Connecticut western news., 1881-11-23
SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL VICES.

S~ ~>>N~~ Let the Young Man Attend to His
 Own Way According to the Word
 Sermon by pr. Hall.
 ''Wherewithal shall 8 young man cleanse his way ? By taking heed there to according to the Word" Psalms, cxix., g. This was the text of Rev. pr. Halls discourse in his New York church Sunday. Speaking especially to young men upon the way in which many de- grade themselves, the preacher said:
 There are many who degrade their lives. Take, for instance, young men who -" dress" There are the words s'coxcomb" and s'fop," which are used to designate them. A sensible man is not to be indifferent to the manner of dress, but in the matter of display and good sense in dress there is as wide 8 difference as between improvidence on the one hand and miserEness on the other in money matters. There are many who degrade their lives by en- deavoring to shine in "society," to be- come social figures. To attract atten- tion is their ambition, but how to spread abundant joys around them is not in their minds. There is a real social life that we are permitted to enjoy, but this kind of s'society" dis play is as far from true social life as the smile of pleasure is from the laughter of the buffoon. There are those again who disregard the aim of life, who drift through life without color or principle. They are what circumstances make them. They drift along with the stream without aim or object. Speak ing to young men who may be without aim, let me recall to them that when passing through the streets they see houses with the sign, 'sTo Let, ," they are like them. One cannot tell who are to be their occupants, whether pure or impure. Do not degrade your lives by letting them drift with the tide; let there be some distinct and determined principle. Many degrade their lives by being simply idle. It is not that they are positively vicious, but that they are s'doing nothing," and it is one of the greatest of temptations to have the means to enable them to ''do nothing. In multitudes of cases those idlers have within themselves the usual ordinary tendency to yield to temptation. Do not go through life maimed and crip pied, young man do not degrade you lives by courses of which these art specimens.
 There are some again who pollutt life. They have no eye for wha is interesting. They are a good dea like Iago in the play, ''for am nothing if not critical" Honesty of purpose, { disinterested spirit, is thing they can not understand. They do not believe il anything that is presented to their at tentlon, or their first thought is, 'Oal we turn 1t into a laugh?' If they heart Socrates speak, they would talk only O his homely features. If they heard tn eloquent patriotism of Demosthene they would criticise and look round fo the fact that he had once been stam merer. So with the Sermon on thu Mount; they would only criticise thu accent of the Galilean. There is wick edness enough, God knows, in thi world, but there is real goodness for all there is the Divine goodness, and tn echoes of it are in human hearts ant lives.
 It is pitiful and painful to meet witt young men who inherit their fathers wealth and who yet despise their fath ers' virtues. Who have not seen mel make ruin of themselves and in doing wound the hearts that were the neares and dearest to them? I have seen tn ghosts of ruined women go into house holds in pursuit of their moral murder CTS, and in doing so they have over shadowed the lives of innocent persons
 Young men destroy their lives throug the passions that have their place in tn , economy of the age. They do not kee them in their places. There are cur osity, the polluting of the imagination , the talking of the corrupting sin, tn
 reading of the books that describe il the saloon and the dancing house wher , there is the seductiveness that destroy body and spirit for here and hereafter t Oh, the misery that any medical man ( 3 great city could describe, that @ clel
 gyman could depict, when vice has ha
 its way, where there has been wicket ness unprofitable for all things. Youn men, I beseech you, take heed to yor
 ways to those dangers.