stronger, or healthier, or more sure of life, than others? Perhaps,

"The young disease, that must subdue at length,

Has Grown with your growth, and strengthen'd with your strength.'

Or how easily may a fever seize upon you, and in a few days reduce you from the highest health, to feebleness and death! How quickly may any sudden change from heat to cold, or many other causes, inflame your lungs, or some other vital part, and, in a few days, lodge you -where? In the eternal world. How soon may a cold turn to a consumption, and before you think yourself seriously ill, you may be incurably so! How soon may numerous other diseases, at God's bidding, accomplish their awful errand!

"Lord grant that this awakening truth,
May every heart engage;

A worm is in the bud of youth,
And at the root of age.

No present health can health insure

For yet an hour to come;

No medicine though it often cure,
Can always balk the tomb."

which

You perhaps now look forward to future years, probably will never be yours, but if they should how soon the years now to come, will be years departed! Others ere long will tread upon your grave, as thoughtlessly as you do on theirs, who went before you. You live in a dying world, in a land of graves. On some spot of earth or other, fresh graves are ever opening, No minute passes in which some do not die. While you breathe some breathe their last. While you think of eternity, others as young as you, are passing thither, enraptured or dismayed. Ah hapless state of an unhappy world! Some dying in youth, and others fooling their precious youth away. Some going to give up their sad account, and others swelling the black list on theirs. Some neglecting early piety, and others, too late, mourning their folly in doing so. Some trifling with a Saviour, and others trembling before him as their Judge. How soon, if you belong to the former of these classes,

will time number you with the latter! You, are on the verge of eternity, and some younger than you are daily dying, and entering on its amazing scenes. O then re

member that youth is vanity, and life itself no better. And should you continue careless of the Lord Jesus Christ, how bitter ere long will be the remembrance of your wasted youth! This one short and vain life is the only season, in which you may obtain peace with God, and receive the gift of life eternal; and would you still throw this one away? Alas, unhappy youth! who are so truly wretched as they, who do this, excepting they who have done it! Would the starving beggar that has but one penny, toss that away! or the sailor that has but one way of escaping shipwreck, neglect that one! or the traveller who sees but one path from a tremendous precipice, slight that one! and will you waste in sinful delays, the flower and prime of that one vain life, in which eternal life may be sought in Christ and surely found? O rather indulge those reflections on its vanity, which will lead you to unite in the Psalmist's prayer, "So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.”

Sect. 4. Indulge such reflections as these on the passing scenes around you.

That sun is setting, and has once less to set on me; in time I may soon behold it rise, but enter eternity before it set. This year is closing, and will never more close on me; it is finished; and has brought me so much nearer to the hour when time itself shall end with me. Do I see a leaf in summer torn from the bough, on which it grew? such is my life. We all do fade as a leaf. Like the leaf, when age the winter of time comes on, it must fade; but as a summer storm may tear the leaf from the tree, and cast it to the ground, so disease may attack my health, and lay my body among the clods of the valley, and send my spirit to God who gave it. O may I flourish in faith and love, that thus being found waiting, I may welcome the coming of my Lord, though at the most unexpected hour.

Am I taking a journey, and riding in a carriage that goes rapidly along? the trees, the hedges, the fields, the houses, seem all hastily passing by me; and would

glide away. But ah! on, it is I, who move, and they are still! I am approaching apace to the end of my journey, how heedless soever I may be of its conclusion. Thus fast am I hastening to the end of my little journey of life, though I should mark not its progress, or be thoughtless of its close.

Do I observe a sportsman aiming at a flying bird? it has left no track behind, and probably his shot may bring it to the ground, and prevent its passing through the expanse before. My past years are gone as the years before the flood; and the years that are before me may never enter. Death, that surest of marksmen, may have already received his dread commission, to number me with the dead. O may faith and love prepare me for eternity before I feel the awful stroke of death! Seck then, my soul. O seek without delay, these precious blessings! My stay here is all uncertain. My youth is vanity. My days are swifter than a shuttle; but what will become of thee, if these fleeting days should end, and thou shouldst then be found in thy present state? O let me seek in Christ deliverance from my sins. Then grace shall make even the vanity of youth a blessing rather than an evil.

