er your future condemnation. For you in vain the Saviour died. His Gospel is to you the savour of death unto death. For you in vain apostles preached, and martyrs bled, to hand a gracious religion down. For you in vain the followers of Jesus pray. The sun shines on you in vain, for it shines to light you to destruction. The years roll on in vain, for every added year increases your load of guilt. Health blesses you in vain, for your soul is sickening to eternal death. Ali the mercies of this world, and all that respect the next, are spoiled or lost to you, and are, to adopt the thought of an old divine, but like a talent of gold, to a man sinking in the sea, which only serves to plunge him deeper in ruin.’ So that, harsh as it may sound, it would really have been better for you to have been cut off in your sins, years ago, and then to have been sent te hell, than to live here adding to the number of your eins, and then to sink to endless wretchedness. Yes, unhappy youth, if you continue careless of religion, every added year will prove a curse instead of a blessing. The longer you live in this world, the deeper will be your misery in the next. The more mercies you enjoy, the more guilt you contract. The more blessings you receive from God, the baser is your ingratitude and sin in refusing to give him your youth. A dying profligate once said, "I have been too strong for OmnipoI have plucked down ruin." Thus, by carelessness and neglect, you change God's blessings into curses; and, as it were compel the Lord when kindest to you," to aggravate your ruin, instead of promoting your happiness. O, what would you think of a sick man, who, by some fatal power, should change all the remedies, by which a kind physician would restore his health, into a subtle poison, which should spread through his body, occasion him years of misery, and in the end, torture him to death! Distracted wretch! you might exclaim, all are kind to him but himself! how happy might he be, if he felt half the pity for himself, that others feel for him! Do you slight your God? you act this part; nay, a far worse than this; you change his healing medicines into poison; his blessings into curses. You heap up wrath against the day of wrath. By the tence. 12 Cor. i. 16, very mercies of God, you are preparing matter for your own torment; not merely through a few fleeting years, but through a dreadful eternity. Distracted youth! did you feel half that pity for your own soul, that others feel for you, how happy would you become; how many are kind to you! how cruel are you to yourself! O, cease thus to run in the path of destruction, you may yet find that one thing, the want of which is so dreadful. O seek it now, for they that seek the Lord early, shall find him. "While conscience speaks, its voice regard, CHAPTER XV. The young sinner's ingratitude to God and cruelty to his own soul urged as reasons for embracing religion in youth. SECT. 1. The neglect of Early Religion manifests the basest ingratitude to God, and....s. 2. To the Lord Jesus Christ.... 8. 3. Such neglect is extreme cruelty to the soul....s. 4. It is unkind to all who wish the young reader well for ever. SECT. 1. I HAVE already, my young friend, shown you, that by the piety of youth, you may testify the most gratitude for divine love; and that though all you can offer to God is little, yet that thus, you may present him with the best offering in your power. You have also seen, that he would remember this kindness of your youth, to your infinite advantage and eternal blessedness: but perhaps all has failed; perhaps you still remain thoughtless, or at least undecided. I beseech you then reverse the scene. Spend a few moments in meditating on the unkindness of a youth of sin to God, and on its cruelty to yourself. Indulge those thoughts that may now be useful; but which will otherwise fill your last hours with horror, and plant your dying bed with thorns. While you continue careless of religion, you lead a life of base ingratitude to the God that gave you being. Ingratitude is one of the most detestable of crimes. It has been pronounced 56 Of vices first, Most infamous, and most accurs'd." It is indiscribably base when manifested to a friend or parent, in this world; but baser still is unkindness and ingratitude to God. Has not he given you life, and crowned that life with comfort? Whence flows the ease of health! or whence the cheerful vigour of youth but from his kindness to you? Whence the friends, the parents, the comforts that you have enjoyed? All are the gifts of God. He has blessed you here, and in the gift of Jesus, provided for your blessedness hereafter; and does all this goodness merit no thankful return? Shall God be thus kind to you, and you unkind to him? Do you remember a fable, which perhaps you may have read in your childhood? the fable of the countryman and the serpent. A compassionate countryman found a serpent, chilled with frost; he cherished it; he put it in his bosom; he cherished it with tenderness there. The vital warmth restored it to life and activity; but what was its first action? It would fain have destroyed its benefactor; him to whom it owed its life and preservation. Apply this fable to the present subject. Has not God done more for you, than words can express? Are not you indebted to him for