be not dismayed at the roaring of the billows. Land will be foon in view. Under the influence of Divine Grace, faith will preferve thee, and pilot thee into a blissful harbour. There (moft tranfporting thought!) a convoy of Angels will be ready to attend thee, and waft thee to the manfions of everlasting joy and glory*.

Thou that can't fill the raging of the feas,
Chain up the winds and bid the tempest cease;
Redeem my fhip wreck'd foul from raging gufts
Of cruel paffion, and deceitful lufts:

From ftorms of rage and dang'rous rocks of pride
Let thy ftrong hand this little veffel guide;
It was thy hand that made it; thro' the tide
Impetuous of this life, let thy command
Direct my course, and bring me fafe to land.

PRIOR's Solomon, Power.

SERMON VI.

The great Advantages of early Piety.

ECCLESIASTES, xii. 1.

Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, &c. &c.

T

HESE words are an admonition left

to pofterity, as a legacy from the wisest of men; a conclufion drawn from unhappy experience, that nothing is fo proper, nothing fo becoming our early years, as to quit the empty circle of worldly pleasures, and remember our Creator in the days of our youth.

Now to remember our Creator is to reflect upon him with delight—to preserve an habitual sense of his goodness in our minds; and to render him all that reasonable fervice, which is included in love-honourand obedience. And fure, for thefe necef

fary

fary purposes, no time can be fo acceptable to our Maker as youth-when the affections are more powerful, the heart more fufceptible of warm impreffions, (and therefore should be of divine ones) than in the languid ftate of decaying nature. Youth is the golden NOW, the glorious opportunity, which lofing at present, we may lose for ever.

proper for

BESIDES, there is no feafon fo man to bear the yoke as in youth; for then wisdom's ways will become habitual-whose ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace. And if we neglect to submit to the gentle restraints of religion in our youth, our burden will inevitably be the heavier, And how fhall we be able to fupport the weight, when we are tottering under the infirmities of old age? Is it a becoming time to make a firft addrefs to the King of Kings, and to offer him our fervice, when our joints are palfied-our eyes dim-and our knees grown feeble:-as if our Maker was only to be complimented with the dregs of mortality? Would a temporal Prince acceptthe service of a foldier in the laft days of his life, who 'till that time had borne arms against him under his moft implacable enemy?

Would

Would he not rather condemn him as a rebel, than accept him as a loyal subject, or reward him among his his own faithful veterans? --Moreover, what an ungrateful return muft it be, for all those ennobling distinctions, which man is endowed with above the reft of the creation? Alas! to what an unworthy purpose must his creation have been, that of a fenfitive and reasoning Being—and how uselefs his being made a little lower than the angels; when he fo abuses his faculties!

By fuch a conduct Heaven is treated only as an hofpital or a guard-houfe; a place to fly to in the hours of diftrefs, a fhelter from the threatening ftorm. The reward of fuch vain confidence is fully fhewn in the parable of the foolish virgins, who for want of a timely provifion of oil for their lamps, were forever excluded the kingdom above. That we may avert their fate, let us all timely confider how precious we are in God's fight; and how folemnly he expoftulates with us by the Evangelical prophet ISAIAH.--Now will I fing to my well-beloved a fong of my beloved, touching his vineyard: My well-beloved hath a vineyard in a very fruitful bill-and he fenced it, and gathered out the ftones thereof, and planted

it with the choiceft vine, and built a tower in the midst of it, and alfo made a wine prefs therein: and he looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes:

And now, O inhabitants of Jerufalem, and men of Judah, judge, I pray you betwixt me and my vineyard. What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not done in it? Wherefore when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes. And now go to; I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard; I will take away the hedge thereof, and it shall be eaten up: and break down the wall thereof, and it shall be troden down. And I will lay it wafte: It shall not be pruned nor digged, but there fhall come up briers. and thorns: I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it. For the vineyard of the Lord of hofts is the house of Ifrael, and the men of Judah his pleasant plant: and be looked for judgment, but behold oppreffion; for GOD has righteousness, but behold a cry. been abundantly indulgent to us-has done his part in giving us improveable underftandings, we must not then, on our parts, neglect hufbandthe culture of them. Shall a poor man do more for the clods of the earth, to

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