Friendly advice to a young man Author:Edward Berens Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: friends and your companions, whenever you do swear, to tell you of it, and be really thankful to them for so doing. Above all, implore the help of God to enab... more »le you to get the better of this evil habit. Say, Set a watch, 0 Lord, before my lips ; keep the door of my month. Beseech Him to grant, that the words of your mouth as well as the meditations of your heart may be always acceptable in his sight, that you may always use his holy name with reverence and honour. The Prayer. O Almighty God, whose name is holy, grant that 1 may never speak unadvisedly with my lips, but may always treat thy holy name, and all that belongs to thy honour and service, with respect and reverence. Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth ; keep the door of my lips. Mercifully forgive the innumerable offences of mv tongue. Bless with the grace of thy Holy Spirit all those against whom I have at any time uttered imprecations, and grant that the awful curses, which in my madness I have at any time called down either on myself or on others, may be all done away, through Him who was made a curse for us, Jesus Christ our Lord. SOBRIETY. In several of his Epistles, St. Paul powerfully urges the consideration of the light and privileges of the Gospel, as an argument for avoiding the sins, which were practised during the night of heathenism, which sins he accordingly terms works of darkness. At the head of these works of darkness, he names in the text rioting and drunkenness; and certainly, thereis hardly any sin more unbecoming a Christian, or more fitly called a work of darkness. They that be drunken, says St. Paul in another place, are drunken in the night'. This low sin, which proceeds from the darkness of folly, and the darkness of ignorance and unbelief, ought to be ashamed to shew itself ...« less