suit, no profession, which they will not be
far better prepared to enter, by the influence of an enlightened,
cheerful, enlarged Christian faith and practice. These will
interfere with no useful enterprise, no honest business, no laudable
calling; nor prevent the prosecution of any of the many projects
among men, which comport with the public good, and are executed
on principles of integrity. Religion will make its possessors
better and more successful laborers, mechanics, manufacturers,
agriculturists, merchants, and more respected and useful members of
any of the learned professions.

If there is any pursuit, any business, which you cannot prosecute
with the sanction of religion, avoid it at once and forever. You had
better do anything else than engage in it. I would have the young
strongly impressed with this view. It would be far preferable to
suffer poverty and obscurity, in an honest and useful calling, than
to obtain the possession and fame of great riches, in a pursuit
which the pure and enlightened principles of Christianity would
condemn. Although you may succeed in hoarding up mountains of gold
in such a pursuit, and in possessing broad domains and "the cattle
on a thousand hills," yet all this will not afford you one throb of
genuine enjoyment. There would be that in the manner of obtaining
these possessions, which would utterly deprive them of all power to
impart happiness. Wealth secured by extortion, fraud, or any
practice or business of a corrupting nature, injurious to the
morals, and destructive to the well-being of community, will be of
no more value to him who thus obtains it, as far as his happiness is
concerned, than so much dust. It is the consciousness of having
obtained riches in honest and useful pursuits, that gives zest and
relish to the enjoyments they procure. Without this consciousness,
the man of wealth has less of pure peace and happiness than the
poorest honest man in the wide world. In the very nature of things,
as a wise and holy God has constituted us, this must inevitably be
so. All past history and experience furnish indubitable proof of the
correctness of this position. If I can impress this single truth on
the hearts and memories of the youthful, I shall do them a service
of a value beyond all human computation.

These considerations, I trust, will tend to convince the young of
the vital importance of obtaining now, at the commencement of their
career, the direction and influe