THE LIBRARY OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 
 NORTH CAROLINA 
 
 THE COLLECTION OF 
 NORTH CAROLINIANA 
 
 C378 
 
 UK3 
 
 1833H.1 
 
UNIVERSITY OF N.C. AT CHAPEL HILL 
 
 00036720593 
 
 This book must not 
 be token from the 
 Library building. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
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 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 
 
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 mmm 
 
 DELIVHBED AT THE 
 
 Msm OF lOHTH Caroli, 
 
 ms^&SM ©a, assJSs 
 
 By rev. WILLIAM HOOPER 
 
 ) 1 
 
 Professor of Ancient Languages. 
 
 WILMINGTON, N. C: 
 
 Messenger Steam Job Presses. 
 
 1890. 
 
 %3f^^m 
 
A SERMON 
 
 , DELIVERED AT THE 
 
 ifniyet^^ity of ^ortl} Cki^oliiik, 
 
 MARCH 31, 1833. 
 
 BY REV. WILLIAM HOOPER, 
 
 Professor of Ancient Languages, 
 
 THE FORCE OF HABIT.* 
 
 Jehemiah XIII, 23 — Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spsts ? 
 Then may ye also do good that are accustomed to do evil. 
 
 I shall take occasion from these striking words of Scripture to address 
 you, my hearers, on The Force of Habit. Vou all know that a habit 
 is formed by the repetition of any act, until, by frequency and long 
 familiarity, it beconis easy and natural. Hence it has grown into a 
 proverb that "habit is a second nature." Uf how much moment then 
 must it be, to mark with especial vigilance, and to guard with especial 
 care, that season of life, when the habits begin to be formed, and the 
 character is beginning to assume the shape which it will carry through 
 the whole of our earthly sojourn, and which will affect our destiny for 
 eternity ! It is because that most of my audience are at this critical 
 
 *This discourse was delivered to the Students of the University of 
 North Carolina, March 31st, 1833, by William Hooper, then Professor of 
 Ancient Languages of the University, and by them solicited for publica- 
 tion. We have been requested to re-publish the discourse, as it is one 
 of great worth and as thete are t'ew copies of the former edition in exis- 
 tence. In complying with the request to allow its publication. Dr. H. 
 addressed to them the following note : 
 
 Votifig Centlemen of the University: — I dedic ate this Discourse to your 
 service. At your request I have submitted it to the press. As a literary 
 effort I am sensible it presents no claims to such partiality ; but as con- 
 taining important truths, worthy of being often held up before your 
 minds and reflected upon again and again, 1 have thought it might not 
 be entirely undeserving to pass into a form that should give it a chance 
 of more durable utility than mere evanescent utterance can ever effect, 
 
period of their lives, that I think no subject on which I could possibly 
 address them, is more appropriate to their condition ; no one, which 
 could more justly claim their deep and serious reflection. It is not 
 merely to fulfill a customary round of dut\ ; it is merely to occupy you 
 the usual time with the expected pulpit performance, and then let you 
 go away, our minds being well satisfied if the end be gained of having 
 kept up for another Sabbath the decent observance of our religion, and 
 of having thrown out some thoughts acceptable to your present hearing. 
 No, my friends, we aim at scnnething more than this barren discharge 
 of a periodical duty, or this half hour's occupation of your minds. It is 
 with the cherished hope and fervent prayer that something may be 
 dropped at this time, which may occur to your meditations at many a 
 future day, and have some operation in regulating those habits which 
 are now fixing themselves upon 30U, that I have chosen the words of 
 the text, as the subject of my present address. "Can the Ethiopian 
 change his skin, or the leopard his spots?" exclaims God by the mouth of 
 the prophet to his people, now become obstinate and inveterate in their 
 wickedness: "Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? 
 Then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil." Here the 
 doctrine is taught that when habits of evil are formed, they cleave to us 
 with as close and inseparable a tenacity as the complextion of our skin; 
 and that you might as well expect the African, by an act of his will, to 
 become white, or the leopard to change his spotty hide, as to expect 
 those addicted to sinful courses to renounce them, and to become good. 
 The comparison is certainly a most striking and forcible one, and con- 
 veys little less than the absolute impossibility and hopelessness of a 
 recovery from vicious habits. I will not go so far as to say, that by 
 likening moral reformation to two natural impossibilities, the divine 
 word means to pronounce moral reformation to be utterly imposible. 
 But this I may safely say, that by the comparison, God evidently intends 
 to teach us that a return from evil habits is extremely difficult and im- 
 probable, and would be almost as miraculous a de[)arture from the usual 
 laws of the moral world, as the voluntary assumption oi a new skin by 
 
 God grant that the considerations here urged upon you, may frequently 
 recur to you in the. hour of need. I have labored many years in endea- 
 voring to communicate classical learing to the youth of North Carolina; 
 but all that I have done in that way affords me less comfort in the retro- 
 spect, than the possibility that 1 may have said in the sacred desk, has 
 had a share in forming a youthful heart to virtue, and leading it to seek 
 acquaintance with God. If in the course oi' my connection with the 
 young men of this State, I have met with any success of this kind, I must 
 esteem it as my most precious earthly reward, and the most valuable 
 fame I could inherit. 
 
the Ethiopian or the leopard, would be from the laws of the physical 
 world. So our Saviour declared the salvation of a rich man to be more 
 difficult than the passaije of a camel through a needle's eye — a natural 
 imposibility; l)ut at tlie same time brought the case within the reach of 
 divine omnipott^nce and mercy, saying that "with men such a thing was 
 impossible, but not with God. Most certain is it, then, that the maker 
 of our frame here calls upon us to mark and take notice of an important 
 and most inflexible law of our moral constitution, to-wit: that what we 
 
