56 YOUTHFUL SINS · DISOBEDIENCE, &c. God rather than men ;" and to love the Redeemer more than parents themselves. Parents are commonly the tenderest of friends; and pious parents among the surest guides, that the young and inexperienced can have, to lead them to the footstool of God. Your interests are theirs. Your welfare their happiness. But ah! has their kindness met with the return it demanded? Who, my young friend, so much deserve your obedience and affection, as those who gave you being, and who watched over your helpless infancy? The father, whose years have been spent in care for you; the mother, who tended you at her breast, and led you through the days of childhood. Have they received this obedience and affection from you? Perhaps I address one, whose disobedience and unkindness have wrung with grief the hearts of fond and pious parents; and filled them with sorrow instead of gladness. Their desire has been to see you walking in the ways of God. For this, they have led you to his house. For this, their prayers have ascended in public and in private. This, by their early instructions and later admonitions, they have warned you to regard as the chief end of life; as that only concern, which, beyond all others, should interest your attention, and engage all your heart. And now they see you negligent of God and religion; and mourn in secret, that the child they love, is still a child of Satan. Ah! young man or young woman, if this be your case, God will bring you into judgment, for all your abuse of precious privileges, and all your neglect of parental instructions; and the prayers, and the tears, and the Acts, v. 29. Matt. x. 37, 38. admonitions of your parents, will awfully witness against you. Think not, that if affectionate and kind to them, you will much mitigate the sorrows of truly pious parents. No; they will still mourn at the thought, that the affectionate child, they fondly love, is not a child of God. It will grieve them to the heart to consider, how near you are to endless destruction; and how soon they must bid you an eternal farewell, when they go to that rest, in which they have no hope of meeting you. Ah! my young friend, if you slight religion, pious parents may leave you, mournfully saying, in their dying hour, "Alas! our beloved child, we shall see you no more: for our God you have not chosen as your God; and our Saviour you have not sought as your Saviour; and the heaven to which we go, is a rest to which you have no title, and which, dying as you are, you cannot enter!" Yes; bitterly will they mourn to think, that with so much that is lovely in their view, there is, in you, nothing that is lovely in the sight of God; and that all which they esteem so pleasing in you, must soon be buried in the deeps of hell. § 5. Another sin, not peculiar to the young, but awfully prevalent among them, is, the waste of precious time. The word of God reminds us, that "time is short;" and commands us to redeem the time." The value of time is beyond our comprehension or expression. 66 "What its worth? ask death-beds; they can tell: A moment we may wish, when worlds want wealth to buy." Time is given us to prepare for eternity; but, alas! how are its golden hours sinned and trifled away! Many young persons act as if they thought, they had so much time before them, that they may 58 YOUTHFUL SINS NOVEL READING. afford to squander some: when, perhaps, their wasted youth is their all; all in which they will ever have an opportunity of preparing for eternity; all in which they can "escape from hell and fly to heaven." One of the most common ways, in which time is worse than wasted, is, the employing of it on romances, plays, and novels. Novels are the poison of the age: the best of them tend to produce a baneful effeminacy of mind; and many of them are calculated, to advance the base designs of the licentious and abandoned on the young and unsuspecting. But, were they free from every other charge of evil, it is a most heavy one, that they occasion a dreadful waste of that time, which must be accounted for before the God of heaven. Let their deluded admirers plead the advantages of novel-reading, if they will venture to plead the same before the worthy Judge eternal. If you are a novel-reader, think the next time you take a novel into your hands, How shall I answer to my tremendous Judge, for the time occupied by this? When he shall say to me, "I gave you so many years in yonder world, to fit you for eternity did you converse with your God in devotion? did you study his word? did you attend to the duties of life; and strive to improve to some good end even your leisure hours ?" then, then, shall I be willing to reply; "Lord, my time was otherwise employed! Novels and romances occupied the leisure of my days; when, alas! my bible, my God, and my soul, were neglected!" In this way, and many others, is time, that most precious blessing, squandered away. Does not conscience remind you of many leisure hours; hours, which, though thoughtlessly thrown away, NEGLECT OF RELIGION. 59 would soon, to you, be worth more than mountains of gold or of pearl? § 6. Wilful neglect of the soul and eternity, is another common sin of youth. Young persons presume on future life; and grieve the Holy Spirit, by delaying to regard the one thing needful. They trust in their youth. God reproves the folly, and says, Boast not thyself of to-morrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth :" but, few will listen to the warning. Instead of doing so, they flatter themselves that they shall live for many years; and think sickness, death, and judgment, far from them. Hence they neglect the soul; and seem to imagine religion unsuitable, or at least not needful for themselves. The blessed God calls on them in his word; the crucified Saviour bids them come to himself, "I love them that love me, and they that seek me early shall find me;" the ministers of the gospel urge the advice upon them; prayers are offered, tears shed for them: yet, many persist in their own ways; and, whatever they do, will not remember their Creator in the days of their youth. My young friend, has this been your sin and folly? O, if it has, remember how many ways there are out of the world! how many diseases to cut short your days! God gives you time enough to secure salvation; but think not, that he gives you any to spare. § 7. An inordinate love of sensual pleasure and worldly gaieties, is another most prevalent sin of youth. The word of God describes those who live in pleasure, as "dead while they live;" and classes with the most abominably wicked, those who are "lovers of pleasure more than lov Prov. xxvii. 1. Prov. viii. 17. 1 Tim. v. 6. 2 Tim. iii. 4. 60 YOUTHFUL SINS LOVE OF ers of God." Though such are the declarations of the Lord; yet, pleasure, pleasure, is the chief object of thousands of the young. Some pursue it in the gross and brutish paths of rioting and drunkenness; of chambering and wantonness: others, in less profligate ways; but with hearts not less intent upon it. The card-table, the dance, the horse-race, the play-house, the fair, the wake, are the scenes of their highest felicity. My young friend, has not this love of worldly pleasure dwelt in your heart? Perhaps you have not run into scandalous and disgraceful excesses; but have you not had a greater love to worldly pleasures, than to God and religion? If you have, you but too surely bear that awful mark of being a child of destruction, that you are a lover of pleasures more than a lover of God. Have not you been present at scenes of sinful amusement and guil-. ty festivity? Have not you been as anxious as others, for those sensual delights which were most suited to your taste? and, while thus loving this world, have not you forgotten that which is to come? Have not you been more pleased with some shining bauble or glittering toy, than with the blessings displayed in the gospel? and been more earnest about a day of promised pleasure, than about securing an eternity of pure celestial joy? Think not that I mean to insinuate, that the Christian should be the slave of melancholy. Far from it; none have so much reason to be cheerful as he, who reads his title clear to heaven. But, wide is the difference between the innocent cheerfulness and humble joy of the Christian, and the vain pleasures of a foolish world. The truly religious have their delights; though they know, that there is |