To you I owe more than to any other living being. In childhood you were my Parent, in later life my Teacher, in manhood my Companion. To your affectionate vigilance I owe my principles, my knowledge, and that I am a minister of the Gospel of Christ. For whatever profit they derive from this Book the young will be indebted to you.” Our space forbids any attempt at reproducing or analyzing these lectures. The evils that he attacked were real, and he did not mince matters in the assault. In the course of his lectures some of his good people, including one or two of the elders, thought that he was too plain and outspoken in his description of the temptations and dangers that beset the young, and undertook to advise him, suggesting that he should be more prudent in the forms of his expressions. He expressed regret that he should differ with them, but he proposed, he said, to treat the subject as he thought he ought, without regard to any instructions given. He did not propose to fight a mad dog with a handful of straw. Notwithstanding the timidity of his advisers, it appears, from the universal testimony of those who heard them, that they did great good, awakening the community to the dangers he exposed. He was earnestly urged to revise and print them, “that their usefulness may be extended beyond the place of their delivery.” His first attempts at their revision were not at all satisfactory to him, for he said afterwards: “I remember, when I was reading over my lectures to young men, with the intention of printing them, that I took down a volume of Dr. Barrow’s sermons and read two on the subject of ‘Industry and Idleness.’ I had two lectures on similar subjects that I thought of publishing, but they seemed to me so mean in the comparison that I took up the manuscript and fired it across the room and under the book-case, where it lay I do not know how long, and said: ‘I am not going to put those lectures into print and make an ass of myself.’ I thought that I would be a fool to think there was anything in them worth publishing. Afterwards, however, a volume of lectures to young men was lent to me, and when I read them they seemed so thin and weak that I said: ‘If these are acceptable to the public and will do good I think I can print mine.’” The many editions published in this country and England justified his final conclusion.