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GOD WILL BRING YOUNG

that you felt the power of divine truth, and yet went on to sin again. The sermons of ministers, the admonitions of friends, and the warnings of the Bible, will all be remembered in judgment, and produced, to show how much greater is your guilt, than theirs, who lived in heathen lands, and heard no tidings of salvation. Then too it will be known what poor trifles, what base delights, you preferred to the love of God and the joys of heaven. O, think not to escape! God will bring thee into judgment. Though thou shouldst be hardened in life, and even deluded in death, yet when thou hast had thy day of sin, God will have his day of vengeance; and when thou hast had the pleasure, thou must have the pain. Think not that you have done with the sinful pleasures and follies of past years. You have not done with them yet; the delight is gone, but the sad account remains behind. You perhaps call your youthful sins, frolics, or innocent sports, or foibles at the worst, but if you are thus deceived, God is not. Your slights of religion;-your neglect of his service, and his ways; - your broken sabbaths; - your wasted days;-your pride; your vanity; must all be answered for on that tremendous day.

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§ 5. Know, O young man, if you are a follower of the world, you must then receive the reward of all your sinful actions; your riotings and revellings, your drunkenness and debaucheries, your hardening others in sin, your wanton songs, your profane words, shall all come to light, and insure your damnation. Though you may be a wanton profligate, or even a scoffing infidel, yet God will bring you into judgment; and infidel as you may be, will make you tremble be

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SINNERS INTO JUDGMENT

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fore that bar, which is the object of your contempt and ridicule now. Or if you are all that is moral and amiable in the sight of men, yet if destitute of saving grace, God will see in you ten thousand unforgiven sins, for which he will condemn you then. Know, O young woman! that God will then bring you also into judgment. Your sabbaths wasted in indolence or trifling merriment - your time squandered on poisonous novels - your heart wrapped up in dress and gaiety, while God and religion are shut out of it - your glass consulted, while the Redeemer is neglected your fondness for worldly delights - your forgetfulness of your poor immortal soul -all these sins and many more, are crying to heaven against you, and not one, in that awful day, will be forgotten. Perhaps all who wish you well for ever, strive in vain to impress your heart; but God will make you listen, God will bring you into judgment. Vain will be the pleas and excuses that now deceive yourself and others. The Judge will pronounce the dreadful sentence; he will say, "Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels," and depart you must. Oh, dreadful sentence to depart from Christ, the only source of happiness-to depart from him accursed, laden with the heavy curse and wrath of God, never to be removed to depart from him, accursed, into everlasting fire, and that the fire, which was prepared for the devil and his angels! § 6. O stop, my young reader! while this sentence sounds in your ears; stop, and consider your ways. Can you bear to have it, with all its horrors, pronounced upon you? If not, O, turn to God. Consider, that if you harden your heart

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FINAL DOOM OF THE UNGODLY.

against this friendly call, that time is coming when you must remember it. In the latter days, says God, ye shall consider it perfectly. God will then remember the sins and ingratitude of your - youth. At that last day you may call for mercy, and God refuse to listen, as he now calls on you to turn to Christ, and you refuse to heark

en.

His word says, "Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out mine hand, and no man regarded; but ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would none of my reproof; I also will laugh at your calamity, I will mock when your fear cometh. Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me. They would none of my counsel; they despised all my reproof; Therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices." Then, when all his terrors are set in array against you, how will you answer him? You cannot say you were not called to serve him, for the lines you are reading would witness against you. You cannot say you were too young, and expected longer time, for he has taught you that the youngest are not too young to die, and that those who seek him early shall find him. Alas, what will you then think of this warning! how tremble before your Maker for the sins of your youth. The Lord Jesus Christ will remember your ingratitude and wickedness; and when they who sought and found him betimes, have entered his eternal rest, while he crowns them with his everlasting love, you, a poor trembling, unforgiven creature, may knock at the door of mercy, then for ever shut. You may join your voice with

Jer. xxiii. 20. Prov. i. 24-31.

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THEIR HOPELESS STATE AND LATE REGRET. that of foolish millions, in the dismal cry, "Lord. Lord, open unto us! Leave us not in endless woe, and infinite despair. Leave us not the prey of devils, and the scorn of hell. Leave us not with. out one glimmering beam of hope, through a dreadful eternity" Alas, vain cry, the Judge will say, I never knew you, depart from me! O, be wise! and guard, by early piety, against the terrors of that day. The eternal Judge will not be thus inexorable, unless, by your choice of sin, you make him so. Give him, now your heart, and he will then give you a crown of life which fadeth not away.

§ 7. But if you will not regard this advice, you will then know your cruelty to your own soul. Then you may sadly exclaim, " God was kind to me; he sought my happiness, and had I listen.. ed to his voice, I should have been for ever hap py. The Son of God was gracious to me. 0, how numberless were his compassions; had I regarded them, how blessed should I now have been. The Spirit of God was kind to me; though grieved and resisted, how long he strove with me. O, had I yielded to his gentle influence, no creature surely had been more blessed than I. The servants of God were kind to me. Pious friends warned me, and prayed for me, and wept for me. Faithful ministers taught me, and laboured for my good, and wished for no reward, but my salvation. But I, alas! was unkind to all these, and cruel to myself. I denied them all they sought-my happiness; all they prayed for to see me snatched from hell. O, had I had but half that compassion for myself, which others had for me, how blessed had I been

Matt. vii. 23.

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ETERNAL RUIN AN AWFUL

now! O, had I let my God, my Redeemer, my Christian friends, or ministers, have their desire, I should now have been rising to eternal glory; but ungrateful to God, and cruel to myself, I have undone my own soul with an everlasting destruction. Wretch that I was, to have no pity on myself, while so many pitied me. Wretch that I was, to rush so madly to eternal flames, while so many strove to keep me out; and alas, so obstinately to refuse such blessings, while so many sought to make me a partaker of them."

CHAPTER XIX.

THE ETERNAL RUIN OF THE UNGODLY A MOTIVE FOR THE EARLY CHOICE Of religion.

§ 1. THERE exists, in many minds, a strong dislike to a faithful representation of those hor. rors, to which the ungodly are exposed in the eternal world; yet the divine Saviour and his apostles, by denunciations of the terrors of a wretched eternity, warn the sinful to flee from the wrath to come. Far, my youthful reader, am I from loving to dwell on so painful, so dreadful a subject. Fain would I have you sweetly constrained by the love of Christ to follow him; but perhaps I address some hardened, or some thoughtless son or daughter of folly, on whom that love has made no impression. O! then let me make one effort more for your salvation; and though it is a dreadful reason, let me urge one reason more for your accepting the grace of God. And O, eternal God! now assist me, and by thy terrors alarm that thoughtless soul, which thy love has not affected, nor thy promises allured.

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