the ornaments of the mind and heart—­whose reading never extends to instructive and useful books, but is confined exclusively to sickly novels and silly love-stories;—­how long will it be before she will become as careless and good-for-nothing as they?

This predisposition of the young to imitate the characteristics of those with whom they associate, has been so well and so long known, that it has given rise to the old proverb—­“Show me your company, and I will show you your character.”  So perfectly did Solomon understand this, that he uttered the wise maxim—­“Make no friendship with an angry man; and with a furious man thou shalt not go; lest thou learn his ways, and get a snare to thy soul.”