 ARE MADF P.V LONG HABIT I'HAT WK SHALL CONTINTE TO BE THROUGH 
 
 LIFE. I say further that our observation of human nature abundantly 
 confirms the doctrine, and proves that men are carried onward by old 
 habits with a certainty and fatality almost as rigid as that which propels 
 the rivers onward to the ocean. Let none complain of this law of our 
 nature. Let none say, whv was man made so much the creature and 
 slave of habit, that when once entagled, he loses all power to extricate 
 himself. We might as well quarrel with the law of gravitation which 
 destroys the life of a man who flings himself from the top of a precipice- 
 The same law of physical nature which makes the fall from a precipice 
 fatal, and which brings down heavy bodies with destructive force upon 
 thousands of human beings, that same law holds the earth in its orbit, 
 binds all its millions of inhabitants to their homes upon its surface, makes 
 the showers descend to gladden the fields, and rolls the waters, that 
 would otherwise stagnate and poison us, with healthful currents to their 
 mighty reservoir. 
 
 Nor is this mora/ law, whose stubborn strength is so much complained 
 of, less a proof of the wisdom of the author of nature than the other, nor 
 is it less remarkable for its salutary than for its pernicious effects. It is 
 by habit that all the most necessary acts of life are rendered easy and 
 pleasant. By habit we learn to walk, to speak, to read and write, to per- 
 form all manual operations with facility and despatch. By the power of 
 habit are all those acts carried on which minister to the wants and con_ 
 venience of life. By the power of habit is the printer enabled to combine 
 his types into words with a rapidity astonishing to the eye and surpass- 
 ing all previous belief, and to prepare for us those thousands of volumes 
 which are continually fibing the world with intelligence and delight. 
 
 This same principle of our constitution is no less subservient to the 
 passive, than to the active powers of man. It enables us to endure with 
 ease, hardships that were at first intolerable. It enables man to breathe 
 with impunity the pestiferous atmosphere of crowded manufactories, to 
 reside in every climate, and after spending half his life among northern 
 snows to go and spend the remainder in the torrid zone. 
 
Now let us mark the inrtuence of this powerful law of nature upon our 
 moral conduct. We find from personal experience, and we know from 
 observations on our fellow-men, that our natural appetites acquire strength 
 from every indulgence; that at first it is comparatively easy to restrain 
 them within lawful barriers; but that habits of excess render them impe" 
 rious and uncontrollable, so that we are dragged on after them as by an 
 invisible chain whose strength bids defiance to all our resistance. This 
 is the case with respect to our natural appetites. And it holds equally 
 in relation to our artiricial appetites. A man may contract such an 
 appetite for tobacco, opium, or ardent spirits, as to crave these naturally 
 distasteful articles with a rage of desire equal to natural hunger and 
 thirst. It is mercifully provided, however, by the constitution of our 
 nature, that habit may be made as powerful an auxiliary to virtue as to 
 vice. By means of it not only sensual appetites and evil passions become 
 dominant and irre*stible, but the numerous train of virtues, to which our 
 nature is less inclined, and the incipient practice of which recjuires so 
 much heroic resolution and self-denial, all these feel the benign forge of 
 habit and become, in time, not only easier of performance but as fixed and 
 certain in their operation on our conduct* as are any of our natural 
 instincts. We are then creatures of habit. Whatever becomes habitual 
 
 *The reader will thank me for enriching my page with the following 
 profound observations: "F^xperience,"' says Mr. Stewart, "diminishes the 
 influence of passive impressions on the mind, but strengthens our acliv-e 
 principles. A course of debauchery deadens the sense of pleasure, but 
 increases the desirr of gratification. An in moderate use of strong 
 liquors destroys the sensibility of the palate, but strengthens the habit 
 of intemperance. The enjoyments we derive from any favorite pursuit 
 gradually decay as we advance iii years, and yet we continue to prosecute 
 our favorite pursuits with increasing steadiness and vigcr. On these 
 two laws of our nature is founded our capacity of moral improvement. In 
 proportion as we are accustomed to obey our sense of duty the infiuence 
 of the temptations to vice is diminished, while at the same time our habit 
 of virtuous conduct is confirmed. It is thus that the character of the 
 beneficent man is formed I he passive impressions which he felt orig- 
 inally, and which counteracted his sense of duty, have lost their influ- 
 ence, and a habit of beneficence is become a part of his nature.... We 
 might naturally be led to suspect that the young and unpractised would 
 be more disposed to perform beneficent actions than those who are 
 advanced in life, and who have been familiar with scenes of misery. 
 And, in truth, the fact would be so were it not that the effect of custom 
 on this passive impression is counteracted by its effects on others; and 
 above all by its influence in strengthening the active habits of benefi- 
 cence. An old and experienced physician is less affected by the sight of 
 bodily pain than a younger practitioner; but he has acquired a more con- 
 firmed habit of assisting the sick and helpless, and would offer greater 
 violence to his nature if he should withhold from them any relief that he 
 has in his power to bestow. In this case we see a beautiful provision 
 made for our moral improvement, as the effects of experierice on one 
 
