Let me farther exhort you, as a point of duty, to cultivate habitual _cheerfulness_. When I say this, you will not understand me as recommending a spirit of levity and frivolity. This is unworthy of rational, accountable creatures, and indicates as much of weakness as of sin. Those who spend their lives in gaiety and mirth, are "dead while they live." But by cultivating habitual cheerfulness, I mean cherishing a pleasant state of the animal spirits; as opposed to constitutional gloom, mental depression, and settled, clouded taciturnity, I mean habits, not of light, but of lively and affable conversation. Such a state of mind does good like a medicine. It contributes to our own enjoyment. It makes us more pleasant and useful to those with whom we converse. It may even operate to promote health and prolong life; and in various ways extend our power of doing good. Guard with conscientious care against habits of _indolence_. A tendency to this sin is one of the radical symptoms of the great moral disease of our nature; and you cannot begin too early to labour and pray for effecting a cure. Fly from idleness as a habit connected with a legion of evils. Make a point of always having something useful to do--something to fill up every moment left vacant between the larger and more important tasks of life. I am aware that we all stand in need of _recreation_; but this is often best attained by _a change of employment_. When you have finished a sedentary task, which required intense application of mind, think, for a moment, whether there be not some other object to which you may attend for a short time, which will require no mental effort, but by attention to which, you may promote either your own health or comfort, or the advantage of others. Make it your daily study to "redeem the time." Try to turn every moment to some valuable account. For this purpose, form, as early as possible, a plan, a systematic order in your daily tasks. Without such a plan, more or less formally adopted, you will inevitably lose much time in passing from one engagement to another. But if you manage always to leave something useful with which to fill up every little interval; so as never to be idle, and never to waste time with frivolous, or worse than frivolous employments, you will be more happy, and live more to your own true honour, and the benefit of your generation.