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lost spirits my companions; I must lie down in the unquenchable fire, and endure the gnawings of the worm that never dies. This doom may overtake me at any moment, since nothing is more precarious than life. Therefore, in order to escape so horrible a destiny, I must hereafter, at some undefined period, when my antipathy to religion shall have vanished, give attention to the subject, and make preparation for a change of worlds!" Such is the import of your language, without the slightest colouring. And in what light does it present your inconsideration? Did you ever hear of so impotent a conclusion, from such majestic premises? Were logic and reason ever before so put to shame? Were eternal things ever treated with such grave trifling? You will consider of religion hereafter, be

cause if you die, (which you may do to-day,) without having attended to it, you are lost beyond redemption! And in this purpose you rest, simply from "the want of a disposition" to apply your mind to the subject now. You "feel no interest" in the matter at present, and you must wait until you do; when that auspicious day arrives, that you are disposed to hear what God has to say to you, you will listen to his communications!

Reference has already been made to the indignity which this conduct casts upon the Supreme Being. Not to revert to that topic here, do you not perceive, in the state of feeling in question, a most cogent argument why you should bring your mind into instant and earnest contact with the gospel? The greater your aversion to this, the more

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palpable your need of it. This aversion is the vital principle of the malady you are seized with, and for which the gospel is the only antidote. It stands forth, a convincing and solemn memento of that violent disjunction between your soul and God, which can be removed only through your sincere repentance and faith in the Redeemer. And when you talk of waiting until you feel sufficient "interest" in the matter to give heed to it, can you suppose that the course you are pursuing is adapted to bring about this desired change in your feelings? Will your love of the world be diminished, by a continued devotion to the world? Will the power of sin over you be abated by indulgence in sin? Will your wayward passions and attachments be weakened by gratification? "Are you so thoughtless or un

knowing, as to fancy that a long course of estrangement from your higher interest, of aversion to it, of resistance against its claims, of suppression of the remonstrances of conscience in its behalf, is to leave you in a kind of mental state, impartial to admit at length the conviction, that now it is high time, and easily convertible into a Christian spirit? Consider that all this time you are forming the habits, which, when inveterately established, will either be invincibly upon you through life, or require a mighty wrench to emancipate you. This refusal to think; this revolting from any attempt at self-examination; this averting of your attention from serious books; this declining to seek the Divine favour and assistance by prayer; this projecting of schemes bearing no regard to that favour, and which are not

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to need that assistance; this eagerness to seize each transitory pleasure; this preference of companions, who, perhaps, would like you the worse, if they thought you feared God, or cared for your eternal welfare; these dispositions, prolonged in a succession of your willing acquiescences in them, will grow into a settled constitution of your soul, which will thus become its own inexorable tyrant. The habit so forming will draw in to it all the affections, the workings of imagination, and the trains of thought; will so possess itself of them, that in it alone they will live, and move, and have their being. It will have a strong, unremitting propensity to grow entire, so as to leave nothing unpreoccupied in the mind, for any opposing agent to take hold on, in order to counteract it, as if it were instinctively