ther, he will be found of thee; but if thou forfake him, he will caft thee off for ever.

The first part of this declaration conveys great comfort, as it fecures fuccefs in our fearch after God. Seek, and you shall find; an eafy condition of obtaining that which is more precious than the gold of Ophir. The things which the world reaches out as objects of pursuit, are not only deceitful and disappointing in their nature when obtained, but, as most men have experienced, difficult of acquifition.

Man goeth forth to his labour, to lay up a ftore for himself or his family, which shall place him above dependence, and enable him to enjoy the advantages of plenty without the toil of application; but innumerable accidents intervene to fruftrate his best endeavours. He often feeks, and finds not; and thus vexation and disappointment add to the real evils of his poverty. But this can never happen in the pursuit of religious perfection. The fcriptures affure us, in the strongest terms, that he shall not fail to find, who faithfully enters on the research of fpiritual treafure.

Make then the experiment, ye who have hitherto neglected God for the fugitive and uncertain

9

uncertain advantages of this world; make the experiment of seeking happiness in an acquaintance with him who never yet deserted a fincere and diligent votary. In the treasures of the fcriptures fearch for mines of wealth, fuch as neither time nor accident can diminish or depreciate. Learn to place a due value on the riches of God's grace. You will in course feek them in preference to all others; and the happy confequence will be, that you shall be rich indeed. Place your hopes of happiness in the knowledge and practice of your chriftian duty, and you fhall never be disappointed. Every other dependence will be found fallacious. Lean on this world for your full and final happiness, and you lean on a reed which shall pierce your hand, and break under your preffure.

If thou feek him, he will be found of thee, fays David; but if thou forfake him, he will caft thee off for ever.

To be caft off for ever, by the author of our being, and the giver of all the bleffings of it! To be caft off!-and for ever! Confider this, you who either neglect your religious duties entirely, or leave the God and the religious perfuafion of your fathers, for the ftrange novelties of every pretended philofopher, or

mistaken

miftaken bigot. Confider into what a pit of mifery ye rafhly plunge yourselves. To be forfaken of your Maker, to be forfaken for ever! Whither can ye fly for fupport and confolation? Nothing can fave you, thus deferted, from a degree of mifery beyond all that language can express, or imagination conceive. An eclipse takes place in the foul. The world intervenes between the foul and its God, its fountain of light and life.

Let me exhort all those who have been brought up in the knowledge of God, to beware how they forsake him as they advance in life, left they should be caft off for ever; left they should incur that dreadful fate, which would render it happy for them if they had never been born, and tempt the compaffionate obferver to exclaim with Job, Why died they not from their mother's womb?

Beware then, ye who are young and inexperienced; beware, at your setting out in life, of affociating with company where the name of God is blafphemed, and the Christian religion treated with ridicule. Such company abounds in the prefent age, among the half learned, the felf-conceited, and the profigate; and it is difficult for a young man to withstand the temptations to evil which it offers.

C

offers. The wifeft method is not to enter it. He who is once enticed by finners to affociate with them, will foon liften to their converfation without pain, however immoral or blafphemous. The tranfition is but too easy, from patiently bearing impiety in the conversation of others, to exhibiting it ourselves; and it is fcarcely poffible, but that he who converfes impiously, fhould foon lofe all remaining principles of religion, and become a professed infidel, and, in his heart, an abandoned profligate. He forfakes the guide of his youth, and falls into deftruction.

Let me exhort the juvenile part of my audience, to attend to that excellent law of the Decalogue, too often repeated without attention, which teaches you to honour your parents, and confequently to follow their inftructions. There is, unfortunately, no topic more frequent in bad company, than that of deriding the aged parent employed in the offices of devotion; the confequence of which is, that he who frequents bad company, foon learns to defpife the folid words of wisdom which a father or a mother has inculcated in early infancy. Let no wit or merriment tempt you to join in derifion of those, to whom you are bound by every obligation of grati

tude,

tude, reason, and religion. The punishment of despising a parent will fall heavily upon you, not only as it is a violation of an express commandment, and muft therefore excite the displeasure of God; but also as it will tempt you to despise those precepts which your fagave you in your childhood for your future direction ; and which, if properly attended to, would have conducted you fafely, pleasantly, honourably, through life, and afforded you hope in the day of disease, and at the hour of death, of A JOYFUL RESURREC

ther

TION.

It is also of great confequence to you, that you avoid those books which, however elegant and entertaining, are no less seducing, than vicious and unbelieving companions; I mean the fashionable philofophers of a neighbouring nation, and their imitators in our own. Either read them not at all, or not till reflection and experience shall have confirmed your belief and principles on foundations fo fure, as not to be fhaken by the witticisms of lively but fuperficial writers, or by vain and petulant difputants in conversation; by those whofe ingenuity of understanding is mifled by the corruption, the pride, and the malignity of their depraved difpofitions.