“I appeal to your experience. Have you observed any such disposition in him, as gives you ground to suspect he will love God too well, or keep himself too ‘_unspotted from the world_’? Or has his past life been such, as that you have just reason to apprehend the remainder of it should too much resemble that of our blessed Master? I will go further. Have you remarked in the various scenes you have gone through, that youth in general is apt to run into the extreme of piety? Is it to _this_ excess that the fervour of their blood and the impetuosity of their passions hurry them? “But we may not stop here. Is there any fear, is there any possibility that any son of Adam, of whatever age or degree, should too faithfully do the will of his Creator, or too exactly tread in the steps of his Redeemer? Suppose the time now come when you feel within yourself, that the silver cord of life is loosed, that the dust is returning to the earth as it was, and the spirit unto God who gave it. The snares of death overtake you. Nothing but pain is on the one hand, eternity on the other. The tears of the friends that surround your bed bear witness with the pangs of your own heart, that it has few pulses more to beat before you launch out into the sea without a shore; before the soul shall part from the quivering lips and stand naked before the judgment-seat of God. Will you then be content with having served God according to the custom of the place you were in? Will you regret your having been, even from your youth, more pure and holy than the rest of mankind? Will you complain to the ministering spirits who receive your new-born soul, that you have been over zealous in the love of your Master? Ask not me, a poor, fallible, sinful mortal, never safe either from the snares of ill example or the treachery of my own heart; but ask _them_,—ask _Him_ who died to make you and me and your son zealous of good works,—whether you may be excused from your solicitude, your too successful solicitude, to prevent his falling into this extreme? How needless has he made that solicitude already! But, I spare you. The good Lord be merciful to us both!