tus, perhaps the greatest historian the world ever has seen; with a constellation of other names too numerous to mention, whose fame has not diminished nor suffered decay by the lapse of ages. If there had been any truth in the argument that education makes all the difference between minds, why is there such a disparity between the men of the same age and rank? and why does it not raise up a greater number to the highest intelectual stature in modern times, which have the advantages of the ancients, and ten times more? That on Thee rests,-eternal were thy vow To honour her!) shall still protect thee, boy! And keep thy youth from every base alloy That might combine to dim its virtuous grace, And cause the scalding tears each other chase Adown thy loving mother's tender face. The Philosophy of Artificial and Compulsary Drinking Usages in Great Britain and Ireland. By JOHN DUNLOP, Esq. London: Houlston & Stoneman. This is a remarkable and valuable work, designed to expose the evils of those habits the moral character of so many of our counof drinking to excess, which are the bane of trymen, and which have entwined themselves, unhappily, with almost all occasions of business, pleasure, or mourning. It is surprising to what an extent these pernicious practices prevail, among most, but especially the working classes; and it is lamentable to think how deeply they are injured by them. We trust this work may be made useful in promoting a reformation of manners.-We give one extract, which is all we have room for. "The multiplicity of the rites and ceremonies of drinking at fairs, markets, and served even by inattentive spectators, although sacraments, can scarcely have passed unob it is unaccountable how little known to one class are the mysteries of inebriation of another. The stopping of farmers on horseback or in carts, with their friends or families, at a variety of public-houses, as they pass homewards, occasions a sad deterioration of morals in that class of the inhabitants. We have been disturbed at a respectable inn, in the Carse of Stirling, as late as ten o'clock at night, by farmers and their families making their fourth or fifth stop from town on a market day; and at this stage, the noise, singing, and riot of these (otherwise respectable) people, was inconceivable. A principle motive of this practice lies in some of the party thus rewarding the owner of the cart for giving them a cast homewards; with others, a parting glass is the excuse. LONDON: T. RILEY, Printer, 161, Fleet Street. THE YOUNG MEN'S MAGAZINE. No. 29.] MAY, 1839. ADVANTAGES TO SOCIETY AT LARGE, [VOL. III. would be no gin-palaces, no gaming houses, no destructive combinations of guilt. It is true that for some time to come, the old vices might exist, and hoary profligates continue; LET us glance at the benefit which but their ranks would soon be must result from the moral and spi-thinned by desertion or death. The ritual cultivation of young men, to morality of young men, and especisociety at large, and to posterity. ally their devoted piety, must operate It is theirs to fix a character on this with intense and ever-increasing efage, and on the next. As the past fect, upon the mass, even of a corhas impressed the present, the pre- rupt world, and work by its influence sent will impress the future. The a thousand reformations. If there existing generation cannot escape were, on the part of the young, no the responsibility, for it arises from reciprocities of sympathy with those the very constitution of things, of who, by direct attack, or through being curses or blessings, by their the specious paths of indulgence, conduct, to unborn millions of young would allure them to evil, the more men of our times. What they are, advanced in life would soon cease or what instrumentally we make to attempt the virtue of the young; them, posterity will be; for they are and the young in their turn would,every moment, like ourselves, re- if it were only by the mere force of ceiving and transmitting impres- example, effectually assail their sions. Through them we are actually seniors by a vice-discountenancing and necessarily working in both conduct, calculated to awaken shame directions; constituting them, like as well as remorse. If, moreover, ourselves, the curses or the blessings there were, as the case implies, an of their children and our descend- activity of effort on the part of young ants. If the young men of the pre- men, a holy zeal united with a sent age be what it behoves them to blameless character, rousing into be, and what a moral and truly reli- life their own powers, and awakengious education may make them, ing those of others yet younger society is safe, the world is happy, than themselves, the result must be the jubilee of the universe ap- soon apparent; sturdy resistance proaches! If among our young would yield, and society at large be men were to be found no drunkard, made to feel "how awful virtue is." no debauchee, no swearer, no rob- While, however, the tide of blesber, no Sabbath-breaker: there sing, flowing from the character of F the renovated