chief happiness to the resorts of gaiety and fashion, to all the multiplied pleasures which public places, or the still higher gratifications of more refined circles, can supply? And then, when the first ebullitions of youthful warmth are over, what is their boasted reformation? They may be decent, sober, useful, respectable, as members of the community, or amiable in the relations of domestic life. But is _this_ the change of which the Scripture speaks? Hear the expressions which it uses, and judge for yourselves--"Except a man be _born again_, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God."--"The _old man_--is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts;" an expression but too descriptive of the vain delirium of youthful dissipation, and of the false dreams of pleasure which it inspires; but "the _new man_" is awakened from this fallacious estimate of happiness; "_he_ is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him"--"He is created _after God_ in righteousness and true holiness." The persons of whom we are speaking are no longer, indeed, so thoughtless, and wild, and dissipated, as formerly; so negligent in their attention to objects of real value; so eager in the pursuit of pleasure; so prone to yield to the impulse of appetite. But this is no more than the change of which a writer of no very strict cast speaks, as naturally belonging to their riper age: Conversis studiis, ætas animusque virilis Quærit opus, & amicitias: inservit honori: Commisisse cavet, quod mox mutare laboret. HOR.