life, breath, being, and a things? Through his fostering care, you have reached the vigour and bloom of youth; and what are your first actions; what is the commencement of your course? Neglect of God and religion; and thus base ingratitude and sin. O, is not this imitating the serpent? It is true, your abused Benefactor is beyond the reach of real injury; but your ingratitude is the same, as if he could receive the greatest injury from you. You deny him your youth, your favoured youth. The time in which you are most favoured by God, the blooming season which he values most, that very time, that very bloom, you give to Satan, the world, and sin. O! while you act this part, little as you may suspect it, the venom of the old serpent is rankling in your heart. Perhaps you delude yourself by imagining, that you shall present him the latter part of Ffe; but does not his goodness claim all your days? Besides, what can the aged convert offer? them no more: his pleasures? but he can enjoy them no longer: his honour? but it has withered on his brow: his authority? but it has dropped from his feeble hand. He leaves his sins, when they will no longer bear him company."* "His riches? but he can use Sect. 2. In neglecting early piety, you are ungrateful to the Son of God. He humbled himself to earth, he hungered and thirsted, groaned and wept, endured the thorns, the scourge, the cross, and even bled and died, in pity to your soul; and he demands no return, but what is for your good as well as his glory. He demands your heart; and you refuse to give it. He bids you walk in the way to heaven, and you refuse to listen to him. Were not they basely cruel and ungrateful to him, who cried "not this man but Barabbas;" who thus preferred a murderer to the Lord of life; but you act as guilty a part while you prefer the world, that delusive destroyer, to a dying Saviour, and a gracious God! Rather you do worse than the murderers of the Lord of glory did. Many of them knew not what they did, and while they preferred the murderer Barabbas to the blessed Jesus, through blindness and prejudice, they knew not how wicked was their choice. You are more ungrateful and unkind to Christ than they; while you profess to view him as the Son of God, and Saviour of men, and yet, in reality, prefer to him, not Barabbas, but sin and Satan. Perhaps you say, "Surely I do not act this horrid part," but O! deceive not your own heart, for in God's esteem, you do, while you refuse to yield your youth to Christ. Though you may merely neglect his grace, yet according to the Scriptures, grace neglected is grace refused; and though you may be merely careless of the Lord Jesus, through thoughlessness or love to the world, yet it is most certain, that a Saviour slighted, is a Saviour rejected; and O dreadful rejected for what? for vanity, folly, and pleasure; or, in plainer words, for the service of the world, and the devil. And O! rejected by whom? By one to whom Christ has an everlasting right. Yes, he has such a right to you though you may refuse to acknowledge his claim; and in denying your heart to him, you are not * Jay's Sermons. merely guilty of the most base ingratitude, but of the vilest injustice. You rob h of his right. You rob not man but God; you rob Goa of his honour, and the divine Saviour of what is most justly his; God said of old to Israel, Will a man rob God? yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings. Ve are cursed with a curse: for ye have robbed me, even this whole nation.o Is not this the language of his word. You are not your own but bought with a price, therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's. What would you think of a man, that might rob an affectionate parent, to give what he stole from his best friend to a most detestable and cruel enemy of that parent and of himself? O, folly, madness, wickedness, ingratitude! My young friend, is not this the part you act if you deny Jesus what is due? and give what his love claims to his greatest enemy and yours! If you refuse him your youth and prime, to which he has an endless right, and give that youth and prime to Satan? Love so amazing, so divine as his, demands "your life, your soul, your all;" and shall it have no grateful return? When you owe God every thing, will you be so base as to give him nothing. Sect. 2. In refusing your youth to God, you are guilty of the greatest cruelty to yourself. Better far had it been for you never to have been born, than to come into the world to spend a few sinful years, and then to go and make your sad abode with devils and the damned; where the worm never dieth, and the fire never shall be quenched. You would think any one dreadfully cruel to himself, who might cut and mangle his own body, who might tear off his own flesh, who might thrust his own limbs into the fire, and keep them there, in misery, till they were consumed. But which is worst, to mangle a mortal body, or undo an immortal soul? to thrust a limb into the fire, or to throw the soul into hell? If you beheld one, that by a fall from his horse, or from a house roof, had his limbs broken, and lay writhing in agony on the ground, would you not declare him cruel to himself, if a friend stood by ready and able to cure him, and he were to refuse the needful help? 31 Cor. vi. 20. 2Mal. iii. S, 9. |