and feels it to be no more than a burden.  The mere lessons may be learnt from a sense of duty; but that freshness of power which, in young persons of ability would fasten eagerly upon some one portion or other, of the wide field of knowledge, and there expatiate, drinking in health and strength to the mind, as surely as the natural exercise of the body gives to it bodily vigour,—­that is tired prematurely, perverted, and corrupted; and all the knowledge which else it might so covet, it now seems a wearying effort to attain.

Great and grievous as is the evil, it is peculiarly hard to find the remedy for it.  If the books to which I have been alluding were books of downright wickedness, we might destroy them wherever we found them; we might forbid their open circulation; we might conjure you to shun them as you would any other clear sin, whether of word or deed.  But they are not wicked books for the most part; they are of that class which cannot be actually prohibited; nor can it be pretended that there is a sin in reading them.  They are not the more wicked for being published so cheap, and at regular intervals; but yet these two circumstances make them so peculiarly injurious.  All that can be done is to point out the evil; that it is real and serious I am very sure, and its effects are most deplorable on the minds of the fairest promise; but the remedy for it rests with yourselves, or rather with each of you individually, so far as he is himself concerned.  That an unnatural and constant excitement of the mind is most injurious, there is no doubt; that excitement involves a consequent weakness, is a law of our nature than which none is surer; that the weakness of mind thus produced is and must be adverse to quiet study and thought, to that reflection which alone is wisdom, is also clear in itself, and proved too largely by experience.  And that without reflection there can be no spiritual understanding, is at once evident; while without spiritual understanding, that is, without a knowledge and a study of God’s will, there can be no spiritual life.  And therefore childishness and unthoughtfulness cannot be light evils; and if I have rightly traced the prevalence of these defects to its cause, although that cause may seem to some to be trifling, yet surely it is well to call your attention to it, and to remind you that in reading works of amusement, as in every other lawful pleasure, there is and must be an abiding responsibility in the sight of God; that, like other lawful pleasures, we must beware of excess in it; and not only so, but that if we find it hurtful to us, either because we have used it too freely in times past, or because our nature is too weak to bear it, that then we are bound most solemnly to abstain from it; because, however lawful in itself, or to others who can practise it without injury, whatever is to us an hindrance in the way of our intellectual and moral and spiritual improvement, that is in our case a positive sin.