beyond all others, should interest your attention, and engage all your heart. And now they see you negligent of God and religion, and mourn in secret that the child they love is still a child of Satan. Ah! young man, or young woman, if this he your case, God will bring you into judgment, for all your abuse of precious privileges, and all your neglect of parental instructions. And the prayers, and the tears, and the admonitions of your parents, will awfully witness against you. Think not, that if affectionate and kind to them, you will much mitigate the sorrows of truly pious parents. No, they will still mourn at the thought that the affectionate child they fondly love, is not a child of God. It will grieve them to the heart, to consider how near you are to endless destruction, and how soon they must bid you an eternal farewell, when they go to that rest, in which they have no hope of meeting you. Ah! my young friend, if you slight religion, pious parents may leave you, mournfully saying, in their dying hour, "Alas, our beloved child, we shall see you no more; for our God you have not chosen as your God, and our Saviour you have not sought as your Saviour; and the heaven to which we go, is a rest to which you have no title, and which, dying as you are, you cannot enter!" Yes, bitterly will they mourn to think, that, with so much that is lovely in their view, there is in you nothing that is lovely in the sight of God; and that all which they esteem so pleasing in you, must soon be buried in the deeps of hell. Sect. 5. Another sin, not peculiar to the young, but awfully prevalent among them, is the waste of precious time. The word of God reminds us that time is short," and commands us to redeem the time.15 The value of time is beyond our comprehension or expression. "What its worth, ask death-beds-they can tell : A moment we may wish when worlds want wealth to buy." Time is given us to prepare for eternity; but, alas, how are its golden hours sinned and trifled away. Many young persons act as if they thought they had so much time before them, that they may afford to squander some, when perhaps their wasted youth is their all-all in which they will ever have an opportunity of preparing for eternity-all in which they can "'scape from hell and fly to heaven." One of the most common ways, in which time is worse than wasted, is the employing of it on romances, plays, and novels. Novels are the poison of the age: the best of them tend to produce a baneful effeminacy of mind, and many of them are calculated to advance the base designs of the licentious and abandoned, on the young and unsuspecting. But, were they free from every other charge of evil, it is a most heavy one, that they occasion a dreadful waste of that time which must be accounted for before the God of heaven. Let their deluded admirers plead the advantages of novel-reading, if they will venture to plead the same before the worthy Judge eternal. If you are a novel-reader, think the next time you take a novel into your hands, "How shall I answer to my tremendous Judge, for the time occupied by this? When he shall say to me, I gave you so many years in yonder world, to fit you for eternity; Did you converse with your God in devotion-did you study his word-did you attend to the duties of life, and strive to improve to some good end even your leisure hours? Then, then, shall I be willing to reply, Lord, my time was otherwise employed: novels and romances occupied the leisure of my days; when, alas! my Bible, my God, and my soul, were neglected?" In this way, and many others, is time, that most precious blessing, squandered away. Does not conscience remind you of many leisure hours-hours which, though thoughtlessly thrown away, would soon to you be worth more than mountains of gold or of pearl. . Sect. 6. Wilful neglect of the soul and eternity, is another common sin of youth. Young persons presume on future life, and grieve the Holy Spirit, by delaying to regard the one thing needful. They trust in their youth. God reproves the folly, and says, Boast not thyself of to-morrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth;16 but few will listen to the warning. Instead of doing so, they flatter themselves, that they shall live for many years; and think sickness, 16 Prov. xxvii. 1. death, and judgment far from them. Hence they neg lect the soul, and seem to imagine religion unsuitable, or at least, not needful for themselves. The blessed God calls on them in his word; the crucified Saviour bids them come to himself; I love them that love me, and they that seek me early shall find me. 17 The ministers of the gospel urge the advice upon them; prayers are offered, tears shed for them; yet many persist in their own ways and, whatever they do, will not remember their Creator in the days of their youth. My young friend, has this been your sin and folly? O, if it has, remember how many ways there are out of the world; how many diseases to cut short your days. God gives you time enough to secure salvation; but think not that he gives you any to spare. Sect. 7. An inordinate love of sensual pleasure and worldly gayeties, is another most prevalent sin of youth. The word of God describes those who live in pleasure as dead while they live;18 and classes with the most abominably wicked those