The Sources of Danger to Young Men Away from Home

It is well to know what these are, and where they lie, that you may know how to avoid them. Ignorance on such a subject, would be itself one of the chief dangers. In many cases, to know our perils is itself one way of avoiding them. Steadily, then, contemplate the following: —

1. You are in danger of falling into evil, from the removal of parental inspection, admonition, and restraint.

It must be admitted, that home itself is some times a scene of peril to morals and religion. In some homes, young people see and hear very little but what is calculated to do them harm. Parental example is on the side of sin, and almost every thing that is said or done is of a nature likely to produce impressions unfavourable to piety, and perhaps even to morality. AVhere this is the state of things, removal is a benefit, and not a few have reason to be thankful for having been transplanted from such irreligious houses, into families where God is feared and religion is exemplified. If this be your case, rejoice in the dispensation of Providence, which has rescued you from such imminent danger, and planted you in a soil more congenial for the cultivation of true piety. Happy youth! to be thus snatched from the vortex of perdition at home, and brought into the way of salvation abroad. Oh prize your privileges, and improve your opportunities. Many a young man, who, at the time of leaving home, wept over the necessity which caused him to quit the scenes of his childhood, and go from beneath the wing of his parents, has lived to consider it the brightest era of his life, inasmuch as it took him away from scenes of moral danger, and led him to the means of grace and the path of eternal life: and in looking back upon the way of Providence, and upon his own feelings and ignorance of what awaited him, has exclaimed, “Thou bringest the blind in a way that they knew not, and leadest them in paths that they have not known; thou makest darkness light before them, and crooked things straight.”

This, however, is not applicable to all families: if there are some parents who take no care about the religious or even moral character of their children, who neither set them good examples, nor deliver to them any instruction, nor impose upon them any restraint, but who allow them the unchecked gratification of their passions and the unreproved commission of sin, there are many others who act a wiser and a better part. In most instances, parents are moral; in many, they are pious: and while the former are anxious to keep their sons from vice, and train them to virtue, the latter go farther, and endeavour to bring them up in the fear of the Lord. Many who will read these pages know this by experience. You have been brought up in habits of rigid morality. Your parents have been solicitous to form your character on a right basis. You have been long familiar with the voice of instruction, admonition, and warning. You have been the constant subject of an anxiety which you could neither be ignorant of, nor mistake. If you were seen in company with a stranger, or with a youth of doubtful character, you were questioned and warned. If you brought home a book, it was examined. If you stayed out at night later than usual, you saw a mother’s anxious eye turned upon you, and heard a father’s voice, saying, “My son, why so late, where have you been?” In short, you felt yourself within the range of an ever present inspection, and under the pressure of a never relaxing restraint. The theatre and other places of pollution were strictly forbidden, and indeed you felt little inclination to visit even the purlieus of those haunts of vice. Morning and evening you heard’. the Scriptures read, and the voice of prayer ascend to God, and ascend for you. With such examples, under such instruction, and amidst such scenes, you had no opportunity, and felt no disposition, to be vicious. Sometimes you thought, perhaps, that the restraint was too severe and the care too fastidious; but then you said, “It is all for my good,” and you submitted to it. All this is now over: you have left, or are leaving home. The moment has arrived, or is past, and will, never be forgotten, when those arms which sustained your infant frame were thrown around your neck and pressed you to the bosom that nourished you, while a mother’s faltering voice exclaimed, “Farewell, my boy;” when a father, always kind, but kinder then than ever, prolonged the sad adieu, and said, “My son, I can watch over you no longer. The God whose providence removes you from your father’s house, be your protector, and preserve you from the evils of this sinful world. Remember that though my eye cannot see you, his can, and ever does. Fear him.” And there, young man, you now are, where your parents’ hearts trembled to place you, amidst the snares and perils of this evil world; where your father’s inspection cannot reach you, nor your mother’s tearful eye behold you. Perhaps you are in a family where no prayer is presented, nor even the form of religion observed; where you are left to yourself, little or no care being taken of your morals or religious principles: and where, provided you serve your employers with industry and honesty, you may choose your own companions, recreations, and places of resort. Or if more favourably situated, and your lot is cast in a religious family, still what is the instruction of a master compared with that of a father, or the. care of a mistre-ss compared with that of a mother? Away from home, a viciously inclined youth will find opportunities for the gratification of his evil propensities in situations the most friendly to virtue. His wicked heart, rejoicing in the absence of his parents, will make that absence an incentive to sin. Ever and anon the whisper will

come from within, “My father is not here to see it; my mother will not know it; I am not under inspection now, restraint is over, I can go where I like, associate with whom I please, and fear neither rebuke nor reproach.” 0 young man, think of the unutterable baseness of such conduct as this. Ought you not to despise yourself, if you could thus meanly, as well as wickedly, take advantage of a father’s absence, to do that which you know would excite his strongest reprobation, and afflict him with the bitterest grief, if he were present. Yet multitudes are thus base and wicked, and have gone from their parents to ruin themselves for ever. Act, young man, act as you would do, if you were conscious that your father’s eye were upon you.

