are attended by great dangers and sad consequences. I have not overdrawn the picture; I have spoken nothing but the truth. Make no excuses to palliate the danger of which I have spoken today. Experience shows that the reality is, if anything, worse than I have pictured it. I made the proper allowance. There is no fault to be found with company-keeping within certain limits. Where there is an earnest intention of marriage, and the engagement is not of too long duration, and the visits are made to the family, and proper hours are kept, there can be no objection. What I condemn, and what every Christian must condemn, are the courtships without reference to marriage, the intimacies protracted for years, the visits where the young people are together for hours and alone. These are nothing but proximate occasions for sin and often a living in habitual sin. For persons living so there can be no hope of absolution in the confessional which is valid before God unless they abandon the occasion. If you are carrying on an acquaintance of this kind, I beg of you, if you love God, if you love the salvation of your own soul, break it off at once. Do not answer that you have done nothing wrong as yet; if you continue, you can not remain free from sin. Cut off the hand that scandalizes you, pluck out the eye that is a source of sin and cast it from thee. Make a generous resolution now, and God will sustain you with His grace. If you do, you will always bless the day on which you conquered yourself.
Each state and calling here below
Has its own joy and its own woe;
Yet sorrowful beyond the rest
A marriage that God has not blest.
