you not known their painful solicitude of soul for your happiness and your eternal interests? What have you done with all these lessons of piety, these assistances to virtue and goodness? Have you cast them all behind your back, and are you grown as negligent of God and Christ, and religion and sacred things, as those who have been brought up as the savages of the wilderness, and have been suffered to run at large in a wicked world, thoughtless of God and of all that is holy? Have you taken no more care to practise the rules of sobriety and temperance than those who have been nursed up in a wild and licentious indulgence of appetite and passion? Have you no more strictness in your morals than those who were born in families which made no pretences to virtue, and took no care to instil the principles of religion and goodness into the souls of their offspring? It is time, my friends, it is bigh time to bethink yourselves and put such enquiries as these to your own consciences; these early blessings will become a terrible aggravation of your guilt in the great day of account, if the Judge shall then find that you have abused and lost them.

II. You who have sat under a serious, a fervent and evangelical ministry, who have heard betimes of the evil of sin, who have been taught the danger of your state by nature, that you are afar off from God and heaven, you who have been instructed early in the gospel of Christ, and the methods of his salvation by the preaching of the word, what have you done more than others? You have known Jesus betimes, and learned his offices as a Mediator to bring sinners near to God; as a prophet to reveal the mind and will of God to you; as a high priest to make atonement for sin on earth, and to intercede for you in the court of heaven; as a king to give you laws, and to govern you; as a heavenly example of all that is pious toward God, and beneficent toward man: Have you ever endeavoured to im press on your own hearts a deep and humbling sense of your sinful and dangerous state without renewing grace and an interest in the Mediator's love? Have you ever yielded yourselves up to this blessed Mediator, and received his salvation? Have you prayed carnestly for the divine influences of the Holy Spirit, which you have been often told are promised in the gospel, to make you new creatures, and assist you in every duty? Have you had a constant awful sense of death and judgment, of heaven and hell, which have been so frequently set before you in the ministry of the word, and impressed upon your ears and your consciences with life and fervency? Have your fruits of holiness been answerable to this favourable cultivation which heaven has bestowed upon you? Do you remember that awful representation of your case by the apostle in Heb. vi. 7. The earth which drinketh in the rain that comes oft upon it, and still bears nothing

but briars and thorns, is rejected of God, and is nigh unto cursing, whose end is to be burned? And can your own reason or your conscience afford you one word of apology or defence against this righteous curse and this burning sentence?

Let us think with ourselves what multitudes there are who have not been trained up in the ways of public worship, who through the wickedness of their parents, or through their great distance from the places of any religious assemblies, have been very much unacquainted with any of the blessings of a gospel ministry think what numbers of families, especially in the country, are brought up to the labours and drudgeries of life at the distance of some miles from a church of any kind, and are not able to attend on any ministrations of the gospel without great fatigue and inconveniences: How transcendent have our advantages been above others? Have we made a right use of these blessings? We who dwell as it were in the house of God, who live near the gates of Zion, who have the ordinances of Christ brought almost to our doors, have we delighted ourselves in the worship of the sanctuary and in the assemblies of the people of God? Or have we cried out what a weariness is it? And have we neglected the methods of grace which the providence of God has brought so near us? Have our lips and our lives and whole. behaviour manifested that we have been often with God, and that we have been nourished up in holiness with the provisions of the house of God? Do we think these heavenly provisions will never be accounted for? Or that the great God will never ask what use we have made of them all ?

III. You who have been favoured with religious friends, companions and acquaintance in the course of life, such as you may converse with freely about the things of God and your own soul, and who will be ready to help you onward in the way to heaven, what have you done more than others? How desirable a thing is it for young christians to have such a friend as David; Ps. Ixvi. 16. Come unto me, and I will tell you what God has done for my soul? How happy is it to be placed amongst such acquaintance who will walk with you in the road to salvation, and with whom you may go to the house of God in company? When young persons first begin to be awakened to a sense of sin, to enquire what must they do to be saved, and to set their faces toward heaven, how sweet and unspeakable a blessing is it to have a religious friend near them, to whom they can unbosom themselves, who can assist them with their advice, encourage them with their company, support them by their own experience, and keep religion warm in their hearts by holy conference? Who can give them a gentle admonition of their danger, who can stir them up to duty whensoever they grow negligent, and recal them when they wander from the paths of piety and peace? What ad

vances in holiness are justly expected from persons who have enjoyed such an advantage as this?

How afflictive and melancholy is the case of many persons in their younger years, whose lot is cast in families where there is not so much as the profession or form of godliness? Who have had not one religious acquaintance, not one friend to speak a serious word to them for months or years together? Who are under the perpetual impression of evil communications and the mischievous influence of wicked companions? Who are drawn away betimes into snares and defilements ere they are aware of their danger? How unhappy are they who instead of hearing pious discourse live daily in the midst of profaneness? Who are surrounded with the language of hell, and where oaths and curses and blasphemies of the name of God are made constant and familiar? And if at any time a holy thought, or an awful sense of sin be awakened within them, the divine spark is quenched on a sudden, and never suffered to kindle into a flame; and every hopeful appearance of religion or virtue is blasted and destroyed in the very bud? How much more blessed are your circumstances who have been freed from the temptations of evil company in the dangerous years of youth? It is expected that you should preserve yourselves more unspotted and pure from all the vices of the age, that your lips and your lives should be untainted with the licentious impiety or lewdness of the times, that your behaviour should be more agreeable to the rules of strict godliness, and your virtues in the world would shine with a more illustrious light and your souls be animated with the purest flames of devotion, since you have had nothing to damp or discourage them. But on the other hand, if ye have run into the paths of folly and madness without the allurements of an evil companion, without the influence of a wicked example, without those temptations to which others are exposed, how aggravated is your guilt in the sight of God, and how deep and sensible ought your repentance to be!