becomes easy, whether it be virtue or vice. Whenever we have formed a 
 habit we seem to act almost mechanically in obedience to the habit with- 
 out an etiort of the will. Indeed, so prone are we to repeat habitual ac- 
 tions, and so little reflection and virtuous resolutions are we conscious of 
 in obeying good habits, that it seems as if tiiey were hardly entitled to a 
 moral character; so nearly do thev approach to being inxdiuntary, like the 
 play of our lungs and the beating of our heart. The time and sphere, then, 
 for virtuous choice and virtuous determination is in the outside of life It 
 consists in oft repeating those acts which lead to good and valuable habits, 
 and in denying, again and again, as often as they solicit us, those acts 
 which lead to \ icious hal.iits. Here, then, my young friends, take your 
 stand. Resist the beginnings of evil; yes, the beginnings; That is the 
 important juncture. Yield to the beginnings of evil and you are un- 
 done.* Your ruin can be predicted with almost as much certainty as 
 that of the bark which is floating towards the cataract of Niagara. Are 
 you now free, unfettered by the toils of vice ? Give not up, I beseech 
 you, that glorious, that blessed freedom. Let not the persuasion of the 
 miserable victims of vice involve you in their degradation. What ! 
 Would you let a slave persuade you for the sake of companionship, to 
 share his chains and his stripes .'' Would you let a man, who was fool 
 
 part of our nature are made to counteract its effects on another." — Phi- 
 losophy of the Mind, vol. /, p. jg6. 
 
 These remarks of Stewart were suggested by the following passage in 
 Butler's Analogy: "Fcom these two observations together, that practi- 
 cal habits are formed and strengthened by repeated acts; and that pas- 
 sive impressions grou weaker by being repeated upon us, it must follow 
 that active habits mav be gradually forming and strengthening by a 
 course of acting upon such and such motives and excitements, whilst 
 these motives and e.xcitements themselves are, by propurtionable 
 degrees, growing less sensible, i.e., are continually Jess and less sensibly 
 felt, even as the active habits strengthen. And experience confirms 
 this; for active principles at the very time they are less lively in percep- 
 tion than the\- were are found to be, somehow, wrought more thoroughly 
 into the temper and character, and become more efi'ectual in influencing 
 our practice. Let a man set himself to attend to, inquire out and relieve 
 distressed persons, and he can not but grow less and less sensibly 
 affected with the variouo> miseries of life with which he must become 
 acquainted; when yet, at the same time, benevolence, considered not as 
 a passion but as a practical principal of action, will strengthen, ^nd 
 whilst he passively compassionates the distressed less he will acquire a 
 greater aptitude actively to assist and befriend them," etc. 
 
 These remarks of both these profound and sagacious writers I have 
 been very willing to transfer to this place, at once to give a more dura- 
 ble value to this pamphlet than it would otherwise possess, and to tempt 
 my young friends to dive for other pearls in the same deeps. 
 fPrincipiis obsta; sero medicina paratur, 
 > Cum mala per longas invaluere moras. — Ovid. ■ 
 
and madman enough to set fire to his own house, persuade you to set 
 fire to yours also, that you might both be in the same condition ? How 
 would you feel towards the man, who should seize your hand, run with 
 you to the veri;e ot a precipice, and then throwing himself over endeavor 
 to pull you along with him ? Would you not wrench your hand from 
 his detested grasp and recoil from him with horor and indignation ? 
 Yet you can smile with complacency upon the companion, who, himself 
 the slave of vice, would have you to forsake the paths of innocence, and 
 join him in his wicked courses, merely that he may have countenance 
 and society in vice ! ^'ou can put yourself under the guidance and 
 conduct of such a veteran in proHij/acy. if he will but take hold of your 
 arm, say "come along," and laugh at vour timorous scruples ! Oh there 
 are no words adequate to express the abhorence due to those, who, not 
 satisfied with being ruined themselves, practice their accursed arts in 
 seducing young and thoughtless minds from the paths of rectitude, and 
 glory in the propagation of vice. If those who turn many to righteous- 
 ness shall receive an extraordinary reward, surely 
 
 There is some chosen curse 
 
 Some hidden thunder in the stores of heav'n. 
 Red with uncommon wrath, to blast the man — 
 
 that finds an alleviation to his own misery in undoing others, or can look 
 around with a devi'ish joy at the desolation he has spared. Yet it is to 
 be feared that this enormity is often committed within Collegiate walls, 
 erected for the nursery and culture of all noble and generous sentiments. 
 Yes; we are obliged to believe that here, even in this very place, are 
 simplehearted. unsuspecting, moral yoimg men, year after year, grad- 
 ually contaminated by those who are older than themselves, and who 
 instead of being their guides to virtue, use the influence of superior age 
 to decoy them into sin. Ye unfeeling seducers of youthful innocence! 
 Is It not enough that you feel yourselves the miseries of remorse? Have 
 you so much malignity within you. as to find a solace to your pains in 
 making others as wretched as yourselves? Is it not sufficient to stab the 
 peace and wreck the hopes of your own parents, must yon also stab the 
 peace and wreck the hopes of othe:r parents? Ah, if you have any pity 
 or generosity left in your souls, if you would not, like satan, enter para- 
 dise, and blast out of sheer envy, the purity and hapiness you cannot 
 partake, leave uncorrupted those who yet walk in their uprightness; who 
 promise to be the joy of their friends, and the hope of their country. If 
 you must have companions of your guilty pleasures, take those who are 
 already corrupted. Let those who take hands, and rush together into 
 
