those whom the ear blessed when it heard, whom the eye gave witness to when it saw, with the' brightness of the father's glory at their head. One of these companies you must imitate, one of these you must join, and associate with for ever. Conscience, I conjure thee in the name of God to do thine office. Ah! ye are witnesses against yourselves that ye have chosen the Lord to serve him.. Think a little on your interest. Interest is a powerful motive among mankind. For interest they deny themselves a thousand pleasures; for interest they expose themselves to a thousand dangers, and often for a mistaken interest. Religion pleads with you on this head to day. It is the interest of your body, which religion preserves, which iniquity destroys; for bloody and deceitful men shall not live out half their days. It is the interest of your soul, which without religion is irretrievably lost; for without holiness no man shall see the Lord. It is the interest of your family; for the curse of the Lord is in the house of the wicked! but he blesseth the habitation of the just. It is the interest of your circumstances; for there is that scattereth and yet increascth; and there is that withholdeth more than is meet and it tendeth to poverty. It is the interest of your diversions; for the wicked man travaileth with pain all his days, a dreadful sound is in his ears. It is the interest of your character: indeed in a world made up of righteous and wicked, it is impossible to gain the applauses of both; yet somehow or other, even a wicked man's conscience will approve what he hath not courage to imitate; he that loveth pureness of heart, for the grace of his lips the king shall be his friend. In youth, in manhood, in old age; abroad, at home, at meeting, at market; alone, in company; in prosperity and in adversity; in the gaieties of life, and in the agonies of death; religion is your best and truest interest. if Meditate a moment on the necessity of gratitude. Favors confer obligations which all but devils love to discharge. Ingratitude is a vice so black that the world disowns and detests it. But. you persist in sin, are you not guilty of the most. hateful ingratitude? You are a rational creature capable of enjoying God: you are of that species of rationals which God went to redeem, when he passed by angels: you were born in Christendom, not in the wilds of America: not in the bosom of popery, where the beauty of christianity is hid under disgustful superstitions, but in a reformed church: your magistrates have protected you: your ministers instructed you: your parents taught you: thousands of friendly hands have assisted you all. these become supplicants to you, all these cry, only acknowledge thine iniquity. Will you, like a wild ass, snuff up the wind at your pleasure, and practically say there is no hope. No, for I have loved strangers, and after them will I go ! Monster of ingratitude, is this thy kindness to thy friends? : Look at the state of the church. A christian society is the noblest association in the world, the world, like the house of Obed-edom, is blest for the ark's sake; your ancestors were sensible of this when they hazarded their lives and properties to plant religious assemblies; and are you more concerned to support an ale-house club, than to uphold this society? a society assembled by the express direction of the only wise God, purchased by the invaluable price of Christ's blood, separated and sanctified by the holy spirit. Shall the lives of the apostles, the labours of the fathers, the blood of so many martyrs, the tears of your parents, the prayers of your ministers; shall all these go to support, and will you desert it? Distressing thought! especially to thy father! O how he wishes for Davids blessing, a son grown up like a plant in his youth, to whom when he dies he might say, I go the way of all the earth, but thou art a wise man, and knowest what thou oughtest to do. Cruel son! wilt thou imbitter death to that good old inan by robbing him of this his only hope? wilt thou bring down his grey hairs with sorrow to the grave? Were you rewarded according to your works, men would clap their hands at you, and hiss you out of your place. Consider finally therefore the issue of all: for rewarded according to your works you will undoubtedly be. Pleasing as the present scene is, to the impenitent it is but as the fine dawn of that day in which Sodom was destroyed. Presently perhaps the Lord will rain upon the wicked snares, fire, and brimstone, and an horrible tempest, for him that loveth violence his soul always hateth. What if the Lord delayeth his coming? Carry your thoughts forward to the longest period of life, at last comes death, you must die, willing or unwilling stupid or afraid, a loiterer in God's vineyard, or a labourer in the devil's the day will finish, and you must die: but how? Terrors shall take hold on you as waters; a tempest shall steal you away in the night, an east-wind as a storm shall hurl you out of your place. Dreadful as death is, after it comes judgment. How will you look the judge in the face? There, in the presence of thousand thousands that minister to him, of ten thousand times ten thousand that stand before him; there, when the sea gives up the dead which were in it, and death and hell deliver up the dead which were in them; there, when small and great stand before God; there, to the ancient of days, whose purity is inconceivable, whose vengeance is is insufferable, to him who strikes through kings in the day of his wrath, who confoundeth the proudest sinner, and accepteth the meanest service; to him will we solemnly deliver you up, and say, This our son was stubborn and rebellious, he would not obey our voice, he was a glutton and a drunkard. Then what would you give if all Israel might stone you with stones, that you might die? No, death would be mercy: the judge shall say depart into everlasting fire. Fearful solemnity of inflexible justice! when hell from beneath shall move to meet thee at thy coming; when he who blessed himself in his heart while he heard the words of the curse, saying, I shall have peace though I add drunkeness to thirst, shall lie under all the curses of this book; when the anger of Jehovah and his jealousy shall smoke against him, and shall blot out his name from under heaven. When all that fear God shall say Hallelujah, while your smoke riseth up for ever and ever. When these friendly tears of a compassionate stranger shall be dried up; these? Alas! even your parents, free from the weakness of the passions, and full of the equity of the punishment, your parents shall weep no more, but shout Rejoice over her thou heavén,... Let us finish. Do you say, pray to the Lord for us, that none of these things which you have spoken may come upon us? We will do so chearfully, being affectionately desirous of you, we are willing to impart unto you, not the gospel of God only, but also our own souls, because you are dear unto us; but in vain we do all this, except you repent and pray for yourselves. Some of you have religious parents, whose lives are bound up in yours, who wait to assist and encourage you. Go generous youths, refresh their bowels in the Lord. Obey the dictates of nature and of scripture. While their repeated instructions drop like the rain, and distil as the dew, may you grow like the cedars in Lebanon. When he that planted and they that watered are dead, may you flourish in the next generation, transmitting to your children, and to your children's children the precious gospel which we commit to you: and when you have out grown this nursery, may you be transplanted into the para |