2. Your danger is increased by the spirit of in dependence and self-confidence, connected, as of course it must be, with much ignorance and inexperience, which young men are apt to assume, when they leave their father’s house, and go out into the world.

“Paternal rule is now over, my parents are not at hand to be consulted or obeyed; and if they were, it is time for me to think and act for myself. I am my own master now. I am a young man, and no longer a child. I am capable of judging, discriminating, and determining between right and wrong. I have the right, and will exercise it, of forming my own standard of morals, selecting my own models of character, and laying down my own plans of action. Who has authority to interfere with me?” Such probably are your thoughts, and they are encouraged by many around you, who suggest that you are not always to go in leading strings, but ought now to assert your liberty, and act like a man. Yes, and how many have employed and abused this liberty to the most criminal and fatal purposes: it has been a liberty to destroy all the habits of virtue formed at home, to subvert all the principles planted with such care by parental solicitude, and to rush into all the evil practices, against which the voice of warning had been raised from boyhood. Many young men have no sooner been freed from parental restraint and become their own masters, than they have hurried to every place of amusement, resorted to every species of vicious diversion, initiated them selves into all the mysteries of iniquity, and with prurient curiosity to know, what it is bliss to be ignorant of, have entered into fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness. Happy, happy, had they been, had they considered that an independence which sets them free from parental advice and control, is the bane of piety, morality, and felicity, and has proved, where it has been assumed, the ruin for both worlds of multitudes of once hopeful youths. Wise is that young man, and blessed in all probability will he be, who, though he has left his father’s house, and it may be has arrived at the age of maturity, feels it his privilege as well as his duty, to look up to his parents as his counsellors, his comforters, and, in some respects, his rulers; who allows the restraints of home to follow him abroad; and who, amidst the dangerous intricacies of life, is thankful to accept the offices of a judicious father, to be the guide of his youth.

Independence of one kind, I mean pecuniary support, is that which every youth, sensible of what is due to himself, as well as to his parents, will be eager to acquire. It is a noble and generous ambition that dictates the wish to be self supported. Some young men have disgraced themselves in the estimation of all who knew them by hanging on upon the industry and resources, and these but limited too, of parents, whose delight in their children made them willing to endure any labour and suffer any privations on their account. I know nothing more mean, or cruel, than for a youth thus to take advantage of the strength of parental love, and keep a father chained to the oar of labour, and draining him of his last pound, to support himself in idleness, or to supply the means of his luxurious extravagance. Disdain, young man, the thought of living by the sweat of your father’s brow, and the wear and tear of his flesh and blood, his bones and muscles. Be industrious and frugal, that as soon as possible you may be, in this respect, your own master, and your own supporter.

3. The numerous incentives to vice with which every place, but especially the metropolis and large provincial towns, abound, and the opportunities of concealment which are to be found there, are a source of great danger.

At the head of all these must be placed the THEATRE, which is there to be found in all its most powerful attractions and most destructive fascinations. Nothing too strong, or too bad, can be said of the injurious tendency of the stage; nor too earnest or impassioned in the way, and with the intent, of warning young men from venturing within its precincts. It is emphatically, and by way of eminence, the broad road and wide gate that leadeth to destruction. It is idle to talk of what the drama and the stage may, in the hands of moralists, be come. I speak not of playhouses in the land of Utopia, but of such as now exist and are to be found in our land, and of such as you, my reader, will attend, if you go to any. Dr. Johnson has very truly said —

“The drama’s laws, the drama’s patrons give, And they who live to please, must please to live.”