 the vortex, and find a mad delight in riding round aind round in the ine- 
 
briate whirl of waters, which are just yawning to engulf them, let these, 
 I say, be ail equally ruined, equally bereft of conscience, equally lost 
 to hope, with scowling despair written on their foreheads. Methinks it 
 ought to melt with sorrrow the heart of a young man, not lost to all sen- 
 sations of humanity, to lead astray another younger than himself. 
 Should we not suppose that honor and every kindly feeling of the soul 
 would rise up in his bosom in behalf of yet untarnished virtue, and in- 
 duce him to thrust back from his company, the young proselyte who 
 was ready to yield himself up to his ruinous example? How much more 
 worthy would it be of every generous enuotion, for those who have con- 
 tracted any unhappy propensity, when they see others beginning to go 
 the same way, rather to put them back, and say: "as for ourselves we 
 cannot help indulgmg in these things, but you who are yet safe, and not 
 fatally bent towards these destructive courses, you we advise to keep 
 yourselves far from them." This is no more than that common charity 
 which we all show to each other, when we have unfortunately taken a 
 disease. We tell how we contrated it, and caution others against the 
 same impudence. 
 
 There are various evil habits to which your circumstances expose you, 
 some of which I will mention, and leave it to your good sense and to 
 your consciences to apply the same reasoning and expostulations against 
 those w hich 1 may not mention, but which you know threaten to ensare 
 you. With respect to them all I beg you to carry along with you, ever 
 fresh in your memory this admonition, that "habit is a second nature," 
 and that you may as soon expect any animal to act in a manner contrary 
 to its nature, the lion to eat straw like the ox, and the wolf and the lamb 
 to lie down in amity together, as for those to learn to do good who have 
 been long accustomed to do evil. Beware, then, how you fall into the 
 habit of what is wrong, and beware of the rtrst act, lest that be the 
 foundation of a habit — lest that give the soid an impulse from u hich it 
 never, never shall recover. If you are enticed by your own desires or 
 by the arts of others, resist, as you would resist an attack upon your 
 life', fly from the temptation — fight against this insidious passion, tram- 
 ple it under ybur feet and grind it to powder. When you are sailing by 
 the the rocks of the Sirens, trust not your ears to the soul-subduing 
 song ; but like t^^lysses and his crew, stop fast your ears and let yourself 
 be bound to the mast until you have past the danger. Or to quote you 
 a better example, like the young and virtuous Joseph, snatch yourself 
 forcibly away and flee far from the tempter and the temptation. Listen 
 to the affectionate counsel of Solomon, the wisest of men: "My son 
 attend to my words: Inclme thine ear unto my sayings: Enter not 
 
into the path of the wicked and go not in the way of evil men. Avoid 
 it, pass not V>y it, turn Irom it and pass away. Hear, then, my son, and 
 be wise. He not among wine bibbers, among riotous eaters of flesh ; 
 for tlie drunkard and glutton shall come to poverty. Look not then 
 upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth its color in the cup, at the 
 last it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder." Oh, how 
 exactly true have miserable thousands found this to be to their eternal 
 cost. 
 
 I mentioned that there were some habits to which your circumstances 
 render you peculiarly obnoxious, and aijainst which, therefore, every one 
 among you ought to case himself in triple armor. Here 1 cannot do bet- 
 ter than copy a passage from Dr. Haley's Moral Philosophy, a book which 
 along with some doctrines of dangerous tendency, contains many valu- 
 able rules for the conduct of life. 'Man," says this celebrated author, 
 "is a bundle of habits. There are habits not only of drinking; swear- 
 ing and lying, and of some other things which are commonly acknowl- 
 edged to be habits, but of every modification of action, speech and 
 thought. There are habits of attention; vigilance, advertency, of a 
 prompt obedience to the judgment occurring, or of yielding to the first 
 impulse of the passion, of extending our views to the future, or of rest- 
 ing upon the present, of indolence and dilatoriness, of vanity, of fretful- 
 
 ness, suspicion, captionsness, of covetousness, of overreaching 
 
 intriguing projecting. In a word, there is not a quantity or function either 
 of body or mind, which does not feel the influence of this great law of ani- 
 mated nature. .... A rule of life of considerable importance is, that many 
 things ought to be done and abstained from solely for the sake of habit- 
 We will explain ourselves by an example: A man has been brought up 
 from infancy with a dread of lying. An occasion presents itself, where 
 at the expense of a little veracity, he may divert his company, set off his 
 own wit with advantage, attract the notice and engage the partiality of 
 all around him. This is not a small temptation. And when he looks a^ 
 the other side of the question he sees no mischief that can ensue from 
 this liberty, no slander of any man's reputation, no prejudice likely to 
 arise to any man's interest. Were there nothing further to be consid- 
 ered, it would be dificult to show why a man under such circumstances 
 might not indulge his humor. But when he reflects that his scruples 
 about lying have hitherto preserved him free from this vice; that occa- 
 sions like the present will return, where the inducement will be equally 
 strong but the indulgence much less innocent, that his scuples will wear 
 away by a few transgressions and leave him subject to one of the mean- 
 est and most pernicious of all bad habits — a habit of lying whenever i^ 
 
9 
 
 will serve his turn; when all this. I sny, is considered, a wise man will 
 forego the present, or a much greater pleasure, rather tiian lay the foun- 
 dation of a character so vicious and contemptible." 
 
