years back, were as gay as you can be, but O all earthly things are for ever past with them. You are young now, so were they then; but youth and vigour have forsaken them. You are healthy now, so then were they; though since numbered with the dead. The world then seemed as enchanting to them, as it can do to you; they were as eager as you for its delights, and as much set upon its dying pleasures; but they are gone; and O what is it to their poor breathless dust? What will it soon be to yours? They are mouldered back to dust. Their very coffins are decayed. Their business is done. Their gaiety is over. Their joys are past. They are gone into the world of spirits. Prepared or unprepared, they have met their God. O what new scenes have opened upon them! With what terror have they, who refused God's grace in this world, been dragged by hellish fiends to everlasting burnings! Could some of these unhappy creatures now address you, did not the malignity of their nature prevent them, they might say, "Avoid our folly. Shun our misery. Sin and the world have ruined us; heart-rending thought! ruined us for ever! A little while back, pleasure, health, and youth were ours! Then we were as eager in the pursuit of fancied happiness, as you can possibly be. The world appeared

dressed in as gay colours to us, as it now does to you. We trusted in our youth, and looked on future years as our own, which, alas! we never lived to see. Vanity and pride filled our hearts; pleasure was our idol, and the world our delight. Alas! we lived as if it were our home, and forgot that we were but travellers through it to eternal scenes. We quenched the warnings of conscience; we scorned the admonitions of pious friends; and thought those strangely impertinent that reminded us of death and the grave, though, alas! we were so near to both. We deemed religion a melancholy thing; and scorned those blessings, for which we should now think a thousand worlds a little price. We ridiculed the folly of professing to be strangers and pilgrims upon earth; and looked down with contemptuous pity on those whose chief concern on earth was safely to reach heaven. We thought our folly wisdom, and their true wisdom folly. We heard the tolling bell, but forgot that it would soon toll for us. We saw the opened grave, unmindful that that land of silence would quickly be our long home. Trifling as you, we stopped not to consider what we were, and what we soon must be. But youth failed us, death arrived, and the lying vanities of life fled at its touch. Then we discovered our misery.

Then we saw our want; but alas! too late. Woe is us! Our day of grace is gone. The tidings of mercy are now unheard by us. The blood of Jesus can never cleanse us; nor the compassion of God reach us now.

For the vain pleasures of a moment, we have ruined a whole eternity."

O my young friend! would the tale of horror, that such unhappy creatures, if permitted, could relate, make you feel how vain is youth? remember, I beseech you, that it is as vain as if you could hear their doleful lamentations. Millions of the young die every year. 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!

O my young friend, while you are a dying creature, would you lead a life most basely wicked, by refusing to yield your youth to Christ? Would you have, at last, to lament

that you have rushed headlong into hell, in spite of all that was done, to turn your feet into the way of heaven? Prevent such sad reflections, I beseech you. As ever you would find mercy at the bar of God, fly to the God of mercy now. Seek Jesus in these the fair days of your youth. I know with many young persons it is now an easy thing to slight the friendly warning that bids them follow the Saviour, and to avoid or deride the friend that gives it; but it will be dreadfully hard at last to remember slighted warnings-abused privileges-a gracious God forsaken a kind Saviour neglected-a wasted youth-a heaven lost-a hell incurred-and a devil pleased instead of God. One way remains for you to escape all these evils; it is to go to Christ for life. May God lead you to him!

CHAPTER XIV.

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

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 miseries that attend the path of transgressors. If you, my youthful reader, are still careless of salvation, allow me now to entreat you to yield yourself to Christ, not by showing you the charms of religion, but by convincing you "that the way of transgressors is hard." This 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."

Depravity and corruption have led you into the ways of sin, and blindness keeps you contented there. "The god of this world (Satan) hath blinded the minds of them