gain the path of fober virtue. Do you contemplate a reformation of manners? Now is the time to begin the important work. Do you feriously intend to make a profeffion of religion? Make that profeffion now. What our Saviour once faid to Judas on another occafion, I would fay to you," what thou doeft, dó quickly." There is no time to be loft; the whole period of human life is but a tale that is told. In what terms, then, fhall we describe that period, in which we may fow the feeds of virtue, and form those habits, which conftitute the life of God in the foul.

There is every reafon for an immediate attention to our eternal interefts. We are exhorted, we are conjured, to confider the things which belong to our peace, before they are hidden from our eyes. The tender mercies of God, the dying love of our Redeemer, the precious promifes, and awful threatenings of the gofpel, the joys of heaven, and the hor rours of the infernal world, are all fet before us as inducements to forfake our fins, and to live reasonable creatures. Let not thefe confiderations be overlooked; they merit our attention; the young, in particular, fhould give earnest

heed

heed to thefe arguments in favour of practical religion; and every man, who retains a moral faculty, fhould be convinced by them of the abfolute neceffity of doing, without delay, what his hands find to do.

Would to God it were poffible to realize the value of the prefent moment ! Would to God we had a juft idea of the deceitfulness of fin! Oh that we could afcend to heaven, and be witneffes of the exquifite felicity of the righteous! Oh that we could penetrate the blacknefs of darkness, and be fpectators of the fhameand mifery of the ungodly Oh that we could trace things to their confequences,. and fee how naturally, and how neceffarily, our prefent conduct muft determineour future condition! Could we con-template our actions in all their connex-ions, we should moft affuredly make hafte, and delay not to keep the commandments. "I love them, who love me, and thofe, who feek me early fhall find me," are words which ought to make a lafting impreffion on our minds; could we feel the whole force of this affurance, religion would never want friends among young perfons; youthful folly, vanity, and difipation would be unknown; but the

rifing generation would be an ornament to human nature; and growing in years, would grow in favour with God and man. Amen.