 I quote this passage, not with entire approbation, because I think 
 whenever we are tempted to a deviation from truth, even in trities, that 
 a regard for the sacredness of truth, an abhorrence for falsehood, a rev- 
 erence for conscience and a fear of God, ought at unce to rebuke away 
 the plausible deceit, independently of the consideration that it will lay 
 the foundation for a bad habit. But the reflections suggested by Dr* 
 Paley, may well come in as powerful auxiliaries, to back the instant and 
 spontaneous refusal of an honest mind. They are reflections too, which 
 might probably operate with considerable force on many who think 
 very lightly of occasional falsehood in triHes. Such persons .should 
 weigh well the danger of tritiing with a tender conscience — diminishing 
 that awful veneration for truth which we ought to cultivate — of gradually 
 breaking down the barrier in our moral feelings between right and 
 wrong, and at length of violating truth with as little scruple in the most 
 important matters as at tirst we did in the smallest. Let these reflections 
 1 beseech you, have the weight they ought to have in checking that 
 levity with which an excuse is fabricated for neglect of ciuty. It is fash- 
 ionable to think and speak of such fabrications as not at all criminal or 
 dishonorable — as quite pardonable. "It is only baffling the faculty by 
 presenting an excuse which cannot refuse — they cannot have the face to 
 dispute our word, though we can have the face to make our word unwor- 
 thy of their confiilence — we are not bound to observe faith with the fac- 
 ulty." What a shocking doctrine is this, that you should not be obliged 
 to observe faith with any and with every one! Is this the casuistry of 
 Colleges? I hope not. I hope that not many among us have adopted 
 principles so loose. For, depend upon it, my young friends, that the 
 person who can consent to violate truth whenever it suits his conve- 
 nience to make up an excuse from collegiate duty, cannot have a very 
 delicate sense of moral obligation on the score of truth, and it will not 
 be surprising if he soon lose credit ftir verac:ity with his companions. In 
 all communities there will be some who will fall in with every vicious 
 habit that happens to be fashionable, and will carry it Just as far as they 
 dare carry it without forfeiting their character. They have no fixed 
 principles, no firm integrity of purpose, no independent rule of action, 
 no settled habit of doing what is right at once without waiting to see if 
 public opinion will uot countenance an aberration. Such persons are 
 
10 
 
 mere moral chameleons;* they take their complexions from surrounding 
 objects. Let them be at Rome, they will be like those at Rome; or if at 
 Botany Bay, their plastic character can easily be moulded into an assim- 
 ilation with the manners and morals of that famed colony of convicts. 
 Let it be the fashion to swear, to drink, to seduce, to tight duels, to spend 
 their money in gaming and have none to pay honest debts with, to break, 
 and live in the same stylt after their bankruptcy as before, thtse obse- 
 quious apes o{ the modt\ without a moment's hesitation, give in to follies 
 and vices that chance to jirex ail and arc glad when the laxity (.li public 
 morals will prevent such practices from rendering' them infamous. Now 
 these persons are withheld from the worst actions only by the fear of 
 disgrace. They are not ashameil to commit the acts themselves, but 
 only ashamed of the detection of them. If a person has contracted such 
 principles in a college, wonder nt)t if in subsequent life you find him 
 careless of veracity. f 
 
 1 might enter upon the same course of reasoning with regard to many 
 other bad habits, such as swearing, idleness, encroachment upon your 
 neighbor's time, making a joke of taking an article of a fellow-student's 
 property, (Sec. These things are done thoughtlessly, but must injure 
 the delicacy of moral principle; they must gradually impair virtuous sen- 
 sibility; or, as Mr. Burke beautifully expresses it, "that chastity of honor 
 which dreads a stain like a wound." Let me advise you, whenever 
 wrong practices prevail in college, not slavishly to fall in with them, and 
 say: "Why nothing is more common among us; nothing is thought of 
 such things.'' Rather oppose the weight of your influence and example 
 against such practices, and if you should be singular, dare to be singular 
 in a good cause; 
 
 Rather stand up assured, with conscious pride 
 Alone, than err with millions on your side. 
 
 But I pass over all other habits as of minor importance, that I may 
 occupy the remainder of my time in speaking of one more dangerous and 
 fatal than all the rest. You can not be ignorant that 1 allude to the appe- 
 tite for spirituous liquors. That the most powerful arguments and 
 expostulations againstthis propensity are much needed in every college 
 
 *As the chameleon which is known 
 To have no colors ©f his own; 
 But borrows from his neighbor's hue. 
 His white or black, his green or blue — Prior. 
 
 fDuring the last war, I happened to travel, in one of our public con- 
 veyances with a young officer of the army. Having occasion to stop in 
 one of the cities, I accompanied him into a shop where he inquired the 
 price Qf 8 sword. He declined purchasing them, but told the shop- 
 
11 
 
 is, unhappily, too well known. It is wonderful that, when the whole 
 country is covered with monuments of ruin produced by intemperance — 
 of intellectual and moral worth, once high in dignity, now abject and 
 prostrate — of families once happy and prosperous, now helpless, broken- 
 hearted and struggling for subsistence — it is wonderful that young men, 
 seeing so many of these monitory spectacles before them, will venture to 
 taste the liquid poison which has spread around them this desolation. 
 Yet, strange to tell, they will rush upon the peril without even the temp- 
 tation of appetite. Yes, many a youth, it is to be feared, has here* begun 
 to drink when he had a positive dislike to the taste of spirits, merely for 
 the sake of appearing sociable and manly. But soon he pays dearly for 
 his temerity and vain-glory. Soon the insidious passion fastens itself upon 
 he contracts a liking for stimulating drink, which perhaps shows its 
 immediate effects in slackening his exertions in his class, creating an 
 aversion to labor, a distaste for his studies, and a i^ondness for idle com- 
 pany. No wonder now at the oft-alleged excuse of sickness for absence 
 from duty. For what else can be expected after such indulgences but 
 lassitude and drowsiness and nausea? No wonder if, presently, college 
 restraints and recpiisitions become intolerable, and an application is 
 made to the parent, requesting that he may be permitted to return home 
 in the midst of his collegiate course. Then may we predict his impend- 
 ing ruin with mournful certainty, and resign him up with despair to the 
 despotism of a habit which overleaps all the barriers that parents and 
 trustees and preceptors could throw in its way! May I not be speaking 
 to some now who are conscious that this habit has obtained an almost 
 complete ascendancy over them? Do they not feel its despotism over 
 the will? Do they not find themselves totally unable to resist the crav- 
 
