THE

THREE GREAT TEMPTATIONS

OF

YOUNG MEN:

WITH SEVERAL LECTURES ADDRESSED TO

BUSINESS AND PROFESSIONAL MEN.

BY

SAMUEL W. FISHER.

CINCINNATI:

MOORE & ANDERSON, PUBLISHERS,

28 WEST FOURTH STREET.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1852, by

MOORE & ANDERSON,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the District of Ohio.

BRITISH

C. A. MORGAN & CO., STEREOTYPERS AND PUBLISHERS,

HAMMOND STREET.

PREFACE.

THIS Volume contains the substance of a series of discourses principally addressed to young men, and delivered during the last winter in the Second Presbyterian Church in this city, of which the author is pastor. They are printed for the same reason that they were originally composed and delivered to promote the temporal and eternal well being of the multitudes of young men who gather into these great centers of business. The desire for their publication has been so general among those who heard them, and expressed in so substantial a manner, that the author has not felt at liberty to withhold them. He has long been convinced, that these popular vices, perhaps because they are so manifestly evil and ruinous, have not received that attention from the pulpit and the press which their fearful prevalence in our large cities imperatively demands. By the pulpit, they have been regarded as so unmistakably wicked so broadly offensive to religion, as to need only an occasional allusion, an indirect discussion; by the press at large, they have too generally been regarded either as a necessary evil, or as fine subjects for editorial witticisms. Meanwhile hundreds and thousands are yearly entering upon this broad pathway to perdition. There have been of late years a few most admirable volumes published on these subjects. They do not, however, meet all the wants of the public in this respect, even if their more gen