this queftion alfo with regard to your recreations; "How long have I to live," that I should spend hour after hour at a cardtable, or any other childish, fedentary, unprofitable diverfion?, that I fhould confume my precious, precarious moments in vain. and trifling company? "Rejoice, O young man in thy youth, and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thy heart, and the fight of thine eyes: but know thou, that for all these things God will certainly, and may speedily, bring thee into judgment:" Thus make the views of death familiar to your minds: for, next to the influences of God's Spirit upon your hearts, nothing will be fo likely to make your business lawful, profperous and comfortable; your amusements innocent, decent and useful; and your tempers habitually ferious and holy. Such a difpofition will be of unfpeakable benefit, if you are early removed out of life.If you live to be old, the habits of piety will be confirmed, and the world, with its cares and pleasures, more eafily and cheerfully refigned. Finally, attend to the exhortation of Chrift: "Take heed

to

to yourselves, left at any time your hearts are overcharged with furfeiting and drunkennefs, and the cares of this life; and fo that day come upon you unawares."

2. Let me add a brief exhortation to the aged, founded on the fubject we have been confidering.

I speak unto you, fathers, because you cannot but know that the world is vain, and death is near. Let me entreat you seriously to reflect, how abfurd and fhocking it is to fee a perfon on the borders of the grave greedy of money, fparing no time nor pains to increase his substance. "Can any thing," faith a heathen, “be more abfurd, than for a man to be eager in laying up travelling expenfes, when his journey is juft ended?" How fad is it to fee a poor dying creature entering upon an awful eternity with a heart glued to the world, and full of its concerns; who, instead of being crucified to the world, is to the laft doating upon it! Shall I be allowed, in this connexion, to address you in the beautiful, ftriking language of Dr. Young?

my co-evals! remnants of yourselves;
Poor human ruins, tott'ring o'er the grave!
Shall we, fhall aged men, like aged trees,
Strike deeper their vile root, and closer cling,
Still more enamour'd of this wretched foil?
Shall our pale, wither'd hands be still stretch'd out,
Trembling at once with eagerness and age?
With avarice and convulfion grafping hard,
Grasping at air? For what has earth befides ?
Man wants but little, nor that little long:
How foon muft he refign his very duft,
Which frugal nature lent him for an hour!

How wife, pertinent and affecting at caution!" Labour not then to be rich: ceafe from your own wifdom:" for, if it terminates here, it will prove the greatest folly and madness. Let me entreat and perfuade you, to turn your thoughts and cares into a nobler channel; to "provide for yourselves bags that wax not old; a. treasure in heaven, that decayeth not ;" and by being " rich in good works, ready. to diftribute, and willing to communicate, you may lay up in ftore for yourfelves a good foundation against the time to come, and may lay hold on eternal life. By meditation on the difference between things. feen and unfeen, by faith, prayer and liberality, labour to get clear of worldly affections, and to grow "meet for the inheri

tance of the faints in light." Let your delight be in the word of God; in converfing with him in the exercifes of repentance, and faith in Chrift; and in refignation to the divine will. Employ fome time. alfo in inftructing thofe that may come after you. Represent to them the vanity of the world, your experience of the divine care and bounty, of the grace of our Lord Jefus Christ, and the influences of the Holy Spirit. Exhort, and endeavour to engage, them to choose the way of truth, and to walk as Chrift walked. And let your own temper and example illuftrate and enforce all your exhortations. That eminent ftatefnan, Sir Francis Walfingham, in the decline of his days, wrote thus to his friend, Lord Burleigh: "We have lived long enough to our fovereign, to our country, and to our fortunes: it is high time we begin to live to ourselves and to our God."*.

-Finally:

If

*Count Oxenstiern, chancellor of Sweden, and prime minifter of the great Guftavus Adolphus, was a person of the first quality, rank and abilities in his own country, and had rendered himself very confiderable through Europe, by the miniftry of affairs at home, and the greatest negotiations in Europe. Being visited in his old age by the English ambaffador, he faid, "Sir, I have feen and enjoyed much

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If your time and ftrength be thus employed, you will find your hearts more and more loosened from the world; you will be eminent in holiness, and useful to the laft; and, as Eliphaz faid to Job, you " will come to your grave in a full age, like as a fhock of corn cometh in, in his feafon." I fhall only add, as he doth in the following verfe, "Lo this, we have fearched it, fo it is hear it, and know ye it for your good."

DIS

of the world, but I never knew how to live till now. I "thank my good God, who hath given me time to know es him and myself. All the comfort I have, and can take,

(and which is more than the whole world can give me) is the knowledge of God's love in my heart, and the reading of this bleffed book (laying his hand on the Bible). You "are now in the prime of your age and vigour, and in *** great favour and business; but these will all leave you,

and you will, one day, better understand and relish what I fay to you. Then you will find that there is more wifdom, truth, comfort and pleasure in retiring and turning "your heart from the world, in the good Spirit of God, and "in reading his facred word, than in all the courts and all the favour of princes.

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