 keeper he would "step in to-morrow and look at them again," when he 
 knew that we were to depart in a few hours! I blushed for him, that a 
 soldier, whose glory it is to scorn whatever is false and disingenuous, 
 should value truth so little. Will you say this was a trifle? Well, so was 
 the temptation a trifle, and 1 am not sure that the same man, upon the 
 occurrence of a great temptation with the hope of concealment, would 
 not have lied in the most important matter. Yet if a person had offered 
 to doubt this man's word on any occasioii he would have been ready to 
 run him through the body. 
 
 *The writer would not be understood to intimate that the habits of the 
 students whom he addressed were worse, or their temptations greater 
 than those of members of colleges generally. He feels it as due to them 
 to say on the contrary, that a Temperance Society embracing a consid- 
 erable number of the students belongs to the college, and that he 
 believes parents encounter no greater risk in venturing their sons at this 
 than at any otiier similar institution. So far as he has had an opportu- 
 nity of discovering, an appetite for drink is as little indulged in this col- 
 lege as in any other. 
 
12 
 
 ings of appetite, although they know the danger of the habit which is 
 growing upon them? They know it, but alas! it is too late — the pleasure 
 of present gratification is all they care for, and they purposely shut their 
 eyes to the probable issue of these things. Hut otiiers can see it if they 
 will not. Yes; we can calculate upon the premature ruin and early death 
 of such a young man with almost as much confidence as if the deep, hol- 
 low cough, the hectic Hush and the w asted form marked him out for the 
 victim of consumption; I say with almost as much certainty, because the 
 very same experience that teaches us the laws of the natural world 
 teaches us the laws of the moral world. The very same observation 
 that makes us know the cough, the hectic flush, the wasted form, the 
 hemorrhage from the lungs, to be alarming prognostics of dissolution, 
 enables us also to know that the morning dram, the evening carousal, 
 the secreted bottle, the tainted breath, the flushed or the pale face, the 
 ill-gotten lesson, are alarming presages of a habit of incurable mtem- 
 perance. And we anticipate the speedy and mournful issue of the one 
 with as little danger of mistake as the issue of the other. 
 
 Will, then, any one who is sensible of being in the very jeopardy I 
 describe say, "What must I do to be saved?" 1 reply, even symptoms of 
 consumption have been removed by an early resort to the proper means. 
 And it is with this very hope of your taking a timely alarm, and adopt- 
 ing the proper means of recovery, that 1 ring these admonitions in your 
 ears. (1 would depict with all my jiowers the terrible danger of an itnip- 
 zV«/ //rt(6iV,- that those yet free may keep free; may come not nigh the 
 slippery verge; and I would sound a still louder alarm of the awful issue 
 of ro«_A'''«''<^ habit, to those who are just beginning to feel its force. I 
 would say to them: feel and act as if you were sliding with smooth and 
 pleasant motion down a mountain's icy breast, that overhung a yawning 
 abyss. You are beginning to decend, but the declivity is yet gradual, 
 k the way is smooth, and your motion is not rapid enough to alarm you, 
 but only sufficiently so to animate your spirits, and to excite a glorying 
 of mind at tlte bravery of your enterprise. Your older and more experi- 
 enced friends stand on the neighboring heights, and watch with consid- 
 erable anxiety your thoughtless career. They cry out to you, and tell 
 you of the precipice ahead. Be advised— let not their warning voice be 
 neglected— throw yourself from the flying vehicle that is hurrying you 
 to destruction; grasp at every twig that will arrest your progress, and 
 strain every muscle and sinew to regain the summit from which you so 
 heedlessly set out. But if you refuse; if you laugh at the idle fear of 
 your friends; if you flatter yourself that you can stop long before you 
 reach the precipice, all they can do is to look on with silent agony at the 
 
