SERMON X.

SERMON II.

THE DANGER OF FREQUENTING EVIL COMPANY.

PROVERBS XIII 30.

"But a companion of fools shall be destroyed."

In the preceding discourse, after explaining the text, I derived from it the following doctrine :

He who frequents the company of sinners is in danger of eternal destruction.

This doctrine, then, I illustrated by various considerations. I will now conclude the discourse with some practical

REMARKS.

I. From these observations we learn that sinful companions are real and dangerous enemies.

They profess, indeed, and often with fair pretences, strong declarations, and many seeming acts of good-will, to be sincere and ardent friends to those whom they corrupt and destroy. Nay they are frequently, and in an advanced stage of degeneracy always, believed to be the faithful and the only friends of the victim. Their efforts to please are often more direct, open, active, and persuasive, than those of real friends. A studied and specious accordance with the passions, wishes, and

purposes, of those whom they ensnare invests them with a peculiarly pleasing and desirable character to the inexperienced and ignorant eye of every youth. Where real friends advise, they only accord. Where real friends alarm, they soothe. Where real friends reprove, they flatter. And thus, where real friends become dreaded, and in the end hated, they become endeared, delightful, and at last necessary to the apprehended good of those whom they destroy.

All this, however strange it may seem at the first view, is easily explicable. Every vicious person, however proud and vain he may be, is secretly conscious that he is destitute of any real worth, and feels, that his claims, either to respect or af fection, are at the best doubtful, and will be questioned. To these claims, therefore, he is unwilling to trust for reputation, good-will, or good offices. If he is to have friends, therefore, or admirers, he knows that he must make them. Satisfied that they will not follow him, he determines to follow them. The esteem and attachment which he cannot command, he resolves to allure. The kind offices which he cannot claim, he labours to win. For worth which he has not, he endeavours to substitute assiduous civility; for amiableness, a pleasing deportment; and for usefulness, flattery. Thus, although he cannot become estimable, he supplies, and often more than supplies the deficiency, by the diligence with which he seeks to promote the pleasure, encourage the hopes, awaken the vanity, foster the wishes, and promote the purposes, of those to whom he attaches himself. In this manner he is but too commonly successful, and finds the subject of his imposition, willing to mistake agreeableness for worth, and sedulity for friendship. Men of real worth, on the contrary, usually expect that their friendship will be coveted, and their good offices sought. They know the value of these things, and naturally expect that it will be known by others. Their friendship is therefore rarely offered; and, if obtained at all, is almost always solicited.

Let it not be supposed that, because I mention this fact, I therefore approve of this conduct. In many cases it is certainly unhappy. Not a small number of youths have, in all

probability, been ruined, who might have been saved, had wisdom and virtue taken them seasonably by the hand, and not left them to be practised upon by the arts of cunning and profligacy.

But real friends are those who, whether pleasing or unpleasing, design and do us real good. Let me exhort the youths in this congregation to remember and to feel this interesting truth. Who else can deserve the name of friends? What else can be the value of friendship? But these wicked companions, instead of seeking your good, aim at your ruin. When, therefore, they profess themselves your friends, the profession is false and hollow. It is true, indeed, that they are destroying themselves, at the same time. But in what respect will their destruction benefit you? Will their sins render yours less guilty? Will their perdition render yours less dreadful? Will it be any consolation to you in the regions of despair, that those who were here your companions in crimes, are there your companions in misery?

The man who in this world voluntarily destroys, or even injures, any valuable interest of his neighbour, is estimated by mankind, and by you as truly as others, an enemy. These persons aim at a far more comprehensive injury, and accomplish an infinitely wider ruin. With the scythe of death they cut down soul and body, life and immortality, and leave nothing behind.

II. What an image does a company of sinners, thus resorting together, present to a sober mind!

Were prophets of God, were even honest historians, to describe, with a faithful hand, the scenes of iniquity; were they faithfully to pourtray the characters, and relate the actions which take place in the dark retreats in which these persons customarily assemble; what, think you, would be the appearance of the portrait? Unfortunately for the young, the gay, the giddy, no such historians are found, to present to them this dreadful picture, as a solemn communication of what they will one day become by frequenting evil company, as a powerful antidote to all the communications and examples, the arts and treacheries,

by which they are so often seduced. From analogy and conjecture only, can sober men, in ordinary circumstances, learn the nature of those transactions, which, in many instances, take place in these recesses of iniquity.

But even analogy and conjecture, when joined with such facts as could not escape detection, furnish sufficient information concerning the character and conduct of these men to alarm the stoutest heart, and daunt the firmest eye, of the young adventurer in sin, if he has not already swallowed the bait, and been so effectually fastened by the barb, as to be beyond the hopes of escaping.

Who are the persons that thus consort together? They are enemies of God, enemies to mankind, enemies to each other, and enemies to themselves. It is true, they profess to be mutual friends. But Judas was not less an enemy to Christ, because he approached him with a kiss. Their real character is seen in the fact, that they seek each other's ruin. They are all gross sinners, except such young, new, unpractised victims, as they have seduced to their company for the purpose of destroying them for ever. They have renounced virtue, principle, conscience, and reputation, and have given themselves up to passion and appetite, to sense and sin.

What is the place in which they have been assembled? It is a solitude, from which every human foot is excluded, beside that of themselves, and that of the pander by whom all the conveniences of iniquity are provided to their hand :—a cell, from which the eye of their own parents, of all virtuous, of all sober, nay, of all decent men is shut out:-an outer chamber of perdition, where themselves train up each other for final ruin; and where, if they could open their eyes, they would see a collection of fiends hovering over them, and hailing, with, a malignant smile, their profligacy, and their approaching destruction.

What is the season at which they are assembled? It is the dark and silent hour of temptation: the season when midnight veils their crimes from all but the eye of God; when imagination is on fire; when passion is excited to delirium; when conscience is asleep; and when the sense of safety from de

tection emboldens even the timid heart of the novice to every perpetration.

What are the purposes for which they are gathered? To give temptation its most alluring form, its most seductive language, and its most fatal efficacy; to perpetrate crimes which shrink from the eye of duty; to make rebellion against their Maker convenient, safe, and pleasant; to blot out of remembrance all motives to repentance and reformation; to extinguish, mutually and finally, the hope of heaven, and to help each other onward towards hell.

What is the language which is here uttered? It is the obscene jest, the tainted narrative of pollution, the lewd song, the false recital, the hypocritical profession, the treacherous promise, the impious oath, the malignant curse, and the tremendous blasphemy. In a word, it is the language of hell, learned and practised against their arrival at that world of sin.

What are the practices which are found in these strongholds of Satan? These are endlessly various, as well as enormously guilty; for here iniquity is drunk like water. Here are practised all the frauds of the gaming-table, amid that host of vices by which it is regularly surrounded: and art and trick here rob the silly novice of his property as effectually as the pistol or the dagger. Here the theft and the robbery are projected and matured. Here the swindler is formed and educated; the forgery nicely finished, so as to escape the most critical eye; the coin falsified; the man changed into a brute by drunkenness; and the soul, by a course of impurity, converted into a Sodom.

What is their end? Poverty, shame, and ruin in this world; death without hope, judgment without mercy, and misery without mixture or termination, in that which is to come.

III. Let me urge those who hear me, to shun evil companions.

If God is true; they will ruin you for ever. That good should be derived from them is impossible. That immense evil will be, is certain. Every injury is to be regularly ex