any instance this be the case, blessed be God, who gave the disposition to write it; and blessed be the day, that saw it begun. May I imagine that you look on this as the happy choosing day, that led you to Jesus; and thus fixed your joy, for an eternity, where days and years, and ages are no more. O my brother; my sister; may I fancy that I meet you there, with your great interests and mine secured for ever? Blessed hour, blessed scene. O, in the prospect of it, let me urge you to make religion your earliest, only choice. It is the best that you can make. Were you prevailed on this day to obey the gospel and begin a life of early piety, how happy a day would this be to you? The best and happiest day of your life. The day that you might look back upon with most pleasure, even from a death-bed; and from the eternal world. Will you then, in God's strength determine to make early religion your first concern? and never more to refuse the Saviour's grace? If you will; seek help from God in fervent prayer; commit your soul to Jesus; and then how happily will you ere long enter endless blessedness; when this vain and inconstant world, this deceitful and fleeting life, are passed away for ever. Then how happy will you be a hundred years hence, when others are as busy about this world, and you are quite forgotten; and your very tombstone hardly to be read by passing travellers. Then, in what inconceivable blessedness will your happy spirit dwell, long after not one wretched trace' remains of the hand that has written, or the eye that reads -Choose but religion. Give yourself to Christ, and life or death will be equally a privilege. Your last sigh will then be a forerunner of eternal praise; your last pang of eternal raptures; and the paleness of death will be seen on your countenance, but a moment before the glories of eternal life. Yet a few years, and you, if you know the Saviour's grace, shall experience a far more transporting change than any heart can conceive. O, could we see, what thirty or forty years will discover, it might then be seen what are the effects upon your heart, of this little book. It might then be known who chose the happy, who the wretched part. Young as you may be; yet a few years and this will be known. O fee to Jesus. Choose Religion. Then will your life be blessed; your death happy; your eternity glorious.

Remember that this is the most important choice you can ever be called to make. On this it depends, whether life shall be a blessing, or a curse;-yourself an angel, or a devil;-God a friend, or an enemy;-Jesus a kind Saviour, or a dreadful Judge;-heaven your home, or hell your prison;-praise your sweet delight, or cursings and blasphemy your dreadful employment;-angels and glorified saints your beloved associates, or devils and the damned your horrid companions;-Satan a vanquished enemy, or a horrid tormentor. May the God of heaven lead you to seek your happiness in the Lord Jesus and himself. If you have made early religion. your choice, may he lead you forward to the promised crown; and if you are not a partaker of that best of blessings, even now may he soften your heart to penitence, and direct you to his crucified Son; and thus, at length, bring you to that blessed world, where hope shall be exchanged for happiness; faith for sight; grief for gladness; danger for safety; death for life; and where, to complete all, saints will be for ever with the Lord.

CHAPTER XXI.

Twenty Objections to Early Piety briefly stated and answered.

PERHAPS, my young friend, if you have seriously read what I have seriously written, even if not moved to choose that good part which would enrich you for ever, you yet feel that religion is important; but fain would be excused from attending to it at present. Perhaps you strengthen this disinclination, by some of those objections to early Religion which abound in this corrupt and wretched world. Permit me then to enumerate a few of these, and to give them a plain, though serious answer.

Objection 1. I am but young; I have time enough yet; I do not mean to put religion off for ever; but why should I begin with it so soon?

Answer. Young as you are, you are not too young to die; nor if you die in sin are you too young to be lost for ever. Young as you are, were you to die with only one

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of your youthful sins upon you, that one would sink you to destruction. Young as you are, you are not too young to be called to meet your God, to stand at his judgmentbar, and to be fixed in heaven or hell for ever. In this Island alone, it is computed, that nearly 7000 persons die every week; numbers of these are the young; and while so many graves are opening every day, may not one soon be opened for you? Why should you promise yourself that you shall see old age when so few comparatively reach it? But if you should, he, that in his youth, reckons it too early to be converted; in old age, may find it too late to be saved."* Few, as you have been reminded, repent in age. Who are the crowds of irreligious persons that throng our towns and country, but those who neglect God while young? It is a dreadful fact that few do turn to God in age; but here and there one; just enough to guard the aged from despair ; but so few as to warn the young, not to expect to be made partakers of grace and glory, unless brought to Christ in youth.

