XXII. vain does he exhibit, in his own conduct, a SERM. pattern of the most perfect obedience to them, if his house and table be open to vicious inmates, and his children permitted to be spectators of their excesses. If a young person perceives that vice is no exclusion from the countenance and familiarity of those whom he has been accustomed to honour, it cannot but greatly diminish the abhorrence in which he has been taught to hold it. But though it is in the earliest periods of life, when the principles are unfixed and the mind open to every impression, that bad company is chiefly dangerous; there is no time in which it can be frequented with security. Many have begun the world with the greatest applause, have afforded to their anxious friends the fairest prospects of them-have even arrived at a mature period of manhood, without a material deviation from the path of virtue, and have then SERM. then suddenly blasted all the hopes, which XXII. have been formed of them, by the fatal prevalence of bad company. Besides the tendency in man, already noticed, to imitate what he constantly sees, there is yet another cause of danger to the morals, from profligate associates. It is the property of vice to endeavour to draw over to its party all who come within its influence :-the libertine, the drunkard, and all the other votaries of profligacy, have ever taken delight to render others as wicked as themselves; tọ compass this point, they spare no arguments, no solicitations:-the sons of virtue, I fear, are not half so anxious to make converts as the children of darkness to make apostates. Let not him, therefore, who has not sufficient self-denial to decline the society of the vicious, flatter himself that he shall have sufficient fortitude to withstand their temptations; more particularly when supported, as they always are, by the shafts of ridicule. If he XXII. preserve his integrity, his escape is miracu- SERM. lous; his temerity merits not that he should: for who does not deserve the fate he experiences, who unnecessarily exposes himself to a danger from whence little less than a miracle can rescue him without destruction? Let me not, however, be mistaken; I do not mean that any such inevitable hazard is incurred by our accidentally falling into the society of the profligate; or that, on account of the uneasiness we occasionally undergo in their com pany, we should therefore altogether avoid it; for if this were required of us, we must needs, as St. Paul observes, go out of the world; we must abstain from all intercourse with mankind whatever; and besides, there would be a want of charity in such extreme caution, for if the vicious were driven to herd with themselves, exclusively, all hope of their reformation would be done away. Vice, though sufficiently infectious, is not, I trust, by those at all well principled, to be imbibed At SERM. at casual interviews; what I wish you to XXII. guard against is a fondness for a delight in the society of vice, whatever seducing attractions it may possess—and against an intimacy, a close connexion with the vicious; you may perform, with safety, the offices of civility and neighbourhood to them, but you are not to take them for intimates; if you do, be assured that you will one day, in the bitterness of your heart, lament it, when you attribute to them, as you justly may, one or all of these calamities-the ruin of your character-the injury done to your fortune-the interruption of your quiet-the perversion of your morals or (which God forbid) the loss of eternal salvation. your SERMON SERMON XXIII. THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER. LUKE viii. 8. And other fell upon good ground, and sprang up, and bare fruit an hundred fold. THESE words are the conclusion of the SERM. parable of the sower who went out to sow his seed. The whole of it is thus related by St. Luke." A sower went out to sow « his seed, and as he sowed, some fell by "the way side, and it was trodden down, " and the fowls of the air devoured it; and "some fell upon a rock, and as soon as it "was sprung up it withered away, because it lacked moisture, And some * fell : VOL. II. Z XXIII. |