level with towns whose capital can yield its thousands for this purpose without a sensation of embarrassment, where local attachments and the prospect of permanent abode divest such enterprises of even the show of self-denial, and where they are attended with not more than one half or one third of their expense in manufacturing towns; and no places will outdo these in attendance on public worship, or in readiness to meet the current expenses of maintaining religious institutions.

It bodes well for the religious interests of manufacturing districts, that the press is becoming tributary to their spiritual wants. Adaptation marks

the age. The multiplication of books is sometimes complained of as an evil. But in so far as it results from well directed efforts to adapt religious instruction to every condition of mind, there is surely little cause to deplore it. While, therefore, we have many excellent volumes intended for the young, let not this attempt to address a particular class of the young be deemed a work of supererogation. Every pastor located in or near a manufacturing village, must have felt the need of some volume to be put into the hands of this interesting and important portion of his congregation, which should speak to their condition. And many a parent has desired to deposit such a volume with his son or daughter on leaving the family home, as a memento of danger and of

duty. The author having favored me with the perusal of his manuscript, I am happy to bear my testimony to the wisdom of his plan, and the success of its execution. The doctrinal views are, throughout, those in which I suppose all classes of evangelical Christians will concur. But the work will speak for itself. I recommend it most cordially to the beloved youth of my own pastoral charge, and to all who like them are summoned to the duties, and exposed to the dangers of such a community. May the author reap an ample reward for this labor of love in the enlarged effusions of the Holy Spirit upon his own flock, and in the blessing of Heaven on this little volume whithersoever it shall go on its errand of mercy and of life.

Lowell, March, 1836.

LECTURES

ΤΟ

YOUNG PEOPLE.

LECTURE 1.

IMPORTANCE OF THE PERIOD OF YOUTH.

PROV. XX. 29.-The glory of young men is their strength.

In attempting to adapt a series of discourses to the circumstances of young people in a manufacturing village, I am entering, so far as I know, upon untrodden ground. Able lectures, addressed to youth in other situations in life, are at command, but they do not profess to reach the peculiar conditions of a manufacturing population. To say that the circumstances of such a population are, in some important respects, peculiar, is to utter the language, not of invidiousness, but of kind truth; and the public good requires that these conditions should be more accurately known and appreciated.

A manufacturing population, then, is yet a novelty in this country. Manufactures, of the simpler kinds, were indeed coeval with the settlement of New England; but it was not till the general pacification of Europe in 1815, that they assumed any great degree of importance. Since that period, they have outstripped, in the Northern and Middle States, all the other great departments of secular enterprise. That they are destined in future years to increase, to a great and indefinite extent, requires no prophetic skill to divine. If we consider the amplitude of our domain-its natural resources-its mineral treasures—its ex

uberant fertility-its means of artificial power by water and by steam-the rapid increase of our population—the far famed aptitude of our countrymen for the mechanic arts-their ingenuity in the invention of labor-saving machinery-and the great surplus capital of many of our citizens, which can find no other so profitable investment, there can no longer remain a doubt, that manufactures will, in coming years, be prosecuted on a far more extensive scale than the present. If, then, such be the recent date, present importance, and prospective magnitude of the manufacturing interest, it ought surely to receive the serious consideration, not merely of the political economist, and the