Another objection will also be made which has stronger claims on our sympathy and respect. We shall be told that the innocent as well as the guilty will suffer—the guilty man’s friends and connections, who will probably feel the indignity more than he does himself. God forbid that we should needlessly add to the pain of those who are thus connected! But we must remember that the highest form of friendship does not consist in blindly falling in with the feelings of those whom we would serve, but in consulting what will be for their real and permanent good. If, therefore, the course here recommended has been shown to be not only indispensable to public morals, but more likely than any other to reclaim the offender, it is clearly not more a dictate of justice to the community, than of Christian charity to the parties more immediately concerned. Consider, also, how much is asked, when a good man is called upon to open his doors to persons without virtue and without principle. Unless the social circle is presided over by a spirit which will rebuke and frown away immorality, whatever fashionable names and disguises it may wear,—unless your sons and daughters can meet together without being in danger of having their faith disturbed by the jeers of the infidel, or their purity sullied by the breath of the libertine, neither they nor you are safe in the most innocent enjoyments and recreations. Parents at least should take a deep interest in this subject, if they do not wish to see the virtue, which they have reared under the best domestic discipline, blighted and corrupted before their eyes by the temptations to which their children are almost necessarily exposed in general society—a society which they can not escape except by going out of the world, and which they can not partake of without endangering the loss of what is of more value than a thousand worlds. [_Sunday, November 25._]