If, however, at any time you grow faint-hearted because of the destruction that wasteth at noon-day, remember the promise of God, that though a thousand fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand, it shall not come nigh thee. God is at thy right hand, and thou shalt not be moved. See how the good Christians of your acquaintance advance steadily on the enemy, and put to flight the armies of the aliens! See how the martyrs break through fire and blood to take the kingdom of God by violence! Above all, see how Christ, your captain, lays round him with his cross, levels whole ranks at once with every stroke of his twoedged sword! His almighty hand rises to heaven, and crushes to hell, at every blow. How can you be dismayed, or draw back, in such company, with such a leader, and such a prize in view? Shew the proof of your armour, and the vigour of your feeding, by the glorious spirit of your charge. Quit you like a man, be strong.

You are now come to that very important, and indeed dangerous time of your life, when, both your reason and passions almost on the borders of maturity, there arises from thence a sort of necessity, that you should choose your master and your way, not only for the remainder of your days, but even for eternity also. You cannot be long indifferent. The cast and character of your life must now be fixed in such a manner as not to admit of any great change without extreme difficulty, nay, without perhaps a frightful risk in regard to the safety of your soul. It is a common and just observation, that such as men are in the earlier part of their lives, such they generally continue to be till death. It seldom happens that the good boy makes a bad man; and seldomer still that a wicked and disorderly lad is reclaimed into a virtuous and regular man. Of so great consequence is it to begin well, that the boy, a few singular cases only excepted, fixes a course of life for the youth; the youth for the man; and he for the angel, whether of light or darkness.

Come, then, my dear young pupil, choose your master and your way.

A master you must have, a servant you must be, as you are but a creature, and therefore, by natural necessity, a dependant being. God, by right of creation, is Lord and

Master of all. But the evil spirit sets up, by rebellion and usurpation, as to himself, and by permission from God, in order to your trial, for an absolute mastery and dominion over you. The question now is, whether you will have God for your Lord, or submit to be a slave to the devil? Your reason finds no difficulty in this choice. You readily cry out, I will obey God and fight against the devil. But does your heart always say so too? Do you not often yield to the motions of sin in your corrupt heart? And what is your heart, thus in motion, but an engine, wrought by the evil spirit, and played off against God and his law?

Know you not, that to whom you yield yourself a servant to obey, his servant you are to whom you obey?' Or know you not, that as often as you commit sin, you obey the devil, and are, so far, actually his servant? You must choose your master, therefore, with all your heart, as well as with all your understanding. God, for his part, disdains a divided servant, and a trimming service paid partly to him and partly to his enemy. He commands you to love him with all your heart, and his goodness to you demands it entire. You cannot, surely, think of obeying him with but a half of it.

Well, you renounce the devil, that monster in the creation, that despicable slave to sin, that infernal tyrant to the wicked, whose sole intention it is to insult Almighty God through you, and to make you as foul, as vile, as miserable a rebel, to all eternity, as he is himself. Him, therefore, and all he tempts you to, by the world, and the corruption of your own fleshly nature, you persevere to renounce and abhor.

And God you are resolved to serve with a steady understanding, and an undivided heart. You will serve him who hath the sole, the eternal right to rule over you, as him who gave you being, who bought you with his blood, who comes, as this day, an almighty ally, to join you against the enemies of your soul; him whose service is the only perfect freedom, honour, happiness, of all his rational creatures; who is in himself infinitely good and lovely, infinitely great and glorious, and means nothing by his dominion over you, but to make you, for ever, good, lovely, great, and glorious, like himself. It is very well; but you must never forget

whom it is you profess to serve, and how he is to be served, namely, in spirit and in truth, with a warm, watchful, and resolute spirit, and with truth agreeable to your professions, with fidelity conformable to your vows. If you begin well, your work is half done, and the necessity of a sorrowful repentance, or the dreadful danger of sinning, and never repenting, may be happily prevented. It is better never to be ill than to be cured, were the spiritual medicine ever so infallible; but, alas! we know of no such medicines for a soul, far gone in the mortal disorder of sin, and perhaps incapable of the application. Remember, therefore, your Creator in the days of your youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them,' and God too shall say, he hath no pleasure in them. Give your heart to God while it is yet young and tender. Offer not your first-fruits to the devil, and think to put God off with the chaff and refuse of old age. Watch and pray, that you enter not into temptation. Watch, for you know not what hour your Master cometh. Pray without ceasing, for your sufficiency is of God, and of him only.'