Obj. 2. But I see many, much older than myself, following the world; then why should not I do so too?

Ans. Because if they choose destruction, you should not choose it with them. If they abuse the mercies of God, and heap up wrath against the day of wrath, you should not do the same. If you saw some aged neighbors taking the way that would lead them to prison and the gallows, you would not say, "They ought to know better than I, why should not I follow them?" And if you see hoary-headed sinners, that have served the devil all their days, serving him still, why then would you make their desperate madness, a reason for giving your youth to the devil! God will not inquire of you what they did, but what you did. If your friends, if your relatives, are all the servants of sin, O! be ambitious to be the first in your family, that shall find the way to heaven. Pray for them; perhaps some of them may follow; but if they should not, it is better to go to hea ven without ungodly relatives, than to go to hell with them.

Obj. 3. Perhaps, my young friend, such is your humble lot in life, that you have to object,

* Mead.

I am poor, and possess but little knowledge. I work hard all the week, and if I do not make Sunday a day of recreation and amusement, I can never take any pleasure; I see too my superiors in riches and knowledge, giving themselves little concern about religion, then why should I mind it?

Ans. You should regard religion as your chief concern: because you are not to follow the example of the great and the noble, but that of the blessed Saviour, who was in this world a man of poverty and sorrows. You are told, in his word, that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called; and that it is the poor that have the gospel preached to them. They often hear it gladly, while the rich and the great as often scorn and neglect it. And though you may have no day for recreation except the Sabbath, yet what will be the end of that pleasure, which is gained by profaning that holy day. Surely it will be everlasting bitterness and despair. Is not your soul worth more than your body? If you knew the pleasures of religion, you would think a day in God's house better than a thousand days of mirth elsewhere; and though you may be poor in this world, would find that delight in prayer, and communion with God, which you never found in all your sinful sabbath-breaking pleasures; and which those of the great and noble, that know not God, never obtained from all their riches and honours.

Obj. 4. Religion it is true is important; but this is not to me a suitable season for following it; when I have a convenient time I intend to inquire for the ways of God.

Ans. And what time will be more convenient than the present? Will it be so when the care and burdens of the world, or perhaps of a young and rising family, are pressing on you? Will it be so, when the pains of disease and the languors of sickness are overpowering all your faculties? or when the infirmities of age make the grasshopper a burden? Ah no. Least of all will it be so when you come to die. Often have I heard the sick or dying declare, that if they had not sought the Lord before, they could not have sought hini then. But perhaps you think, that as life advances, your ap3Ps. lxxxiv. 10.

21 Cor. i. 20; Matt. xi. 5.

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petite for sensual pleasures will grow less; and that then you shall embrace religion with less difficulty than now. Alas! you are dreadfully deceived. "You might as well expect to drown a fish by putting it into water, as to extinguish sensual desires by following sensual delights." If you could not, without difficulty, bend a twig, would you expect easily to bend a tree? If you could scarcely cure a cold, would you expect to cure it when it becomes a confirmed consumption? If it be hard for a captive to break a single chain, will it be easy for him to escape, when loaded with more than double fetters? So conversion is made more difficult by delay. Think then of no more convenient time. None can be more so; all will be less so than the present. Remember Felix said, "Go thy way for this time, when I have a more convenient season I will call for thee;" but that more convenient season never came, and Felix was undone. God tells you of no season more cqnvenient than the present. "Now, says his word, is the accepted time, behold now is the day of salvation.”

Obj. 5. I might attend to religion, but I have little leisure and have much else to mind.

Ans. O my young friend! whatever else you may have to mind, the salvation of your soul should be your first concern. If you were sure of gaining a crown and a kingdom; of becoming a king or a queen here; what would this be compared with gaining a crown of glory and endless life of blessedness in heaven? To enjoy this; and escape the damnation of hell; is of ten thou sand times more consequence to you than to gain the whole world, if you were sure you could do it. The apostle Paul counted all things loss that he might win Christ; nor does he now repent of his choice. Would a dying man say, "I have so much else to mind, that I cannot find leisure to take the medicines, that, under God, may raise me from this bed of sickness?" Would a condemned criminal say, "I have so much business to attend to, that I cannot find time to apply for my pardon; or to accept it if offered?" And shall a perishing sinner say, "I have no leisure to escape from hell and seek for heaven?" To the dying man, or the condemned criminal, all other business is unimportant,