As to the staple matter of which the ordinaryrun of dramatic representations are composed, it is altogether adapted to corrupt the youthful mind, by appealing to the most inflammable, the most powerful, and the most dangerous of its passions. Tragedy, with whatever fine passages and occasional sentiment it may be adorned, is usually calculated to produce pride, ambition, and revenge; while comedy, such as is most suited to the public taste, and therefore most in demand, is the school for intrigue, amours, and licentiousness. It is not, however, the subject matter only of the play itself that is corrupting, but the representation of it upon the stage, with all the accompaniments of the theatre. Not only is the lesson vicious, but the teacher and the schoolfellows are vicious too. It is bad sentiment, borrowing every possible aid to render it still worse: it is vice recommended by the charms of music, painting, architecture, oratory, eloquence, with all that is fascinating in female beauty, and dazzling in elegant costume. Think of the audience: that many of them are honest, virtuous, and respectable members of society, I allow; but how large a portion of it is of a contrary description. Is there any where such a collection of the vicious, such a condensation of vice, as at the theatre? Is it not there that the dissipated meet to make their guilty assignations? Is not the profligate, of whatever grade or kind, sure to meet his fellow there? Is it not the har lot’s resort, the place of convocation for those miserable beings, whose ways lead down to the chambers of death and the pit of destruction, and who there swarm in the lobbies and crowd the benches?

It were easy to enumerate the evils, though they are many and great, to which frequenting the theatre will expose you. It is expensive, and will thus endanger your honesty. It leads to other expensive sins, such as drunkenness and debauchery, which, besides being evil themselves, will consume the fruits of your industry. It is sure to lead you into bad company. It generates a feverish imagination, and destroys a right balance of character. It raises the passions above their proper tone, and thus induces a dislike for those grave and serious subjects of life which have nothing but their sim plicity and importance to recommend them. It kindles low and base appetites, and creates a constant hankering after their indulgence. It not only hardens the heart against religion, so that a theatre-loving man never becomes religious, until he is persuaded to abandon these amusements, but it gradually benumbs the conscience into an insensibility to good morals. Through the power of the morbid propensities, and ungovernable desires which it produces, it often urges on to licentious conduct, so that a youth who frequents the play house is almost sure to fall a victim to the lips of the strange woman, for “they drop as the honey comb, and her mouth is smoother than oil; but her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death, her steps take hold on hell.”*

* The following demonstration of the demoralizing influence of the theatre, arising from the crowds of bad women that frequent it, is furnished by a Boston correspondent to the editor of the “New York Observer,” June 29, 1839 : —

Myriads of young men have had to date their ruin for both worlds from the fatal night when, against the dissuasions of parents and the remonstrances of conscience, they first trusted their morality, till then uncorrupted, within the walls of a

“The Tremont theatre is in trouble. It proves to be a losing concern, and there appears to be no way to make it profitable. It was built with the avowed intention of raising the respectability of the drama; and I believe the manager has honestly done his best to meet, at once, the demands of those who love theatres and those who love good morals. Several years since, he abolished his bar for the sale of intoxicating liquors; in consideration of which he solicited and obtained a license for his theatre, without paying the usual tax. He afterwards attempted another reform, which he delicately announced by a notice that no lady would be admitted to any part of the theatre unless accompanied by a gentleman, thus excluding all ’ ladies’ in whose company no gentleman would be willing to be seen. This was necessary, because so many of both sexes utterly refused to attend a place of amusement where it was known that such ’ ladies’ would form a part of the company. But the loss of the patronage of such c ladies.’ and of those who stayed away when they were excluded, was more than the manager’s purse could bear, and in a few weeks the rule was suffered to fall into disuse. Of late, there has been an investigation of the affairs of the company, and a report has been published, from which it appears, that even if the manager had the building rent-free, the receipts would fall considerably short of meeting the other expenses.”

