I hope I shall have no reader to whom these remarks apply; but should it be otherwise, happy will it be for him if he takes the alarm, and walks not another step in the downward road to certain and terrible retribution. Happiest, however, is he who has never erred from the first; and who reads these pages as he reads of those awful scenes in nature,--the devastations of the lightning, the deluge, the tornado, the earthquake, and the volcano; as things to be lamented, and their horrors if possible mitigated or averted, but with which he has little personal concern. Sympathizing, however, with his fellow beings--for though _fallen_, they still belong to the same family--should any reader who sees this work, wish to examine the subject still more intimately, I recommend to him a Lecture to Young Men, lately published in Providence. I would also refer him, to Rees' Cyclopedia, art. _Physical Education_. The article last referred to is so excellent, that I have decided on introducing, in this place, the closing paragraph. The writer had been treating the subject, much in the manner I have done, only at greater length, and had enumerated the diseases to which it leads, at the same time insisting on the importance of informing the young, in a proper manner, of their danger, wherever the urgency of the case required it. After quoting numerous passages of Scripture, which, in speaking of impurity, evidently include this practice, and denouncing it in severe terms, he closes with the following striking remarks. 'There can be no doubt that God has forbidden it by the usual course of providence. Its moral effects, in destroying the purity of the mind, in swallowing up its best affections, and perverting its sensibilities into this depraved channel, are among its most injurious consequences; and are what render it so peculiarly difficult to eradicate the evil. In proportion as the habit strengthens the difficulty of breaking it, of course, increases; and while the tendency of the feelings to this point increases, the vigor of the mind to effect the conquest of the habit gradually lessens. 'We would tell him (the misguided young man) that whatever might be said in newspapers respecting the power of medicine in such cases, nothing could be done without absolute self-control; and that no medicine whatever could retrieve the mischiefs which the want of it had caused: and that the longer the practice was continued, the greater would be the bodily and mental evils it would inevitably occasion.