youth of our land, moral influences. We touch one might, from the present corruption point in society, but it is an electric of society, be only like the river touch; it runs, or may run, through running through the lake with little the whole. It may be felt a thouintermixture of the waters, the sand miles off, or for a thousand whole would be at length suscep-years to come ? Have we not tible of the infusion, and exhibit, in quoted our fathers, and heard them reality, a total change. For it is quote theirs? Do we not read the obvious that the mass of the young, books of our ancesters, and listen to look but a few years forward, is their concentrated wisdom or folly society. Those who are now in maxims or sayings transmitted amongst us constitute the future from unknown times and places? population of the earth. They will Do we not every day converse with soon be the world; there will be no them or think of them, or catch other. They are the fathers and some impression from them? There mothers, the wives and husbands, stands a volume through which the the men and women of mankind. people of centuries past address us; They are the statesmen, judges, and there is a record of the words magistrates, ministers, missionaries and the teachings of one whose of the earth, as it will be after a words impressed his friend a thoufew more rotations on its axis. sand years ago; which friend imPosterity is thus brought up to view, pressed, through the same or other and actually before us- -while the medium, his sons and daughters; elder-born look on our children and and they theirs, and their families; our children's children. Who then, and their families, towns, and disand where, are the dwellers on this tricts, and nations-and in some depeopled surface in forty or fifty gree moulded the very passions, years? Behold them in yonder prejudices, and fashions of now playful children tossing the shells on existing thousands, who were then the sea-shore-flying the paper-kite an unborn, unthought-of generation, -trundling the hoop-and sporting And we, the later comers into life, in the play-ground;-behold them are teaching young ideas, and mouldin those joyous youths who are just ing yet unformed destinies, and emerging from the university, or transmitting an impulse to uncalcuwalking its cloistered solitudes; be- lated ages for good or for evil! hold them in the toiling artisans in But where, and how, is the impulse the shop, or the striplings of the given? It is by affecting the percounting house; or see them tread-sons and the minds nearest to us; ing the early paths of professional or especially the young and susceptimore distinguished life! What they ble. The representatives of posare, or what they become, the age terity stand in close array by our must be, when their immediate pre- side, as the mirrors to catch and decessors sleep with their fathers: reflect us-and truth or error, vice but ere they sleep let them use their or virtue, through us-upon the fueyes to watch their tongues to ture world! Let parents, teachers, plead and pray-their hands to sow employers, ministers, authors, and christians of every class, cherish a the seeds of future renovation! It is fearful, in connexion with a deep and awful sense of their respecsense of moral responsibility, to tive capacities and opportunities; look at the endless progression of let them be roused by a considera tion of the worth of souls, which SUICIDE-SUICIDE-SUICIDE-writthey are to influence for happiness ten in flame unquenchable, upon the or woe, for time and eternity! They consciences of the lost! are to be the life or death of others Solemnly, therefore, do we ad-perhaps of millions! Their own dress our beloved young friends destiny is to receive a complexion with the appeal, "Why will ye die?” from that of those to whose wretched By what infatuation are you goor blissful existence they have minis- verned? Are you the victims of tered! Through them many may an irresistible destiny when you be saved or lost! Their negli- plunge into sin; or are you not the gence or assiduity may add a shade willing slaves of passion and of vice? or a brightness to their own being; Is it the blindness of instinct, or the may affect the balances of the last perversion of reason, that impels judgment; and may even mark their you? Are you brutes, or men? own everlasting state! But the law of nature, whether in But no; I cannot utter it In conclusion, though we have brutes or men, is the love of life; earnestly, and in various modes of and this, by departing from God, illustration, enforced the claims of you resist, and virtually disown. young men upon society, and de- Impelled by the grossest folly, as picted the consequences of negli- well as by the most criminal, and, gence to parents themselves, to as I may say, anti-natural passion, teachers and others, whom Provi- you oppose your Maker's purpose dence has constituted their natural and trample upon his authority in guardians, let not young men imagine your original creation; for though that they are themselves free from he has taught you that