MY DEAR YOUNG FRIEND:—You are born for eternity
—you are to be an inhabitant of this world only for a few
days or a few years. You have just to stay till you are
prepared and qualified for an unseen world, where your
state will be unalterably fixed in a solemn, an awful,
unbounded, immeasurable eternity. Oh, how solemn!
How awful the consideration! An eternity of unspeakable,
indescribable glory and blessedness—or an eternity
of unutterable, inconceivable woe and misery awaits all
the numberless millions of Adam's numerous race. Then
what inq uiry can be more rational and proper for a creature
that must be an inhabitant of heaven or hell, than
this: How will it fare with me after death? Am I walking
the narrow way to eternal life? Or am I in the broad
road to hell! Am I seeking, striving, watching, praying,
and trying to make sure of Christ and Heaven? Or am I
living thoughtless, careless, and prayerless, putting off
repentance conversion, and the work of my soul to middle
age, to old age, or to some future period? My dear
young friend, how is it with you? Is Jesus precious to
your soul! Is Christ the hope of glory formed in you?
Have you found Christ, the pearl of unspeakable price?
Can you tell the great things the Lord hath done for you?
Is the Bible the sweetest book to you that you ever saw?
Do you spend much time in reading it, and reading it
with a praying heart ? Do you pray in secret every night
and every morning? Is the work of your salvation—the
business of your soul—the business of eternity—your
chief concern? Does it occupy the highest place in your
thoughts? Oh, for the Lord's sake, for your own soul's
sake, propose these solemn questions to your heart and
conscience. Oh my friend! the present time is the best
time, the most precious time—the most suitable time that
you will ever see till your dying hour, for the work of
your salvation. You are young, your heart is tender, it
is susceptible of good impressions—it has not yet grown
hard and gospel trodden from having repeatedly resisted
the Spirit of God, and slighted the offers of mercy as is
the case with the old impenitent sinner. Sweet promises
are made in the book of God to youth, that old gray-headed
sinners cannot claim, such as Proverbs 8: 17: “I
love them that love me, and they that seek me early shall
find me.” The ablest divines and most experienced and
exemplary christians, such as Ambrose, Flavel, Doddridge
and others, observe that the time of youth is in a particular
manner a person's convertible age. They give it as
their opinion that more precious souls are brought to
Christ between the age of nine and eighteen than of any
other class of mankind, and that scarcely any are ever
converted in a place that has enjoyed the lovely means
of grace, after the age of twenty-five or thirty years as
the farthest. But oh, my precious youth, time is uncertain!
Death comes like a thief in the night; you know
not that you shall ever see twenty-five or thirty years of
age. When you hear one sermon, you know not but that
it may be your last. When you enjoy one offer of mercy,
men or angels cannot assure you that you will ever have
another. Oh then how dangerous to delay! How fatal
the risk to put off the work of your soul one hour or one
minute. Oh be entreated then to comply with the most
reasonable command (if possible) in the whole book of God,
viz: “To remember thy creator in the days of thy youth.”
Oh what can be more right and fit, in the very nature of
things, than for a rational, intelligent creature, to remember,
love, obey and serve his God, his maker, his preserver,
his kind benefactor, the author of all the good that ever
he enjoyed, or that a reasonable creature can enjoy. To
remember, love and delight in infinite excellence—infinite
glory—infinite beauty—infinite rectitude and purity.
What exercise or employment can be so honorable or so
respectable as to love, obey, or serve the almighty sovereign
Lord of the Universe. To love, obey and delight in
that Jesus that came into the world to save sinners; to
seek and save them that were lost; to seek and save just
such poor lost sinners as you and I are from sinking forever
and ever in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone.
But further, I can tell you as a truth, as
an unquestionable certainty—I can tell you from experience,
there is no happiness, pleasure, or comfort, on
this side of heaven that is worth calling pleasure or
happiness, but that which is to be found in religion.
One half hour viewing the glory of God in the face of
Jesus—beholding by faith the intrinsic beauty and
glory of all the moral attributes of God, meeting, centering,
uniting, and harmonizing in Christ's merits and
atonement, feeling the love of God in Christ Jesus shed
abroad in the heart, the Spirit of God bearing witness
with the soul that it is born of God, thus feeling the joys
of pardoned sin,—the blessed hope of eternal life—the
dawnings of heaven on earth,—the sweet foretastes of
immortal glory in the soul,—this, I say, affords more
pleasure and real satisfaction than ever an Alexander, a
Cæsar, or a Napoleon felt in all their victories, conquests,
Pomp, or grandeur. These things sweeten all the sorrows
and afflictions of life; these would communicate a
heaven to the genuine christian, though he was chained
in a dungeon, or burning at a stake, they make death
desirable, and eternity delightful. Oh, my young friend!
will you take a start for glory and blessedness? will you
come with me to Emmanuel's land? to the paradise of
God? I am bound for that happy country, it is my home,
and the place where all my prospects lie. Oh come and
enlist under the sweet banners of King Jesus; come and
give your heart to Christ: put the crown of your salvation
upon him that has many crowns upon his head.