Has every blessing and every mercy been taken as a matter of course, and every pleasure been enjoyed with a thankless forgetfulness of the hand from which it flowed?  If such has been the case, let it be so no longer; but awake and rouse ye from your lethargic slumber, be true to yourselves, and remember that you are responsible beings, and will have to account for all the time and talents misspent and misapplied.  Reflect seriously on the true end of existence and no longer fritter it away in vanity and folly.  Think of all the good you might have done, not only by individual exertion, but by the influence of your example.  Then reverse the picture and ask if much evil may not actually have occurred through these omissions in you.

To many of you too, life now presents a very different aspect to what it did in the commencement of the year.  A most important day has dawned, and momentous duties devolved on you.  The ties that bound you to the homes of your youth have been severed, and new ones formed, aye stronger ones than even to the mother that bare you.  Yes, there is one who is now dearer than the parent who cherished, or the sister who grew up with you, and shared your father’s hearth.  Oh! could I now but impress upon your minds, how much, how very much of your happiness depends on the way you begin.  If I could but make you sensible how greatly doing so might soften the trials of after life.  Trials?  I hear each of you exclaim in joyous doubt, What trials?  I am united to the object of my dearest affections; friends all smile on, and approve my choice; plenty crowns our board:  have I not made a league with sorrow that it should not come near our dwelling?  I hope not; for it might lead you to forget the things that belong to your peace.  I should tremble for you, could I fancy a life-long period without a trouble.  You are mortal and could not bear it, with safety to your eternal well-being.  This life being probationary, God has wisely ordained it a chequered one.  Happy, thoroughly happy as you may be now, you are not invulnerable to the shafts of sorrow;—­think how very many are the inlets through which trial may enter, and pray that whenever and however assailed, you may as a Christian, sanctify whatever befalls you to your future good.

But while prepared to meet those ills “the flesh is heir to” as becomes a Christian, it is well to remember that you may greatly diminish many of the troubles of life, by forbearance and self-command, for certain it is, that more than one half of mankind make a great deal of what they suffer, and which they might avoid.  Yes, much of what they endure are actually self inflictions.