318 THE YOUNG READER ENTREATED engage in the same business. In the house of God they sit in the same seats, and hear the same truths; but hereafter they will be parted far asunder. The last great separating day is hastening on; and then shall they mingle together no more. No more shall they occupy the same seats; nor dwell in the same houses; nor pursue the same employments. All this will be for ever done with; and a distance wide indeed, will part them for eternity. O! as you would then have the distinction of belonging to Jesus, embrace his gospel now! As ever you would share the happiness of those who meet in glory, I beseech you by coming to Christ, secure it now! How happily will they meet there, who have trodden the same path of humble religion here! How happily will the pious child meet his parents! the faithful pastor his flock! relations join relations again! and friends unite with friends! And now, my young friend, life and death are set before you. "I call heaven and earth to record against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life." The only alternative presented to you, is, Religion and heaven; or, Want of Religion and hell. Which, O, which is your choice? Now is your choosing time. You must be a saint or a brute here, and an angel or a devil hereafter. Perhaps you may never again be invited to make this important choice; and your decision this day, may be that by which your eternal state will be fixed. Choose then, I entreat you, the way of life, if you have not already chosen it. Peace attends it, and happiness is at its end; happiness inconceivable, unutterable, and eternal. And will you choose? or have you chosen humble re TO EMBRACE EARLY RELIGION. 319 ligion? If you have, let me take you by the hand, and lead you into yonder fair and spacious world. May I imagine that I see you arrived there? or are you determined never to go thither? May I imagine that I see you before the throne of the Eternal, adorned with the splendours, and blessed in the raptures of heaven? Ah! is it but deception? do you still slight the way that leads a sinner to glory and to God? May I imagine, or is that too happy a supposition, that you ascribe your early choice of the way of life, to the blessing of the Most High on this little volume? O, if in 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; comyour soul to Jesus; and then how happily you ere long enter endless blessedness, when mit will 320 BLESSINGS OF DECIDED PIETY 66 this vain and inconstant world, this deceitful and fleeting life, have 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, flee 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 IMPORTANCE OF THE CHOICE. 321 Satan a damned your horrid companions; 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 PERHAPS, my young friend, you feel that religion is important; but 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 world. Permit me 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 of your youthful sins upon you, that one would sink you to destruction. Young as you are, you are not too 322 OBJECTIONS TO EARLY young to be called to meet your God, to stand at his judgment-bar, and to be fixed in heaven or hell for ever. In G. Britain, alone, it is computed, that nearly seven thousand 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 his old age may find it too late to be saved." Few, repent in age. Who are the irreligious crowds that throng our towns and country, but those who neglect God while young? It is a dreadful fact, that few turn to God in age; 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. I see many, older than myself, following the world; 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 neighbours 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 I not 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 |