Choose now your way too, my dear children in Christ. There are two ways before you, one called the narrow way, and the other the broad. This leads downward, that upward. You see they set out, both of them, just from your feet, but go wider and wider from each other the farther they advance, till it becomes a long and painful journey to cross over from the one to the other, in regard to the unhappy traveller, who may have entered into the wrong road at first, and proceeded in it, till his day is wearing towards an end. This broad way here gives room for many travellers abreast. It is smooth and easy to the foot. Its hedges are flowery, and loaded with fruit as fair to the eye, and as delicious to the palate, as that which hung on a certain tree in the midst of Eden. The pleasures and profits of this world may be picked up in the shape of guineas and diamonds at every step. The air richly perfumed, breathes in soft music on the ravished ear. This is the reason, 1 suppose, that the passengers here, instead of soberly walking, are observed to dance down to the wanton measures, in pairs, while some, fast asleep, are carried along in gilded

coaches. On each side are palaces for inns, where there is entertainment for man and beast, with pomps, pleasures, and riches, promised on every sign. Such is the broad road at the end next you; but farther onward it grows narrow and craggy. You meet with thorns and briers among the flowers. These decrease, and those become more frequent. Some base money, or counterfeit stones, are thinly scattered on the road. The air becomes harsh. The music is often intermixed with groans and yells. The passengers, enfeebled by surfeit and satiety, drag their limbs with labour, though the road lies wholly downhill; and they in coaches are kept awake by the gout and stone. Here the inns are filled with drunkenness, rapes, broils, bloodshed, murder, remorse, and terror. Here gaming-houses and jails, apothecaries' shops and tombs, turn the road almost into a street. A little farther down, a frightful pair of stairs, formed for the greater part of precipices instead of steps, throws the travellers into a bottomless gulf, too shocking for the ap. proach of description. Hear, therefore, ye youth, the voice of him who cries aloud, Go not in the broad way which leadeth to destruction.'

No, enter in at the strait gate, and take your journey upward in the narrow way, narrow only at first to those who come over from the broad, but, from the beginning, open, and easy enough of entrance to you, in whose yet untainted minds goodness is not altogether unnatural. You are not yet swoln by habits of sin to so great a size, as to make your entrance very difficult. It is but of yesterday that you ceased to be one of those innocents of whom Christ saith,' of such is the kingdom of heaven.' Pass in resolutely among the thorns and roses of this way, rather than among the roses and thorns of that other. Herein, the higher you ascend, the air will grow clearer, the light stronger, and your prospects still larger and more beautiful. This world, with its trifling persons and insignificant things, grows less and less to your eye, till you see it but as a dark and disagreeable lump of confusion; while the heavens open to you, and the things above, as you approach them, begin to look larger and more illustrious to the eye of your faith, till you see them as they are in themselves, all lovely, all great and glorious, such as the unregenerate eye hath

not seen, the unregenerate ear hath not heard, and the unregenerate heart hath not conceived, nor can conceive. On the other road, every pleasure enfeebles. Here every pain invigorates. There the travellers, forming themselves into a community of miscreants and reprobates, help to hurry one another downward, and the great deceiver, redoubling their weight, increases their power of plunging still deeper and deeper: but the faithful Christians on this road, joined in a communion of saints, lend their hands and shoulders to help one another upward, as often as this or that traveller grows weak, or the hill too steep for him to climb; while the Spirit of God spreads a plentiful table for his refreshment, takes him to repose in his house, and sometimes sets him forward in the fiery chariot of Elijah. Here a conscious sense of virtue, an ardent love of God, a burning zeal for his service, and a heavenly ambition, shall inspire you with courage, and teach you to glow at the sight of danger, nay, even to rejoice in tribulation, especially if brought upon you for your fidelity to so gracious a Master. But move a little farther up to the point of victory, where tribulations and persecutions shall be left behind; where triumph and exultation shall begin; where you shall be crowned, and surrounded with the natives of heaven, with saints, martyrs, Christian heroes, angels, archangels, principalities, powers, thrones, through the loud hallelujahs of whom, you shall pass into the immediate presence of your God, your Father, your Saviour, your Comforter. You shall see him. You shall see his countenance all covered with smiles and love. You shall hear him say, 'Well done, thou good and faithful servant; enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.'

Enter ye, therefore, in at the strait gate, and travel ye in the narrow way, which leadeth to life. Think it not too much to encounter with some difficulties, and to struggle patiently for a short time, that you may live for ever in joy unutterable, and glory inconceivable. Remember you must be a partaker of Christ's holiness, perhaps, in some measure, of his sufferings, before you can be a partaker of his joy.

And now, my dear children, whom I have faithfully laboured to train up in the way that ye should go, 'I bow