fervice the untainted bloom of innocence, which is the nobleft facrifice you can offer. Refolve never to forfeit the glorious privilege of being born in the house of God, and under the bleffed covenant of redemption from fin: rather let it be your first care to make the beft ufe of that advantage, by preferving the good feed fown in your hearts. Read therefore the written word of God, meditate on the great works of his divine power in the difpenfations of nature and providence, and hearken to his voice, when he speaks to you by your confcience, by his minifters, or the powerful language of divine grace. So will you fee your goods profper upon the earth; fo will your faith and piety increase with your increasing years; and after having been a comfort to your parents and an ornament to religion in this world, you will one day be received into everlafting habitations, at the right hand of your Father which is in

heaven.

SER

SERMON XXXIX.

LUKE XV. 13-16.

And he took his journey into a far country, and there wafted his fubftance with riotous living. And when he had spent all, there arofe a mighty famine in that land, and he began ta be in want. And he went and joined himfelf to a citizen of that country, and he fent him into his fields, to feed fwine. And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the fwine did eat, and no man gave unta bim,

T. Paul, reproaching the Romans with

She thameful regularity of their part

conduct, very justly afks them, "What fruit "had ye then in those things, whereof ye " are now ashamed?" And the fame quef tion may, with equal justice, be asked of

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every

imprudent

imprudent and abandoned finner. And what the true answer to this question must ever be, let the woful experience of the young man in my text declare, whofe imprudent conduct I have on a former occafion endeavoured to describe to you in plain and artless language, to deter the young and unthinking from perfuing the dangerous paths of error and ruin. So long as he remained under the guidance of a wife and kind father, and followed the path of his duty, he was happy, because he was innocent: but no fooner did he shake off the yoke of parental authority, and abandon himself to debauchery, than diftress and fhame followed, and he was reduced to the lowest ftate of poverty and mifery: for, as the Apoftle well adds, "the end of those things "" is death."

It appears that this unhappy young man fet no bounds to his youthful exceffes. For the word made use of in the original * to defcribe his conduct, is expreffive of the most abandoned debauchery and extravagance. And of what kind this debauchery and extravagance was, we are told by his elder brother, who

* Ασώτως.

reproaches

reproaches him with "having devoured his

living with harlots." Here then we fee the fatal rock, upon which the virtue of unguarded youth is ever in danger of being shipwrecked. Captivated by the fyren tongue of beauty, and ensnared by the woman “which "forfaketh the guide of her youth and the "covenant of her God," he foon forgot all the instructive lessons of an aged father, and the improving example of a faultless elder brother. Loft to his country, loft to his friends, to his intereft, to every thing that was manly, wife, and virtuous, he flumbered on in the lap of pleasure, till the voice of distress awaked him to shame and remorse;to tell him that he had spent his all;—that the gripe of famine was ready to seize him, and to bring him down to the chambers of death.

In the fate of this unthinking prodigal, then, let every young man fee, as in a glafs, the unavoidable confequences of lawless lust and ungoverned paffion. Let him be affured from the experience of all ages, that there is not a furer, there is not a more direct road to abfolute ruin, and that the wife king of Ifrael

Ifrael fpake the language of unerring truth, when he faid, that " by means of a whorish "woman a man is brought to a piece of "bread." Suffer me therefore to address you all in the affectionate language of the fame wife king, "Hearken unto me now "therefore, O ye children, and attend to "the words of my mouth. Let not thine "heart decline to her ways, go not aftray "in her paths. For her house is the way "to hell, going down to the chambers of "death." And here I cannot but take occafion to remark, and at the fame time fincerely to lament, that mafs of folly and ob fcenity which is circulated through every part of the kingdom in indecent prints and publi cations, replete with danger and ruin to the youthful part of both fexes. For fure I am, that nothing can tend more fatally to inflame the paffions and corrupt the minds of young perfons, and prepare them for the commiffion of every species of deftructive debauchery. And at the beft, had they no worse tendency, even the most harmless of them fill the mind with frivolity, enervate the powers of the understanding, and generate an unaptness in young minds to apply to what is ferious, manly,

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