What I am here describing, has been the miserable experience of thousands of unwatchful and irresolute Christians; who have fallen into the snare, yea at last into the ruinous abyss of evil, from which they have never afterwards escaped, because they were too “wise in their own conceits” and too confident in their own strength, to take a warning against the peril of yielding to the first temptation; because they ventured into the borders of forbidden ground, and were insensibly led on to the fatal lengths, which they once held in abomination.
How many a youth have we known, trained from his earliest infancy in the holy principles of the gospel, the hope and the promise of his anxious parents, the joy of his family and friends, yet, from incautiously listening, on some unsuspected occasion, to the advice of an evil counsellor, and induced to make experiment of some unhallowed pleasure, thereby shaken in his integrity and thrown off his bias; prevailed upon to repeat the pressing indulgence; thence to proceed to others; till, in the end, the character has been totally changed,—marred, corrupted, ruined. It seemed but a little matter that first courted his consent; what, though sinful pleasures did surround him in his new scene and his new company, he, poor innocent youth, had no intention of joining in them; was determined to stand aloof. For a while he did so; and maintained the pious and virtuous and christian habits, in which he had been trained; the habits of prayer, and holy reading, and holy meditation, and uprightness of conduct: but he began to give way, to “fall from the stedfastness of his faith in Christ;” { 358} one religious observance after another was broken in upon; one scruple after another overcome; till at last he was stripped of every portion of the garment of righteousness, and left “miserable and poor and naked,” with nothing to hide his wretchedness and shame; the dishonour of his father, the grief of his mother’s heart; disowned by his family, disowned by his God: a misery to himself; dying the death of a sinner. And whence came all this load of misery upon him?—on account of his first unguarded yielding.
This representation has been but too frequently verified: yet not to the young only has such heedlessness proved a snare and destruction. We may see its consequences ravaging around us almost every day; in persons of every age and condition. How many a sabbath-breaker has contracted his dreadful habit from a very small beginning of neglect? At the first he was tempted very occasionally to absent himself from the House of his God; to indulge now and then, extremely seldom, in worldly pleasure; or to engage, in a thoughtless hour, in the dispatch of worldly business; but his affection and reverence for the holy day by degrees grow colder, and the temptations became stronger: the Lord’s House was, in a great measure, forsaken; the Lord’s day became his day of dissolute pleasure; or his day of business and accounts, as best suited his condition; and hence followed, as it must of necessity, the total decay of religious principle and religious character.