ΤΟ YOUNG MEN, ON VARIOUS IMPORTANT SUBJECTS. BY HENRY WARD BEECHER, SECOND EDITION. SALEM: PUBLISHED BY JOHN P. JEWETT & Co. CINCINNATI: WM. H. MOORE & CO. 1845. Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight hundred and forty-four, by HENRY WARD BEECHER, in the clerk's office of the District of the United States, within and for the District of Indiana. ΤΟ LYMAN BEECHER, D.D. To you I owe more than to any other living being. In childhood, you were my Parent; in later life, my Teacher; in manhood, my Companion. To your affectionate vigilance I owe my principles, my knowledge, and that I am a Minister of the Gospel of Christ. For whatever profit they derive from this little Book, the young will be indebted to you. PREFACE. Having watched the courses of those who seduce the young― their arts, their blandishments, their pretences;-having witnessed the beginning and consummation of ruin, almost in the same year, of many young men, naturally well disposed, whose downfall began with the appearances of innocence; I felt an earnest desire, if I could, to raise the suspicion of the young, and to direct their reason to the arts by which they are, with such facility, destroyed. I ask every YOUNG MAN who may read this book, not to submit his judgment to mine, not to hate because I denounce, nor blindly to follow me; but to weigh my reasons, that he may form his own judgment. I only claim the place of a companion; and that I may gain his ear, I have sought to present truth in those forms which best please the young; and though I am not without hope of satisfying the aged and the wise, my whole thought has been to carry with me the intelligent sympathy of YOUNG MEN. |