theatre. Let earnest, affectionate, importunate entreaty prevail, then, to induce you to abstain from this road to perdition. If you will not take my testimony, hearken to that which is furnished by witnesses more competent, from experience, to give evidence. It is said of Sir Matthew Hale, one of the greatest and most upright judges that ever sat on the bench, “that he was an extraordinary proficient at school, and for some time at Oxford; but the stage-players coming thither, he was so much corrupted by seeing plays, that he almost wholly forsook his studies. By this he not only lost much time, but found that his head was thereby filled with vain images of things; and being afterwards sensible of the mischief of this, he resolved, upon his coming to London, never to see a play again, to which resolution he constantly adhered.” Augustine, the celebrated Latin father, confesses, with a noble frankness, that it was at the theatre he imbibed the venom which so corrupted his heart and polluted his life during his early years. “There is no part of theatrical economy,” says one, “with which I am unacquainted; and it is my personal and complete knowledge of that economy which forces upon me the conviction, that- were another Ezekiel to arise, and another angel descend, to exhibit to him the greater and greater abominations of this land, he would reserve for the astonished and indignant prophet a display of the iniquities of a London theatre, as the last and most fearful chambers of imagery.” “As I was one day walking out,” says an American preacher, “for my accustomed exercise, a gentleman passed me in his carriage, and invited me to ride with him. He is a man of wealth and distinction, and of an elevated and pious character. He came to the city when young, without friends, without money, without reputation, without any extrinsic means whatever of getting started in business. Soon after I took a seat with him, two young men of dissipated air, with cigars in their mouths, dashed furiously past us in a chaise. ‘There,’ said he, ’ are two young men going fast to ruin.’ This incident turned our conversation upon the expenses and the ruin of young men. He remarked that most of the young men who carne to live in Boston (America) at the time he did, had already gone to ruin. I told him that the interest I felt in them prompted the inquiry, how it came to pass that he escaped, and by what means he had succeeded so well in life? He replied, that when he came to the city, he laid down some rules, which he had steadfastly observed. Among them were the following: — That he would always attend public worship on the sabbath; that he would never read loose and infidel writings, nor visit infidel meetings; that he would devote a portion of his time to some profitable study; that he would be always diligent and faithful in business, however discouraging things might look; that he would not frequent places for refreshment, unless for necessary food; that he would form no alliance with any individuals, for society or amusement, till he knew them to be safe and virtuous companions; and, that he would not go to the theatre till he was forty-five years old, when he supposed he should be above the reach of any injury from that source. Long before he reached that age, he became a pious man, and of course he now finds higher sources of pleasure than the theatre, a place he never visited. Another youth, who came to the city at the same time and from the same place with him. took lodgings at a house with some theatre-going young men, was prevailed upon to go for once, then again, and again; became loose in his principles and habits: one wrong step led to another, until he went headlong to ruin, and found an infamous grave! And this, he remarked, had been the sad history of many who entered on and began their career in life with him.”

I have no need, after this to add any thing, except it be to advise you never to do as some have done to their destruction, and that is, to go once, in order to judge for yourself. Taste not the poison to ascertain how you like it, and to form an opinion of its deleterious power. Touch not the fang of a serpent, to ascertain by examination the sharpness of its tooth. These are matters which it is safer and easier to decide by testimony; and a cloud of witnesses can, and do depose, that of all the avenues to destruction, not one is more seductive, or more direct, than the THEATRE.*

But besides the theatre, how many other species of corrupt and corrupting amusement are to be found. Need I mention GAMBLING-HOUSES, brought down to the level of persons of slender means, where the excitement of cupidity, and the witchery of a love of play, is kept up, to the destruction of all sobriety of mind and industrious habits. Is it necessary to speak of the DIVANS, or rooms where young men meet to smoke cigars, that modern invention for corrupting the minds and destroying the character of youth? It may seem to some to be trifling, but I know it is not, to say, that the first cigar a young man takes within his lips may become, and often does become, his first step in the career of vice. A cigar is, with young persons, the symbol of foppery, and swaggering, and conceit. I knew a youth, and he was the son of a minister too, who acquired such a passion for this species of gratification, that it contributed to the ruin of his circumstances as well as of his character. His income was limited, and he was at one time twenty pounds in debt to the tobacconist for cigars, at whose house he used to meet a company of youths, as idle as himself, to enjoy the gratification of smoking. I heard of another instance,

* I most earnestly recommend to all young persons who are in any doubt about this subject, the perusal of Styles’s Essay on the stage” 3* which I was assured was a well-known fact, in the town of Liverpool, of an individual, of course a man of some property, who spent a pound a day in cigars, which he had sprinkled with otto of roses before he smoked them. I always grieve and tremble over every young man of my acquaintance whom I see contracting this habit. It often leads to other and far worse things.

Then there are THE NOCTURNAL ORGIES OF CERTAIN WALKS AND BOWERS, the tea-gardens, the parks, and the steamboats to Richmond, or Gravesend, or Greenwich, those alluring baits for sabbath-breaking, by which millions, as time rolls on, are caught in the snares of Satan, ever lying in wait to deceive and to decoy. “What harm can there be,” it is said, “after we have been shut up all the week in a close street, hard at work, to go out on a fine summer day, to enjoy the clear sunshine, the fresh air, and the beauties of creation? Surely our Maker is not such a hard master as to refuse us gratifications so innocent and so healthful.” And thus sabbath-breaking, which is a manifest violation of the laws of God, is defended by an appeal to his goodness. Probably there is no means of destroying religious principle, and of leading to immorality, more common, than the neglect of public worship, and the desecration of the sabbath. Let this hallowed season betaken from devotion, and given to pleasure, and the character is from that time open to all the inroads of sin, without any check.