"Be wise, my soul, be timely wise,
Flee to the atoning sacrifice;
The gospel promises embrace,
And trust thy all to Jesus' grace."

CHAPTER XVII,

The sorrows and dangers, that attend the way of transgressors noticed as a reason for the choice of early Religion.

SECT. 1. The wretchedness of the irreligious, seen in the blind and perishing condition of the careless sinner....s. 2. Sinful pleasures transitory and often attended with inward stings.... 8. 3. Ruin for time as well as eternity the frequent effect of irreligion, especially of some sins, which are noticed....s. 4. The danger and misery of the sinner seen in the progressive and ungovernable nature of sin....s. 5. If the life is not flagrant, still a sinful state is most dangerous....s. 6. Irreligion awfully dreadful in the day of death, illustrated by several brief narratives.

SECT. 1. WHILE the various blessings, which attend a knowledge of the Gospel, combine to form a motive for embracing early piety, a motive of an opposite nature, but of a most weighty kind, arises from the disappointments and sorrows, and the miseries, that attend the path of transgressors. If you, my youthful reader, are still careless of salvation, allow me now to intreat you to yield yourself to Christ, not by showing you the charms of religion; but by displaying to you that the way of transgressors is hard. There is the testimony of the word of God, which also assures you that there is no peace to the wicked; and that God, to them, distributeth sorrows in his anger.3

Were we unacquainted with any actual miseries attendant on irreligion, yet there would be enough in the divine word, to convince you that it is ruinous and destructive. Depravity and corruption have led you into the ways of sin; and it is blindness that keeps you contented there. The understanding of men is darkened, being alienated from the life of God, through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart. The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him. The God of this world, (or Satan,) hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light

Prov. xiii. 15. 2Isa. lvii. 21. 3 Job xxi. 17. 'Eph. iv. 13.

1 Cor. ii. 14.

of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine into them. While in this state, you resemble a blind man in the midst of treacherous enemies, he does not see them; he is unconscious of their being around him; and so he does not fear them. Thus, on the edge of destruction, you are unconcerned, because blind to your state; for did you see your real state, while uninterested in the Saviour, you might perceive yourself to be, as it were, hanging by a single thread over the mouth of hell; devils waiting to receive you; the eternal Judge frowning upon you; and nothing wanting to seal you up under endless despair, but the command of God to snap the brittle thread of life asunder. You are blinded by Satan, and led captive at his will. Is not this a state of wretchedness? yet this is yours; though spiritual blindness prevents your perception of it.

Sect. 2. But perhaps though such is your truly dismal condition, you have not felt its danger, nor been alarmed at its horrors. You have thought, and still think, the ways of iniquity pleasing. Yes, unhappy youth, in the flush of health, in the moment of unbridled passion, while the future is forgotten, and death and judgment out of sight, the young sinner may find in them a transitory though brutish pleasure. The profligate, the drunken, and the lewd may be gratified, for a few moments, with their base delights. The civiler and more moralized, in the giddy ball room, or licentious theatre, or when wasting invaluable time, over a novel or romance, may think themselves happy; but,

"Short is the course of every lawless pleasure,
Grief, like a shade on all its footsteps waits;
Scarce visible in joy's meridian height,

But downwards as the blaze declining spreads,
The dwarfish shadow to a giant grows.'

Though sometimes the ways of irreligion may yield a short though guilty pleasure, yet often worldly delights are bitterness, in the pursuit, as well as in the end. They are unsatisfying. The sinner pursues them for happiness! and yet is not happy. The lover of pleasure follows his pleasures, yet finds little or no pleasure in them. Have

$2 Cor. iv. 4..