"What is your life? appeareth for a little

excite you to instant duty. It is even a vapor, which time, and then vanisheth away." Your "days are swifter than a post; they are like "the weaver's shuttle." Yesterday, perhaps, you wove your winding-sheet; to-day, insidious disease may be finding the way to your heart-strings. Your companions, too, are falling around you, like the leaves of autumn. Summons after summons, like successive peak of thunder, is sounding in your ears. Think not that "all are mortal but yourselves." Very shortly your turn will come. pared or unprepared, there will be no respite. Now, by the utter uncertainty and extreme brevity of life, I pray you to "prepare to meet your God." You know not what a day may bring You have no lease of life for an hour or

forth.

moment.

"The spider's most attenuated thread

Is cord, is CABLE to man's tender tie

On earthly bliss; it breaks at every breeze."

Pre

O, the superlative folly of that youth, who procrastinates repentance! "Turn ye, turn ye, for why will ye die? "

3. Your peace of conscience requires immediate reconciliation to God. That person must have

very little knowledge of himself and of divine truth, or must be given over to hardness of heart, who feels no compunctious visitings while living in sin. Most youth, who have been religiously educated, are much under the influence of conscience. It often fills them with disquietude and alarm. "The wicked flee when no man pursueth."

"Guiltiness will speak, though tongues were out of use."

The bosom of many a sober, moral youth is often the theatre of any thing but repose. "The wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt. is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked."

There

Here then is a mirror, in which you may look far into your own heart, and see the mingling elements of that storm which sometimes rages there. How dire the wreck of serenity and joy! How irksome, and restless, and agitated is all within! And can you be content to writhe all your life under the dagger of remorse? Do not the chills of despair, like the waves of the sea, chase one another over your frames, when you think of your present and prospective condition? In some paroxysms of mental agony, is not the inquiry extorted, "What must I do to be saved?" I answer, You must be reconciled to God. This war in your conscience is a war with your Maker.

You must submit or perish. You must throw down the weapons of your rebellion, and become the cordial subjects of the Prince of peace, or all the attributes of the OMNIPOTENT are pledged for your destruction.

I will plead with you to become Christians by one motive more.

4. You are in danger of grieving the Holy Spirit by delay. Jehovah says, "My Spirit shall not always strive with man." There is a limit beyond which the Holy Spirit will strive with you no more. You are dependent on his regenerating influences for salvation. Will you then trifle on, till you pass that limit where those influences will forever cease? Perhaps you are this moment nearing that line. Perhaps, this moment, angels and devils are gathering round, anxious for the result. Trepidation may be felt in other worlds for the decision you are about to make.

Immortal youth! pause and consider. Take not another step in the road to perdition. Is not the Spirit of God now moving on your hearts ? Do you say, that you know not whether you ever felt his operations?

"Sinner, hath not a voice within,

Oft whispered to thy secret soul,
Urg'd thee to leave the ways of sin,
And yield thy heart to God's control?

Hath nothing met thee in the path
Of worldliness and vanity,
And pointed to the coming wrath,
And warn'd thee from that wrath to flee?

Sinner, it was a heavenly voice,—

It was the Spirit's gracious call;
It bade thee make the better choice

And haste to seek in Christ thine all."

Perhaps his last call is now sounding in the chambers of your conscience.

Listen-believe

give your hearts to Jesus,-and you will soon find yourselves in a new world. The heavens and the earth will be gilded with the glory of God. Your souls will beat in delightful unison with the symphonies of his holy creation, and you will then begin to live.

See the spirit and conduct of the newly converted youth.

"He walks with God,

Surveys far on the endless line of life;
Values his soul; thinks of eternity;
Both world's considers, and provides for both;
With reason's eye his passions guards; abstains
From evil; lives on hope, on hope, the fruit
Of faith; looks upward; purifies his soul;
Expands his wings, and mounts into the sky;
Passes the sun, and gains his father's house,
And drinks with angels from the fount of bliss."

LECTURE VIII.

LIFE OF ACTIVE USEFULNESS.

2 COR. v. 15.-And he died for all, that they which live, should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them, and rose again.

"WHAT is the chief end of man? Man's chief end is to glorify God, and enjoy him forever." This noble sentiment ought not only to be committed to memory by every youth, but to be indelibly engraven on his heart. It is melancholy to notice, what a wide waste of talent, and intelligence, and influence, most men in all ages have been guilty of, by not understanding and pursuing the great and only proper object of life. If the "chief end of man," or the great object of life, be to "glorify God" and to become prepared to "enjoy him forever," then the conduct of a vast majority of mankind is stamped with superlative folly. For it is most manifest, that, not only the Cains, and the Sauls, and the Jero