The Southern Literary Messenger, Vol. I., No. 4, December, 1834Various
History
The Southern Literary Messenger, Vol. I., No. 4, December, 1834
Various
American literature -- 19th century -- Periodicals
guide your course; and the road by which you should travel through the
present life to reach them, should be _that_ and _that only_ which your
heavenly Father, through his blessed Son, has commanded and besought
you to take. Thousands who have steadily pursued this course have
testified that it is "a way of pleasantness and a path of peace" to all
who have once attained the dispositions, feelings and principles
enjoined upon those who have made it their choice, in preference to all
other reputed roads to happiness; while not a solitary human being who
has ever tried these other roads, has ever yet been heard to bear
witness in their favor, after the experiment has been fully made. Woful
then must be your mistake, most fatal your error, in choosing "the way
in which you should go," should you rather be led by the sinful
allurements of illicit pleasure, than the universally concurring
testimony of the good, the wise, and the just throughout the world.
In a few fleeting hours more this school will cease to exist, and your
present monitor will have uttered the last words of admonition which he
will ever address to you as pupils. Anxiously, most anxiously do I
desire to fix them indelibly on your minds. But alas! I feel too
sensibly my own inability, as well as the evanescent nature of all
language in the form of advice, to hope for more than a temporary
impression. If I make even _that_, I shall in part at least have
attained the sole object of all that I ever said to you, which has been
your own intellectual improvement, your own happiness. Let me entreat
you, my dear young friends; let me implore you for the last time, never
to forget (whatever other things you may suffer to escape your
memories,) any of the various moral and religious instructions which
you have received under our care. I feel well assured that they will
not fail to come home to your bosoms--probably too with greatly
augmented force, should the withering blasts of misfortune ever spread
desolation and wo among you. But I pray for something more for you. I
would have you bear them continually in remembrance, even in your
happiest hours of prosperous fortune. I would have each of you
individually meditate on them "when thou sittest in thy house, and when
thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest
up." Then, but not until _then_, will you be fully prepared both for
adversity and prosperity; and then indeed may you confidently trust
that the God of all mercy and goodness will vouchsafe to impart to you
the true christian's last, best hope, both for time and eternity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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