IV. You who have had books of piety and religion put into your hand from your youngest years, and have been taught to read the great things of God and of your salvation, what have you learnt, what have you done more than others? You who have been excited and encouraged to acquaint yourselves with the necessary and important things of religion by reading; who have had the rules and advice, the precepts, the promises and threatenings of the word of God drawn up into a narrow compass in religious treatises, and set before you in a most powerful and persuasive manner; you who have enjoyed the labours of your fathers, and are addressed by the dead and the living, in their practical and pathetic writings, with the kindest exhortations to virtue and piety, and the most awful warnings against every sin; you who

have been allared by all the most engaging methods your parents or your friends could think of to acquaint yourselves with the histories of scripture, the doctrines of religion, the examples of godliness, and the important affairs of your immortal souls: it is expected that you should exceed others in practical godliness since you have enjoyed all these assistances. Let us be persuaded to consider with ourselves, how many there are of our age that never had one pious book put into their hands, and it may be they have never been taught to read; or if they have learned the art of reading, it has been employed from their childhood in wanton songs, in lewd novels or trifling romances; and thus their fancies and their thinking powers have been unhappily tinctured with iniquity, and vitiated even from their youngest years: what degrees of holiness have we attained higher than they? What im provement have we made of our privileges to acquire more eminent advances in piety, and get further onward in our way to salvation?

V. You who have had closets or secret chambers at your command, and proper places of retirement provided for you, wherein to retreat from the world, and converse with God and your own hearts, what have you done in religion more than others? This is a most considerable advantage for improvement in godliness. Mat. vi. 6. our Saviour bids us enter into our closets, and pray to our heavenly Father who seeth in secret, and he promises in his Father's name that he will reward us openly. What multitudes are there in the world whose parents have been so negligent of serious religion both in themselves and their offspring, as never to contrive or provide for their chil dren either any opportunities or any conveniences for secret worship; nor have the young creatures ever been taught to retire from the world, and call upon God in secret ? And what numbers also have always lain under such strait circumstances even from their childhood, that they are seldom able to find a retiring place, the whole family being confined to a single room or two? And if at any time the word of God has reached their consciences, and awakened them to a painful sense of their sin and danger, if they have been earnestly enquiring after relief and pardon and salvation, when their souls have been full and ready to overflow under a deep impression of divine things, they have neither had a friend into whose ears they could vent their inward sorrows, nor a secret corner to retire where they might pour out their souls before God? This has been a most afflictive and painful hindrance to young and early religion; but as for you who have enjoyed blessed advantages for retirement, what have you profited by them? O say thus to your own souls, Have 1 made more constant visits to heaven than others? Have I conversed more frequently with God than they? Have I arrived at a more humble and intimate acquaintance with God through Jesus

Christ the Mediator? Have I attained greater freedom at the throne of grace, and treasured up richer experiences about the duty and the grace of prayer, the pleasure and the success of ? Have I learned more of the temper of my own heart when I have had such conveniences for retirement and for self-examination, such opportunities to converse with God and my own soul, and to transact the important affairs of eternity? Which of us in this assembly who have enjoyed this advantage have not reason to smile upon our breast, to acknowledge our guilt, and to mourn before the Lord ?

VI. You who are not so overburdened with the businesses and cares of life but you can find frequent seasons of leisure, which may be employed in the concerns of your eternal interests, what do you more than others? Methinks when I observe some persons, and even whole families under such degrees of poverty, that they are forced as it were to plow and thresh for their bread from morning to night through the whole weck, who are as it were chained to the labouring oar, and must sweat and toil early and late, and break in upon the hours of natural sleep and repose in order to support this mortal life, and to furnish themselves or their household with food and raiment; when I observe how very little time or leisure they can employ to the purposes of religion for their own profit, or for the spiritual benefit of their offspring, I cannot but pity them at my heart and if at any time they have had any breathings of soul after God or godliness, the perpetual cries of nature in their poor starving families have almost drowned the voice of awakened conscience, and made them neglect the one thing needful: they have been so constantly engaged in labouring for the meat that perishes, that they have little time to seek that which endures to eternal life. Surely upon a review some of us should be awakened to reffect upon many wasted hours of leisure that we have spent in vanity, and whole days that have been squandered away in foolish trifling or vain amusement. Oh how much better might many of these happy seasons have been improved in closets and retiring rooms, in reading or prayer, to carry on the designs of religion and our everlasting happiness!

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How valuable a thing is time, though it flies away in silence and so much unnoticed and unregarded! Time for rebels to seek their peace with God! Time for guilty creatures to implore a pardon! Time for those whose hearts are by nature corrupt and sinful, to labour with their hard and sinful hearts by applying the promises, the precepts and the threatenings of the word, in order to soften, to purify and refine them! Time to wrestle with God in prayer for the assistances of his Spirit! Time for miserable creatures to pursue happiness! Time for mortal creatures to prepare for death, and for their immortal spirits to get ready