13 
 
 a pproarhitjg catastrophe. They fduld tell you if you would hear them, 
 that the derlivitv is every motiient becoming steeper — that the velocity 
 ot" a tailing hodv is every moment accelerated — that the twigs along your 
 path which once miglit have arrestrd you, will now sn;ip in an instant 
 before the violence of your motion, and onward, and onw ard, onward 
 yo\i must go until vou reach the verge, then take the aw ful leap and dis- 
 appear forever!) And if such a fat<; as I have described were to befall 
 vou, in the literal sense of the description, it would be less mournful than 
 that it should befall you in the allegorical sense intended. For then you 
 might die comparatively innocent and respectable. Your friends might 
 not see vour mangled corpse, nor feel disgraced by your tieath. But 
 who can do justice to the feelings of those parents whose son, just ripen' 
 ing into manhood, is dying before their eyes, the loaths'>me victim of his 
 guilty excesses'. How shall thev escape from the hideous spectacle? 
 Their own house, the only place they have to lay. their iiead, the birth 
 place of their children, the spot where are clustered all their comforts, 
 the peaceful sanctuary of their old age, becomes the hospital of their 
 reprobate son. worn out with intemtierance. He occupies one of the 
 chambers. There, while they lie on their sleepless beds in a neighbor- 
 ing room, (I have witnessed something of what 1 describe,) they hear 
 his calls for drink, his disgusting belches, his horrid execrations against 
 himself, and ever and anon a groan, bespeaking misery too big for words 
 to tell! And is this the return you make, degraded young men, for all 
 the loving l^indness of your parents? Is this the way you requite the 
 father that dandled your infancy on his knee, and from that time til! the 
 present, has been toiling to provide tor your happiness? Is this your 
 gratitude to the mother that brought you into the world, that cherished 
 you at her breast, that tended your cradle with throbbing temples and an 
 aching heart, that watched you all along your playful boyhood with 
 ceaseless tenderness, and that at length let you go from under her eye to 
 a place of education, only from the confidence i a confidence, alas! too 
 much misplaced) that the prijiciples and the gratitude with which she 
 had imbued you would forever forbid you to distress her by a vicions life? 
 Surely this, if anything in the world, realizes the fable of the frozen vipe; 
 that as soon as it was thawed into life struck its envenomed tangs into 
 the bosom that warmed it. 
 
 But I would not stop at the e.Khibition of the temporal, the earthly con- 
 sequences of tbip worst of habits. Could I do it, I would disturb the 
 slumbers of the dead— I would evoke from their tombs the myriads that 
 have gone down thither before their time, the victims of drunkenness. I 
 would array their ghastly spectres in a long line before you, sire by the 
 
14 
 
 side of son, and brother at the right hand of brbther. I could call upon 
 them to tell 3'ou of the fir-t steps that led to their unclointr; how thev firs^ 
 trifled with their enemy— how they, in thoughtless boyhood, mixed with 
 idle company; made dnmkenness a subject for jestinj^; took a glass 
 among their jovial friends, merely to appear social and manly when the 
 liquor was not pleasant to their taste — how the appetite grew with every 
 indulgence until It was impossible to deny it — until they themselves 
 became the very beastly spectacles of intemperance they had been accus- 
 tomed to look upon with loathing and contempt", how they lingered upon 
 earth, becoming more and more the sorrow and shame of their friends, 
 and at last sunk unregretted to the grave. I Avould extort from them 
 "the secrets of their prison house." I would make them appear before 
 you surroundeil v ith their atmosphere of tempestuous fire— open before 
 you their tortured breasts and disclose within the never-dying worm 
 gnawing on their hearts -tell you with tlieir burning tongues the horrors 
 of their doom, and peal in vour trembling ears the declaration of the 
 Almighty, that drunlvards shall lie down in "the lake that^jurneth with 
 fire and brimstone for ever and ever." I should hope that such a vision 
 would make you shun for life the sight, smell and taste of inebriating 
 liquors. Oh! in the contemplation of the manifold and direful miseries 
 that flow from this bane of the human race, one might be tempted to 
 curse the memory of tlie man who first invented the art of distillation; 
 of extracting death from (rod's good creatures intended to be the nourish- 
 ers of Hfe. One might be tempted to wish that every distiller of spirits, 
 and every vender ©f spirits, and every diinker of spirits, could have their 
 nudnight slumbers haunted by the apparitions of pale widows and or- 
 phans in their robes of mourning, and by the horrible skeletons of their 
 poisoned husbands, sons and brothers, until their goaded consciences 
 should drive them, with unanimous movement, to seize every vessel con- 
 taining the liquid poison and throw it into a funeral pile, to make one 
 general pious.burnt-off'ering to heaven, while. the art of manufacturing the 
 accursed pest should forever be blotted from the memory of man. But 
 why wish for terrifying visions of the dead to benefit the living? They 
 will never be granted. Nor are we sure that they would prove the means 
 of reformation. For what says Christ, that divine anatomist of the human 
 heart ? "If they believe not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be 
 persuaded if one rose from the dead. ' Bowing with unquestioning cre- 
 dence to the divine decision, and feeling deeply the utter impotency of 
 man to help himself when sunk in evil habits, let us rather urge the 
 poor slave of sin to look with imploring eye to the Heavens, and let us 
 join our supplications to his that the Almighty's arm may be stretched 
 
15 
 
 down to "lift liini out of the horrible pit ami mit of the miry clay," and to 
 put into his niouth the song of deliverance. 
 
