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THE NOMINAL CHRISTIAN URGED TO

Ah! what solemn scenes will soon open upon you; an endless world and all its endless joys or woes; the mighty Redeemer and the eternal God. Were there only a proba-“ bility of that solemn world, it might be sufficient to make a reasonable creature indifferent from one so transitory and perishing as this; but here it is not barely probability, it is certainty; and yet will you grasp at the passing shadows of this world, and neglect the endless realities of the other! Now you say of a part of life, It is gone; yet you look forward and hope for other years to come; but what will be your state when looking backward, you must say, Time is gone; and looking forward, Eternity is come. O that awful, that dreadful eternity! How will it torment the murderers of time! how will it teach the thoughtless sinner, and the mere nominal Christian, their folly and their madness! In this world, the most wretched may look for ease from earthly misery in the hallowed rest of the grave; there, they may say, the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest. But when they enter that neglected eternity, oh, what a change will there be in this respect! As there no death alarms the happy, so no death relieves the miserable. On earth, sleep may afford the most miserable, intervals of ease; but there will be no sleeping in hell. The sufferer on the bed of distraction and pain often finds relief in the power of laudanum and opiates. O how often, when sitting by such a bed, have I thought, there will be no laudanum in the world of wretched spirits! no medicines there to assuage the force of pain, or render the sufferer insensible of his state! All this too deserved by sin. And do you profess to believe the book which warns you of such danger, and shows you how to escape? and yet do you slight that salvation? O what heads, what hearts, have they who, professing to believe these things, can trifle life away! You would start with horror at a proposition to murder yourself; can you, without hesitation, do ten times worse than murder your immortal soul? by a careless, ungodly life, train it for destruction ;-fit it for hell ;--make it the eternal enemy of God;-prepare it to be a suitable companion for devils;and eternally subject it to Satan's power! If you were in a room surrounded with armed enemies, and one were to enter with two lists in his hand, in one or the other of which the name of every person present would be found; if all in one list

CONSIDER HIS WANT OF FAITH.

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were devoted to death, consigned to the bayonets of the surrounding soldiers, and all in the other list sure of life and joy, how anxious would you be to know in which list your name stood! especially if the dead list were the more numerous of the two! Yet here all your anxiety would be concerning a life, that must soon end by disease if saved from violence. But eternal life or eternal death is before you; and do you never think it worth while to inquire, Is my name written in the book of life? am I a candidate for glory? have I fled to the Giver of life eternal, and found salvation in him? or does my name still stand in the list of those who are the slaves of sin, the children of wrath, and the heirs of hell? O my fellow-sinner! if you have hitherto professed to believe the Bible, and yet with the multitude neglected Jesus and salvation, learn more wisdom now. You cannot neglect this much longer, without neglecting it for ever. Be then what you profess to be, be not a hypocrite or a practical infidel, and you will be a Christian.

§ 6. But, perhaps, the eye that reads this page is an eye that sees no glory like that it sees in Christ; yet if you have reason to hope it is so, still it is needful often to commune with your own heart, often to examine your own condition. Try yourself, my friend; the Judge eternal will try us all. Try your every grace; hereafter all must be tried. And is your faith like that described in the precious Scriptures, as genuine and saving? is it the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen? does it engage your heart powerfully and decidedly for God and Christ? does it lead you to act as seeing him who is invisible? and though you see not God, to live, and pray, and persevere as if you saw him? Though the blessed Jesus is unseen by you, does faith lead you to trust him, and love him, and follow him? so that it may be said, whom having not seen, you love; in whom, though now you see him not, yet believing, you rejoice; and whose word you hear with as much deference, as if you heard him speaking from heaven.

While the things that are seen would engage your heart, does faith lead you to look above them? to choose a world you never saw, before that you daily see? to set your affections upon a heaven, of which by sight you never gained the slightest glimpse, in preference to the honours, and profits,

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ADDRESS TO THE CHRISTIAN ON

and pleasures of earth and time? and to flee more earnestly from an unseen world of ruin, than you would from

"Hunger, poverty, and pain,

"And all the transitory ills below?"

Does faith cause you, with Enoch, to walk with God? with Noah, to dread God's threatened judgments? with Abraham, to forsake an earthly, and seek a better country? with Moses, to esteem the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt? with Paul, to count all things but loss that you may win Christ, and be found in him? and with all the holy host of martyrs, whatever you may lose, whatever you may suffer here, still to persevere, looking for a better resurrection?