to love him guilt when they suffer ruin. Let is to love life-and to love the them not suppose that others are world, its pomps and pleasures and solely responsible for their miscon- pollutions, is to love death and induct, or that the blame which is cur immortal horrors-yet you perjustly due and has been severely severe- -your infatuation is complete charged on those who have failed you will to be the guides of their youth, exempts them from culpability. No; I cannot finish that sentence against they are still in the proper sense of you. Ere the page is blotted the term self-destroyers: their ali- with the direful declaration, surely enation from truth and from God is the ingenuous heart of my youthful a wilful alienation; their ignorance, reader is ready to arrest the recordhaving the means of knowledge, is ing pen, and to say, O write it a wilful ignorance; their covenant not-write it not tell me that I with death and hell, for it is volun- may, and tell me how I may live, tary, is a wilful covenant. If any and not die ;-tell me what I must perish, whatever may have been the do to escape the evils which encomaccessories to their ruin-whatever pass me, the associations that entheir temptations whatever the thral me, the guilty habits that emparticipation or prompting of others barrass and sink me, the woe that whatever the neglects of the even now conscience intimates righteous or the counsels of the awaits me ;-O"what must I do to wicked whatever the snares of the be saved?" devil the "darkness visible," the Is this indeed your inquiry? Is Jurid light of hell will reveal only-there in reality this preparation of 66 F 2 mind for the " 'good seed of the when the purpose of his incarnation kingdom?" Is there a commencing is not understood, the design of his solicitude for your own everlasting death not appreciated, and the interests? Then at once I answer benefits of his atonement, through to the demand in one scriptural and want of faith, not experienced. If comprehensive sentence, "Believe these considerations be included in in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." Perhaps you may be ready to assure me you do believe; and to think, if I should question the fact, that it is a prejudice and an unkindness. But this must depend upon the nature of the case, that is, upon the application of the term. the term, which in a scriptural use of it undoubtedly they are, then our refusal to admit that the mere mental acquiescence in the historic fact or in the revealed doctrine is believing, can neither be unjust nor unkind, since this must be essentially different from that which he who is said to "have life" possesses, and Belief is one of the simplest acts which issues in salvation. When, of the mind, and may be purely in- therefore, you are exhorted to betellectual, dependent entirely on lieve the gospel, it is to do somethe evidence adduced of a particular thing more than to believe that fact or object of credence; it may Christ came into the world, and also be complicated with a variety that he died for sinners; it is to of concomitant emotions, and have believe in him and on him, to look relations to beings or objects of the to him as your Saviour; to trust in highest interest, the due apprecia- the merits of his death as a sacrifice tion of which may not only consti- and propitiation, and to renounce tute the act of believing, but con- your own; to abandon every selfnect itself with the greatest conse- righteous plea, and receive his quences; in this sense it becomes righteousness alone as the ground moral. Belief may be merely intel- of justification before God; to lectual in things which have relation" commit the keeping of your souls to moral and religious truth, as well into his hands;" to rely on his peras in relation to those which are fect ability and willingness to 66 save scientific or common; so that, the them to the uttermost that come mere evidence being considered in unto God by him;" to devote your either case, it is equally a mere hearts and lives to his service as mental act to admit that the earth worthy of the consecration of your is spherical, or that Julius Cæsar entire being. We go beyond this," lived, and that Jesus Christ came and do more than exhort you to into the world to save sinners. The it-we affirm that you are required moral character of the credence, to do so; you are under the highest and consequently that which in- obligations to believe and obey; volves present and eternal results, nothing can release you from the the happiness of life, the salvation duty and the responsibility; it is at of the soul, the bliss of eternity, de- the peril of your soul to disregard pends on the state of the heart in and disobey: and while we appeal, relation to the truth in question, and you actually stand between the which is, what the Scriptures mean two extremes of heaven and hell, it by believing in Christ and believing is yours to decide to decide at on the Son of God. It is obvious, once, and to decide for ever. If therefore, the fact may be admitted, you hesitate-if you linger-if you |