knowledge, temperance; to temperance, patience; to patience, godliness; to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, charity. He frees from ignorance and intemperance, the vices of the profane; and from impatience, hypocrisy, and bigotry, the vices of the pharisee: and thus he makes your calling and election sure to yourselves, and to the church of God; and when you die, ministereth an entrance abundantly unto you, into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Finally, he will lead you to the source of all; the everlasting and distinguishing love of God in Jesus Christ. He will shew you that Jesus, and all his rich salvation is not the procuring cause, but rather the strong expression of the love of God: and on repeated views of this immense treasure, and your participation of it, you will frequently cry, Thine O Lord is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty: for all that is in the heaven and in the earth is thine: thine is the kingdom, O Lord, and thou art exalted as head above all. Now therefore, our God, we thank thee, and praise thy glorious name. But who am I?

We have said, pray for these things. Do this, but do more. Diligently hear God's word preached. Search the scriptures. Chuse the company of good people. Study yourselves. Learn your hymns and catechisms. Begin with the simple, thence proceed to the sublime truths of the gospel. Believe, in spite of all the flourishes of falsehood,

that as these simple means spread christianity at first, and reformed it when it was corrupted, so they are the most likely to succeed still. No man having drank old wine straightway desireth new for he saith the old is better!

Put all these things together, assemble them in one youth, and he riseth an angel to view. In an agreeable healthy body, a capacious well cultivasted mind; a conduct made up of the just and the lovely; a soul enriched with every grace that dignifies human nature, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, and changing into the same image from glory to glory. What melody in his language while he says, The Lord is my strength and song, he is become my salvation: he is my God and I will prepare him an habitation: my fa ther's God and I will exalt him. The venerable elders with his parents bless him : his pastor in the name of each saith, God before whom my fathers did walk; the God who fed me all my life long; the angel that redeemed me from all evil, bless the lad, may he grow into a multitude in the midst of

the earth.

Thus we understand our text. Indulge me with your attention a little longer, while I endeavour to inforce your obedience. May the finger of God write everlasting characters on our hearts!

Pardon me if I tell you that ignorance only makes persuasion necessary; for did you indeed see vice in its own proper undisguised features, did you but see virtue in its own symmetry and beau

ty, you could not but chuse virtue, and refuse vice. Every object of thought produceth an effect on the mind, as sensible objects produce their effects on the body. I may remove from a fire, but I cannot approach it without feeling certain sensations in my body; at one distance, I am warmed; at a nearer, heated; at a nearer still, scorched; and at another approach I am burnt. It is just the same with the mind. I may turn my eyes from virtue, but I cannot look but I must love. I may avoid reflecting on vice, but if I reflect, I abhor. Fixed and unalterable laws, as independent on me as the motions of the planets, determine these effects. but you turn your eyes from these, or what is worse, you see them through false mediums; through fashion, or custom, through an endless train of prejudices; through the opinions of those that live without reflection, and die without repentance.

Must we then attempt to persuade you? Why what can be said which hath not been said a thousand times? and shall we again plow upon the rock? Yet God is rich in mercy, therefore behold, I will this once cause you to know.

Consider young people the authority of God. It is God who saith to you, remember your creator in the days of your youth; he speaks it in his word, he speaks it by his ministers, he speaks it by your own consciences, Were you angels, it would shock one to hear you say, Who is Jehovah that I should obey his voice? and will you little serpents, will you rear your presumptuous

like

crests, and hiss at him? will ye also disannul his judgment? will ye condemn him, that ye may be righteous? hast thou an arm like God? or canst thou thunder with a voice like him? Hell is naked before him, and destruction hath no covering; the pillars of heaven tremble and are astonished at his reproof; he divided the sea with his power, and by his understanding he smiteth through the proud; who hath hardened himself against him and hath prospered? true, he is slow to anger; but yet great in power, he will not at all acquit the wicked. True, he is good, a strong hold in the day of trouble; but yet, the mountains quake at him, and the hills melt, and the earth is burnt at his presence, yea the world, and all that dwell therein. Out of Zion the perfection of beauty, God hath already shined, but by and by he shall come, and shall not keep silence, a fire shall devour before him, and it shall be very tempestuous round about him. He shall call to the heaven from above, and to the earth, that he may judge his people. O acquaint yourselves now with him, and be at peace; thereby good shall come unto you.

Reflect on the nature of what you are invited to, Every other creature seeks a good, suited to its nature, and having found that good enjoys it: doth the wild ass bray when he hath grass? or loweth the or over his fodder? but you, while you live in sin, violate every dictate of nature, as well as every command of scripture. You love happiness: we ask you to love God with all your heart, and you tell us, this would destroy all your happiness. Ah

foolish people and unwise! has religion no charms then? no rewards? what vice is it that appears so desirable, and clothed with so much beauty? What! eyes full of adultery, a tongue set on fire` of hell, a mouth full of cursing and bitterness, a heart deceitful above all things and desperately wicked! What! brute beasts that corrupt them selves, clouds driven about with the winds, raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame, the blackness of darkness for ever, are these the charms that allure you! O blindness and madness! Look at that old debauchee, grown grey in the devil's service; his bones are full of the sin of his youth, which shall lie down with him in the dust. Though forty years ago wickedness was sweet in his mouth, yet he sucked the poison of asps, and now the gall of asps is within him. Is that poor, decrepid, guilty thing, sinking under the weight of infirmities and iniquities, is that your model young men? O could you see the tempers of his heart as you do the features of his face, you would see an image of him whom scripture calls the dragon, that old serpent which is the devil! formidable creatures! my soul come thou not into their secret! But virtue is lovely, infinitely lovely, all description throws a vail over its beauty. Do not judge of virtue and vice metaphysically assemble on the one hand, the vicious of every age and climate; the Çains, the Pharoahs, the Judasses, the whole world of rebels, with Satan and his infernal legion at their head place on the other, the just, the generous, the meek, the benevolent people of God,