thoughts be sanctified by virtue and holiness;
and their lives shall be as white and spotless as the driven
snow--winning the admiration of all who know them. With purity as
a shield, they are doubly guarded against sin. However enticing
temptation may be--however artfully or strongly it may assail
them--they are prepared to rise above it, in any and every
emergency.

Another of the fixed rules of conduct should be to _aim high_ in all
the _purposes_ of life. The great obstacle to success with many of
the young, is that they adopt no standard of action for their
government; but allow themselves to float along the current of time
like a mere straw on the surface of the waters, liable to be veered
about by every puff of wind and whirling eddy! If the current in
which they float happens to waft them into the smooth waters, and
the calm sunshine of virtue and respectability, it is a matter of
mere fortunate chance. If they are drawn into the dark stream of
sin, they have but little power to resist, and are soon hurried into
the surging rapids, and hurled over the boiling cataract of ruin!
True, they may not utterly perish even in plunging down the
cataract. They may possibly seize hold of some jutting rock below,
and by a desperate effort drag themselves from the raging waters.
But they will come forth bruised, bleeding, strangling, and
half-drowned, to mourn the folly of their thoughtlessness. How much
wiser and better to have taken early precaution, and guarded in the
first place against the insidious current, which compelled them to
purchase wisdom at so dear a rate.

To avoid this great folly, the youthful should establish a fixed
purpose for life. They should set their mark, as to what they wish
to become; and then make it the great labor of their lives to attain
it. And let that mark be a high one. You cannot make it too
elevated. The maxim of the ancients was, that although he who aims
at the sun will not hit it, yet his arrows will fly much higher than
though his mark was on the earth. A young man who should strive to
be a second Washington or Jefferson, might not attain to their
renown. But he would become a much greater and better man, than
though he had only aspired to be the keeper of a gambling-house, or
the leader of a gang of blacklegs. In all your purposes and plans of
life, aim high!

"Again a light boat on a streamlet is seen,
Where the banks are o'erladen with beautiful green,
Like a