Here we would note, as the first advantage, that to serve God in youth is a safeguard, a defense against vice and temptations. No age, indeed, is secure. Till we arrive in heaven and have laid off this body of sin and infirmities we are never safe. Here, like travelers in the mountains, where a coating of snow hides the treacherous ice, and one false step may prove the Christian's ruin, we walk in slippery places, and have need to lean on an arm stronger than our own. Still youth is of all ages the most dangerous. With its ardent temper, its inexperience, its credulity, taking appearances for realities, its impatience of restraint, its unbroken passions, and feeble hands to control and guide them, it requires the utmost care and vigilance. "Lead us not into temptation," should be its daily, constant, earnest prayer. We read at times in our public prints of the wrecks that happen on the shores of our great lakes or the ocean, of vessels gone down in disaster and storms. What is that list of wrecked vessels to the number of men and women who year by year are wrecked in their youth on the dangers and vices of our towns,--our town? What a graveyard of virtue, honor, and honesty! Let the places of business where employers show no regard to the welfare, but only to the work of those in their service; let the houses where no friendly interest is taken in their domestics; let the halls of public amusement, the haunts of drunkenness, and the hells of vice, give up their secrets, as the sea does the drowned cast upon the beach, and we should have a roll like the prophet's, "written without and within with lamentations, mourning, and woe," as shocking, if not more so, as the field of battle, covered with the carnage of war. And out upon the scene, from the virtuous influence of home and school, steps the unsophisticated youth, a thousand avenues of seduction opening around him and a siren voice singing at the entrance of each. Evil companions surround him, erroneous publications ensnare his eye, means and opportunities of temptation and sin. He may flatter himself that his own good sense and moral feelings will render him secure, but as the wise King Solomon says: "He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool." The force of examples, the influence of circumstances, the voice of railing and ridicule, the fascinations of the pleasure party, stifle the finest resolutions, and often render us an astonishment to ourselves, as the old proverb says: "Give the devil an inch, and he will take an ell." No, depend upon it, there is nothing that will do to keep you virtuous, noble, and happy but a hearty consecration of soul and body to the God that loves you, and the Savior that redeemed you, nothing else than the restraints which that God inspires in His holy Law, and the helps that He provides in the rules and ordinances of His Church. Let a young Christian love the habitation of His house, the place where His honor dwelleth, and