entering. We thus mistake our merely outgrowing our vices,
or our relinquishing them from some change in our worldly circumstances,
for a thorough, or at least for a sufficient, reformation.

But this topic deserves to be viewed a little more closely. Young people
may, without much offence, be inconsiderate and dissipated; the youth of
one sex may indulge occasionally in licentious excesses; those of the
other may be supremely given up to vanity and pleasure: yet, provided
that they are sweet tempered, and open, and not disobedient to their
parents or other superiors, the former are deemed _good hearted_ young
men, the latter, _innocent_ young women. Those who love them best have
no solicitude about their spiritual interests: and it would be deemed
strangely strict in themselves, or in others, to doubt of their becoming
more religious as they advance in life; to speak of them as being
actually under the divine displeasure; or, if their lives should be in
danger, to entertain any apprehensions concerning their future destiny.

They grow older, and marry. The same licentiousness, which was formerly
considered in young men as a venial frailty, is now no longer regarded
in the husband and the father as compatible with the character of a
decently religious man. The language is of this sort; "they have sown
their wild oats, they must now reform, and be regular." Nor perhaps is
the same manifest predominance of vanity and dissipation deemed innocent
in the matron: but if they are kind respectively in their conjugal and
parental relations, and are tolerably regular and decent, they pass for
_mighty good sort of people_; and it would be altogether unnecessary
scrupulosity in them to doubt of their coming up to the requisitions of
the divine law, as far as in the present state of the world can be
expected from human frailty. Their hearts, however, are perhaps no more
than before supremely set on the great work of their salvation, but are
chiefly bent on increasing their fortunes, or raising their families.
Meanwhile they congratulate themselves on their having amended from
vices, which they are no longer strongly tempted to commit, or their
abstaining from which ought not to be too confidently assumed as a test
of the strength of the religious principle, since the commission of them
would prejudice their characters, and perhaps injure their fortune in
life.

Old age has at length made its advances. Now, if ever, we might expect