In short, does faith thus govern your heart, thus direct your choice, thus rule your conduct, thus fire your love, thus wing your desires, thus strengthen your hopes, and thus enable you to live on earth as a stranger travelling to heaven? If it be genuine, if it be saving, these will be its effects; and if effects of this kind are not produced, you have but the shadow, instead of the substance.

Make it your study and prayer to bring faith into daily and hourly exercise. You believe in a gracious, an all-seeing and almighty God: act as in his sight. You believe in an atoning Saviour: look daily to him as your life, your all. You believe in eternal judgment: now live as one whose actions and thoughts must then be scrutinized; live as you will wish to have done, when standing to receive the sentence of your Judge. You believe that there is a happy heaven : pursue it with that earnestness which eternal life demands. You believe that there is a miserable prison of eternal punishment: watch and pray against sin, the source of misery, the cause of the creation of hell. You believe that your way to eternity is beset with snares: watch and pray lest you enter into temptation. You believe that you are dark in your reason, and weak in your powers: listen then with all humility to him whose knowledge is as boundless as yours is confined. Receive implicitly whatever Jesus has revealed; and let it be enough to engage your belief, that he has said it. You believe that you are weak: let frequent daily prayer implore the guidance and strength of your God and Saviour, to attend you through the world, down to death, and up to

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glory. Thus live as a believer. And when a few more suns have risen and set; when a few more days, and weeks, and months have rolled away; when you have suffered a few more of the pains, and enjoyed a few more of the pleasures, of life; your days will be numbered, your time will be no longer, your farewell must be taken of earthly comfort, and your freedom from earthly pain will be complete. Then will you see what you now believe. Death, when it closes your eyes upon this world, will open them on the next; there to see all that is now unseen, to know what is now unknown; there to change faith for sight, and fleeting comforts for eternal life. Blessed are those servants that, when the last great change approaches, are found watching! Be not slothful, but a follower of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises. Persevere, is the direction of the Saviour; and let it animate you to think that perseverance will not long be requisite. Let faith direct your thoughts to future scenes. Like the watchmen on the mountains of Judea, watching the first glimmerings of the moon, let faith look for its returning Lord. In pleasing meditation, let faith descry the events of other years, and tell us the language of his saints in distant days. Ah! let it say to us, He comes-one star is blazing— the firmament is catching fire from its flames—He comes— the lightning spreads before him—again it spreads and turns midnight darkness into awful day-He comes-the last trumpet speaks him near-He comes-let us go hence! let us leave this ruined world! this perishing creation! Ah! Saviour, Shepherd, Guardian, Friend, and God! thus wilt thou come! thus wilt thou visit earth a second time! but we-ah we— must we wait those distant years! Ah no! long ere that time arrive, all who love thee here now, shall love and adore thee in the dwellings of unfading life.

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CHAPTER V.

THE CHRISTIAN LIFE A LIFE OF PRAYER.

§ 1. PRAYER is a sacred privilege. By it the Christian

maintains intercourse with his God and Saviour.

Prayer brings down numberless blessings upon man. It is the breath of the soul. It is the life of religion. A Christian cannot live without it. A corpse maintains for a while the form of man, but the spirit is fled, it is destitute of life. The form of religion may be assumed where the life is wanting. Without prayer it is a dead corpse; the breath, the vital spirit, are wanting. Religion begun leads to prayer. Of every awakened sinner, it may be said, as it was of St. Paul, Behold, he prayeth. Religion strengthens, matures, and lives by prayer; and closes its course below with prayer, when the dying believer breathes out his soul and his desires together with Stephen's petition, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!

§ 2. Consider the solemnity of prayer. The most solemn change that will ever take place in our situation, is that made by death; when we at once leave all the scenes of mortality for the more important scenes of eternity; quit the society of our nearest relatives and dearest friends to enter on the presence of Jesus and of God; and from being inhabitants of this changing world are, in the twinkling of an eye, removed to eternal abodes of unchanging misery or bliss. This is a change whose terrors the wicked must dread; and whose solemnity the righteous must feel. But on earth there is a change which we may justly deem next in solemnity to that of death. It is the change made in our circumstances by prayer ;-often as unthought of as it is solemn. In death, we leave time for eternity; the converse of mortals for the presence of God. In prayer, we leave the business of time for that of eternity, and intercourse with man for intercourse with God. One minute our attention is occupied with those dying creatures, who, like ourselves, are hastening to the grave, the next our business is

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