sakes, if not for your own, begin to seek early the God of your fathers.

My brethren, will any of you say, in order to avoid the force of this appeal to the best feelings of your nature: All this, though true, is not applicable to me; my parents themselves are unconverted, and have not these feelings?' Wo, wo, to such criminal parents! they shall answer not only for their own souls; the blood of their children also shall be required at their hands! But leaving them to their Judge, let us inquire whether filial affection will not powerfully urge you also to seek the Lord, although your parents are, as you say, unconverted. Yes, if you will turn unto the Lord, you will save them from accumulated misery. Their punishment, though it be solitary, will be inconceivably severe, when they are enwrapped in the flames of the abyss. But oh! if they meet you there, it will be tenfold more excruciating. The sight of you will kindle in their breasts an inward hell. At sight of you, conscience will speak to them in a voice of thunder, and reproach them, that, worse than the worshippers of Moloch, they have not been contented with their own perdition, unless they could also sacrifice their child to Satan, and devote him to the flames. Oh! flee in time then to Jesus, that you may not bring down this additional punishment on the heads of your parents. Oh! flee in time to Jesus, and you may perhaps be made the instruments of saving your parents from all these horrors! I recollect that it is remarked by the pious Baxter, that "at Kidderminster, where God most blest his labours, his first and greatest success was amongst the youth; and that when God had touched their hearts, the parents and grand-parents, who had grown old in an ignorant,

worldly state, were many of them savingly converted unto the Lord." Many others, besides Baxter, have seen divine mercy operating in a similar manner. Oh! my brethren, what a powerful inducement is this! Your parents gave you animal life; you, by attending to the concerns of piety, may perhaps be made the instruments of their spiritual life: Your parents have brought you into this fading world; you may perhaps be made the instruments of raising them to that world of light, where there are pleasures for evermore. Oh, if you really love these parents, turn, turn unto the Lord, that he may have mercy upon you, and that he may, through you, "pluck them as brands from the burning.",

Are there any amongst you who say, this motive still does not address me; my parents have left this earth, and their destinies are already fixed and immutable? Still this motive does address you, and address you with force. Are your parents lost and undone ? We have already told you, that you will increase their torments by descending to join them. From the bosom of the pit the ungodly rich man cried out, "I pray thee, father Abraham, to send Lazarus to my father's house, for I have five brethren, lest they also come into this place of torment.” (Luke xvi. 28.) If your parents are the companions of this rich man, they also supplicate you to avoid their lot; to come not thither to aggravate their sufferings. Are your parents among the blest? Remember how Jesus hath told you, that "there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth:" (Luke xv. 10.) and if your parents are amongst these angels, they surely, in an eminent degree, participate in this joy. Think then, that perhaps the spirit of thy father, of thy mother.

is at this moment regarding thee with tender solicitude; is watching whether all the advices they have given to thee, all the prayers they have offered for thee, all the sighs and tears which thou hast forced from them, shall be of no avail; whether thou wilt not, by turning unto the Lord, bestow on them a new sensation of joy, even in the midst of paradise; give them liberty to entertain the hope again to join you, when you enter into the kingdom of God, and to exclaim with transport, "Return my child; return to my parental embraces!"

V. Finally, (for although I fear I have already exhausted your patience, yet I cannot resolve to leave you without urging one more motive:) Finally, on your conduct in youth, your salvation or perdition, almost infallibly depend. I can conceive no consideration. more impressive than this: listen, if you please, to its proof and illustration.

If you do not in your youth seek the God of your fathers, a prolongation of your life will be indispensably necessary to repair this neglect. Are you certain that your life will be thus prolonged? Have you not seen thousands whose health was as firm, whose prospects as fair as yours, cut off in their bloom, and summoned to meet their Judge in the midst of their schemes of future amendment? You act as though you were assured that this would not be your lot; but whence have you derived this assurance? Have you ascended into the heavens, and there penetrated into the counsels of that God," who holdeth in his hands the keys of life and of death;" who hath appointed the number of your days, beyond which you cannot pass? Or have you fettered the hands of the Almighty, so that he cannot snatch you hence before your repentance? Have you, if I

may borrow the strong language of Isaiah, have you “made a covenant with death," that he shall not yet smite you; "an agreement with hell" (Isaiah xxviii. 15.) that it shall not yet swallow you up? No, no; you, like the rest of men, are ignorant of the duration of your life: you know not whether this sun that enlightens you, shall not, before it sets, behold you a corpse; you are not sure but that the angel of death has already received his commission, and is already winging his flight to tear your unwilling soul from its body, and bear it to the tribunal of God, to sustain there all the holiness, the purity, the strictness of his judgment. And yet in so perilous a state, you are cool and tranquil; and yet in só dreadful an uncertainty, you can be sportive and gay! When your body is attacked by a disorder, you think not of deferring till to-morrow the remedies which may immediately be applied; when your house is enwrapped in flames, you endeavour without delay to extinguish them; but when your soul is stricken by the mortal malady of sin, when you are burning with unholy desires, and preparing to be consumed in the flames of the abyss, you cry, that at some more convenient season you will attend to these matters, but that there is no need of instant anxiety and attention! God of our lives! thou only knowest whether they will not be in the eternal world before this anticipated period arrives!

Let us however suppose for a moment, that some friendly hand had lifted for you the veil of futurity, and removed all its uncertainty; let us suppose that God had revealed to you that you should yet live fifty, a hundred, or a thousand years, if you please; still it is by no means probable that at the expiration of this term you would be willing to seek the Lord and re

nounce your sin. Sin will then have become deeply habitual; its chains will have not only the strength, but also the brilliant lustre of the adamant. Your criminal inclinations will be fortified by frequent exercise and by guilty example; will mingle in the whole course of your life, and become incorporated into your very essence; your understanding will be obscured by your guilt, and those false reasonings which you shall have so often used to quiet your fears, will appear to you irrefragable arguments; your conscience, whose monitions you shall so often have rejected, will be almost silent, and will reserve its testimony to be given in at the bar of your Judge; your heart corrupted by sin, will be devoid of all taste for pure and holy pleasures; your imagination whose endless illusions you shall have experienced, will occupy itself in mustering up the images of past pleasures, to furnish new aliment to the flame that devours you, and to re-animate dying passions. Is it conceivable that in such a situation you will be willing and disposed to forsake your sins and seek the Lord; to do what you are unwilling to do now, while sin is less habitual and less endeared? Is it not probable that, a slave in the fetters which your own hands shall have forged, you will not even make one struggle to deliver yourself from them? If unconvinced by this reflection, go and consult experience. How few do you find among real Christians; how few pious persons in this assembly who do not date the period of their conversion from their youth; how few are there in the number of those who hear my voice, who, after neglecting to seek God in their youth, have since become his true disciples? How many aged sinners, who see all the consequences of their iniquities, who know the perdition which awaits