who are lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God.19 Though such are the declarations of the Lord, yet, pleasure, pleasure, is the chief object of thousands of the young. Some pursue it, in the gross and brutish paths of rioting and drunkenness, of chambering and wantonness;, others in less profligate ways, but with hearts no less intent upon it. The card-table, the dance, the horse race, the playhouse, the fair, the wake, are the scenes of their highest felicity. My young friend, has not this love of worldly pleasure dwelt in your heart? Perhaps you havo not run into scandalous and disgraceful excesses; but have you not had a greater love to worldly pleasures than to God and religion? If you have, you but too surely bear that awful mark, of being a child of destruction, that you are a lover of pleasures more than a lover of God. Have you not been present at scenes of sinful amusement and guilty festivity? Have not you been as anxious as others, for those sensual delights which were most suited to your taste? and while thus loving this world, have not you forgotten that which is to come? Have not you been more pleased with some shining bauble or glittering toy, than with the blessings displayed in the gospel? and been more earnest about a day of promised pleasure than about securing an eternity of pure, celestial joy? Think not that I mean to insinuate that the Christian should be the slave of melancholy. Far from it; none have so much reason to be cheerful as he, "Who reads his title clear, To mansions in the skies." But wide is the difference between the innocent cheerfulness, and humble joy of the christian, and the vain pleasures of a foolish world. The truly religious have their delights, though they know that there is, No room for mirthful trifling here, For worldly hope or worldly fear, If now the Judge is at the door, And all mankind must stand before The inexorable throne. Let conscience now answer, as in the sight of God, has the love of worldly and sensual pleasure been cherished in your heart? If your situation has prevented your freely following the delights of sense, has the love of them dwelt within? If it has, though you should not have had the opportunity of indulging your worldly taste once in a month, or a year, you are still, in God's sight, as much a lover of pleasures as if these had occupied every moment of your time. Sect. 8. Sabbath-breaking, though not confined to the young, is a sin that eternally ruins thousands of them. God calls the Sabbath-day his own, but makes the profit of it ours; and Sabbaths spent in holiness, devotion, faith and love, are blessings which help the soul towards heaven; while broken Sabbaths increase the sinner's load of guilt here, and of misery hereafter. At the beginning of time, God set this blessed day apart for sacred uses; and his express commandment is, "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.""20 He calls for the day. He does not say, Keep holy the Sabbath morning, or the Sabbath afternoon, or the Sabbath evening, but the Sabbath day. Though this awful 20 Exodus xx. 8. commandment is thus positive and express, yet no sin is more common than Sabbath-breaking. Some profane the whole day; others a part of it. Some employ many of the precious hours of the Sabbath in attending to their worldly employments; others make it a season for finery and gayety. They go even to the house of God, merely to see or be seen. They idle away their sacred time in trifling conversation, vain amusements, and silly mirth; or waste the holy day in rambling in the fields, with companions as frivolous and worldly as themselves. Yet Sabbath-breaking is the fruitful source of sin and misery. A Sabbath-breaker is justly described as “one who despises his Maker, rebels against the King of kings, defies his vengeance, provokes his wrath, disgraces the Christian name, tramples on the laws of his country, ruins his own soul, and poisons others by his fatal example.'* And how have your Sabbaths been spent? Have you been one of the thoughtless young women, or loose young men, that, on the Sabbath-day, in giddy, but truly pitiable parties, throng our streets, or wander in our fields? Have you been one who has made that most blessed day no blessing to yourself? Sect. 9. The Apostle. Paul, when enumerating some of the sins of mankind, concludes the dreadful list with that of their taking pleasure in the sins of others." This, though one of the most awful, is one of the most common of human iniquities, and abounds among none more than among the young. Young persons are often each other's tempters and destroyers. The lewd and profane tempt others to lewdness and profaneness: the thoughtless and the gay persuade others to imitate their levity and folly. As if it were not sufficient to have their own sins to account for, many thus make themselves partakers in the sins of others; and, as if it were not enough to ruin their own souls, many thus contract the guilt of assisting to destroy those of their companions and friends. Have you never thus led others into sin? Perhaps some, who are now lost for ever, may be lamenting, in utter darkness and despair, the fatal hour when they became acquainted with you. Have any learned of you to trifle with religion, to squander away their golden day of |