nothing of wider
questions of national importance, who that sees before him, as we must
see it, the gradual change from childhood to boyhood, who that sees
added knowledge often accompanied with added sin, can help wishing that
the earlier ignorance of evil might still be continued; and fancying
that knowledge is at best but a doubtful blessing?

But our path is not backwards, but onwards. Israel in the desert was
hungry and thirsty, while in Egypt he had eaten bread to the full;
Israel in the desert saw a wide waste of sand, or sandy rock, around
him, while in Egypt he had dwelt in those green pastures and watered
gardens to which the Nile had given freshness and life. But that
wilderness is his appointed way to Canaan; its dreariness must be
exchanged for the hills and valleys of Canaan, and must not drive him
back again to the low plain of Egypt. There is a moral wilderness which
lies in the early part of our Christian course; but we must not hope to
escape from it but by penetrating through it to its furthest side.

Undoubtedly this place, and other similar places, which receive us when
we have quitted the state of childhood, and before our characters are
formed in manhood, do partake somewhat of the character of the
wilderness; and it is not unnatural that many should shrink back from
them in fear. We see but too often the early beauty of the character
sadly marred, its simplicity gone, its confidence chilled, its
tenderness hardened; where there was gentleness, we see roughness and
coarseness; where there was obedience, we find murmuring, and self-will,
and pride; where there was a true and blameless conversation, we find
now something of falsehood, something of profaneness, something of
impurity. I can well conceive what it must be to a parent to see his
child return from school, for the first time, with the marks of this
grievous change upon him: I can well conceive how bitterly he must
regret having ever sent him to a place of so much, danger; how fondly he
must look back to the days of his early innocence. And if a parent feels
thus, what must be our feelings, seeing that this evil has been wrought
here? Are we not as those who, when pretending to give a wholesome
draught, have mixed the cup with poison? How can we go on upholding a
system, the effects of which appear to be so merely mischievous?

Believe me, that such questions must and ought to present themselves to
the mind of every thinking man who is c