In addressing the following observations to you, I keep in mind the
peculiarity of your position,--a position which has made you, while
scarcely more than a child, independent of external control, and forced
you into the responsibilities of deciding thus early on a course of
conduct that may seriously affect your temporal and eternal interests.
More happy are those placed under the authority of strict parents, who
have already chosen and marked out for themselves a path to which they
expect their children strictly to adhere. The difficulties that may
still perplex the children of such parents are comparatively few: even
if the strictness of the authority over them be inexpedient and over
strained, it affords them a safeguard and a support for which they
cannot be too grateful; it preserves them from the responsibility of
acting for themselves at a time when their age and inexperience alike
unfit them for a decision on any important practical point; it keeps
them disengaged, as it were, from being pledged to any peculiar course
of conduct until they have formed and matured their opinion as to the
habits of social intercourse most expedient for them to adopt. Thus,
when the time for independent action comes, they are quite free to
pursue any new course of life without being shackled by former
professions, or exposing themselves to the reproach (and consequent
probable loss of influence) of having altered their former opinions and
views.

Those, then, who are early guarded from any intercourse with the world
ought, instead of murmuring at the unnecessary strictness of their
seclusion, to reflect with gratitude on the advantages it affords them.
Faith ought, even now, to teach them the lesson that experience is sure
to impress on every thoughtful mind, that it is a special mercy to be
preserved from the duties of responsibility until we are, comparatively
speaking, fitted to enter upon them.