 Before I conclude 1 must take notice of a doctrine held by many, some- 
 times L-ven urged from the pulpit, which seems to lie as an objection to 
 the argument we have been endeavoring to enforce. It is said that G»d 
 can as easilv convert a hardened profligate as the most correct moralist; 
 nay, that the former will much more [)robably be awakened from his 
 security than the latter, because the very enormity of his sins serves as 
 an alarm-bell to shake his sleepy conscience, or as the sting of scorpions 
 rack him with tierce pains of intoIera!)le reniurse; and hence we iiear it 
 sometimes incautiously asserted that the man of sober, resjjectable char- 
 acter is in more danger of final perdition than the abandoned, ct,>nlirmed 
 libertine. What is the direct tendency of such a belief? Why, to estab- 
 lish the dangerous paradox that the more a man sins the bt-iter for him- 
 self—it will quicken his conscience and arm it with mighty energy to 
 drive him from his evil courses; and thus his chance of salvation will be 
 increased the deeper and deeper he plunges into iniquity. What an awful 
 license such a belief must give to vicious propensities; what an additional 
 impulse it must lend to the already imperious rage of appetite niay 
 easily be conceived. And yet nothing is more certain, if we are to believe 
 our te.xt and the facts «ccurring to our daily obser\ ation, that the more 
 a man sins the harder he grows, thai every new sin stupefies and indur- 
 ates the conscience, renders a man's retreat more difficult and improba- 
 ble, and his final ruin more fatally certain. We may illustrate the two 
 cases thus: — heaping sin after sin upon the conscience may be compared 
 to heaping green wood upon a few coals. The more you throw on, the 
 more you crush the coals, and the greater danger of putting out the tire 
 altogether. If, however,- the feeble heat should not e.xpire under this 
 incumbent weight, but should, by great good fortune, once ignite the 
 wood contiguous to it. then all the oppressive heap serves as so much ali- 
 ment to feed the flame and to increase the greatness and heat of the fire. 
 So a proHgate's conscience has the almost certain prospect of being 
 seared in final obduracy. But if bv one of those astonishing acts of God's 
 special mercy, which it pleases Him sometimes to work for the display 
 of His power and goodness, that proHigate's conscience is awakened, it 
 will be apt to operate more powerfully upon him — apt to produce more 
 awful agonies of fear, more convulsive struggles to effect an escape, 
 deeper humiliation and, if he obtains pardon, more ecstatic gratiude that 
 such an enormous transgressor has been spared and purified and blessed. 
 He has had much forgiven, he will therefore love much. But let every 
 man beware how he tries the dreadful experiment of sinning in order to 
 furnish himself with materials for repentance. Enough of these, the most 
 blameless will find, who study the holy law of God and compare it with 
 the evil that is in their hearts. That delicacy of conscience which is the 
 fruit and the reward of a moral life will, by the aid of God's spirit, ena- 
 ble you to have a quicker and livelier feeling of what is evil, and to find 
 as copious a source of godly sorrow and humiliation in the secret sins of 
 your heart as the gross transgressor finds in the recollection of his scar- 
 let and crimson sins. Never have I heard from the lips, never have I 
 read in the secret diary of any penitent prodigal, such deep, heart-touch- 
 ing confessions of inward depravity and self-loathing as appears in the 
 
16 
 
 journal of Edwards, and Brainerd, and Martyn, and Payson, men who 
 were preserved comparatively pure and free of vicious habits from their 
 tender years, 'f lie prorligate ffiav escape, but he will have reason to 
 remember all his lifetime that he has escaped as by hre. Like one of 
 Milton's infernal potentates, he bears on his marred visage the signals 
 of his unrighteous battle with Heaven. 
 
 His face 
 
 Deep scars of thunder ha\e intrenced. 
 
 He will have cause to bemoan, while he lives, his career of proHigacy. 
 He will be "made to possess the iniquities of his youth"* in bodily dis- 
 eases, a shattered c()nstitution, shame for past dishonor, past injuries to 
 others — injuries alas! irreparal)lc; injuries to those wiio are dead, and 
 therefore out of the reach uf his tardy retribution — injuries to those who 
 are li\ ing, but irremediably blasted in fortune and reputation, or uncon- 
 querably fortified in vice and inhdelity. He will find himself reaping the 
 bitter fruiis of <-arly crimes, perhaps in the rebellion or lewd lives of his 
 children, vitiated tiy his bad e.xample and his cruel neglect — in a solid 
 and polluted imagination, and the jiestilent and contaminating recollec- 
 tion of past alH>minations. These may make him go mourning all his days. 
 To cleanse this heart, this Augean stable where foul lusts ha\ e held their 
 abode for manv years, will furnish him with Herculean labor to the end 
 of his life. Oh, what untimely, unwelcome intrusions will the visions 
 of tornier riot make upuu his soul, perhaps in his most hallowed mo- 
 ments, perhaps in the very attitude of devotion! How much work will 
 he have to do in keejMng out the vile thoughts? How will they, with im- 
 pudent freedom, rush unl)ulden into the breast that once harbored, but 
 would now tain exclude them, and with their liar|)y touch detile the 
 sanctuary of the soul, and the very oftering that is there burning on the 
 altar of tiod! 
 
 Diripiuntque dapes, contactuque omnia fa'dant 
 Tin m undo. 
 
 Oh, then will the reclaimed profligate bemoan himself that he ever laid 
 up within him such materials for shame and sorrow, and will en\y those 
 whose youth, unstained by vice, have never entailed upon themselves 
 such an inheritance of guilty recollections, ^'ou may say that these 
 things serve to humble him. Yes they do, but they often keep him 
 mourning and prostrate, ashamed to lift up his head or exert his hasds 
 when he ought to be up and doing, rejoicing and praising, and acting for 
 his God. 
 
 Kut supposing the hardened sinners's conscience to awake, is he sure 
 that it will awake to repentance? Is he sure that it will not awake to 
 horror and desperation? Is he sure that it will not, like Cain's, drive him 
 out from the presence of (jod? That he will not quickly draw down 
 again over his eyes, the veil which had been fur a moment drawn up, but 
 disclosed. prospects too horrible for contemplatu)u? Is he sure that an 
 insulted, aggrieved and outraged conscience, will not, like the ill-boding 
 owl, scream in his ears the slirill note of despair, of sin beyond the reach 
 of God's mercy, sin inexpiable even by the blood of Christ, until it urges 
 him, like''Judas, over the precipice of self-murder. 
 
 *Job xiii 26.