parting from friends dear as life, but I am going to others still dearer. I am turning away from bright prospects, but infinitely brighter ones are opening upon my view. I am going away early from earth, but am going as early to heaven: and my existence in the former is shortened only that my existence in the latter may be extended. The connections who I am leaving pity me for my early death; the angels in Paradise congratulate me on so soon quitting a vale of tears, and so early retiring from all the trials, temptations, and dangers of this scene of conflict. I am now within sight of glory, and am all but absolutely certain of being safely brought to it. Who can tell but I am taken home to escape perils which might have been too great for my strength. I therefore die without murmuring, and depart with cheerful submission, though I die in youth, since it is to be with Christ, which is far better." Happy youth! Yes, happy, to have thy warfare thus early and successfully accomplished, to win the victory at the very commencement of the battle! So soon to gain

and wear the crown! *

II. But I must now turn to a class of young persons the reverse cf all this: I mean those who die without religion. Alas! alas! what an idea! How sad, how mournful, how awful! To die without religion! To go out of the world without comfort in death, and without

*I will give an illustration of this by a scene, part of which I witnessed myself. One Lord's-day, after the morning service, was requested to visit a gentleman who was alarmingly ill, at one of our inns, on his way to Scotland. It is not my custom, for want of strength, to visit the sick on Sabbath-days, but this case was urgent, and I went. I was introduced to the sick chamber of a remarkably fine young man, of considerable worldly respectability, who was attended by two anxious sisters and a brother. They were bearing him home with many apprehensions that he would die on the road. My visit was one of solemn and mournful delight, for I found him a real Christian, expecting death hourly, but expecting it in the most serene and hopeful frame of mind, as his kind deliverer from the burden of the flesh. Since then I received from one of his sorrowing sisters the following account of his peaceful dismissal : 66 # * He suffered greatly the last three weeks, but was enabled to bear all with much patience, feeling it came from the hand of a loving Father. His growth in grace was very

*

hope beyond it! And usually those who live without religion, die without it. Death-bed repentances are in most cases little to be thought of, and less to be depended upon. True repentance is never too late, but late repentance is rarely true. Religion is not like the act of a man who in a shipwreck is cast into the sea, and there in the greatest alarm, as a matter of necessity, lays hold of and grasps a plank as a means of saving himself from being drowned. But on the contrary it resembles the conduct of one who deliberately and by choice steps on board a vessel or a boat, to convey him on some gainful or pleasur able voyage. And therefore those who live without religion, I repeat, generally die without it. Everything renders the death of a young man who dies without religion peculiarly melancholy. He has no comfort in death; on the contrary, he has most melancholy reflections. Comfort in death can come only from religion. The petrifying process of a stoical philosophy, or of a hardening infidelity, may, and sometimes does, so turn a man's heart into stone, that he may acquire a stupid insensibility even in death; but actual comfort can come only from religion. It is the hope of immortality alone which can be as a lamp in the dark valley of the shadow of death, and the man destitute of it, passes through the gloomy region either in perturbation and mental agony, or in sullen indifference. In this case there are also the vexation, disappointment, and distress, of giving up life so early. A feeling of mortification springs up, akin to that of a

:

rapid he seemed to enjoy largely the teaching of the Holy Spirit. The Lord was most gracious in the support and comfort he vouchsafed to him. He often seemed lost in adoring wonder, contemplating the amazing love of God in Christ Jesus. Although he had much to make life to be enjoyed, he left earth without regret; indeed he said he should not like to return again to the world, except from one desire, that he might be honoured in doing something for the Saviour. When in much suffering, some hours before his death, it was said to him, 'Soon this will be ended, and then, happy, happy spirit!' He faintly replied, 'Happy even now.' Amongst his last words were, 'Peace, Peace.'"

Are you, if called to die in youth, prepared to die so happy?

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person reluctantly called away at the commencement of a pleasurable scene which he intensely wishes to see completed, while others are left behind still to enjoy it after his departure. For a while he resists and resents the thought of dying. He clings to life with a tenacity which looks as if he could not, would not, dare not, die. He sends for his companions, who endeavour to cheer him and persuade him he will yet do well, and he talks with them of plans of future enjoyment, when he shall recover. Disease however progresses, and extinguishes these hopes: and at last comes, first the dreadful fear, and then the still more dreadful certainty, that he cannot live. Thoughts such as these are in his mind, although he may be afraid to give utterance to them in language. It is really a very hard case to die so young. Before I have well tried what life is, to be thus hurried out of it! To have ties so tender, and only just formed, severed! To see all my hopes so soon and so suddenly cut off, and all my prospects shut up! To have the cup of pleasure dashed from my lips, just as I had begun to sip it, and before I had taken one full draught! To see others of my own age in full health, pursuing their schemes, and likely to live and prosper, while I am dying and going down to the grave! How cruel is inexorable fate! How I almost wish I had never been born! For what has this short life proved to me, but a disappointment? My existence has been rather a shadow than a substance, a mockery rather than a realisation of hope. I have lived only for this world, which I am now leaving for ever, and have made no provision nor preparation for that on which I am about to enter. have neglected my soul and have forgotten God. I am wrecked at the commencement of the voyage of life, and shall perish, with all that belongs to me, both as a mortal and immortal creature." How distressing to meet death in such a frame as this, so cold, so hopeless, so comfortless, and cheerless! A young man dying without religion is, according to his own views and reflections, cut off, without

I

having seen known or enjoyed much of life. He has not had his share of life's business enjoyments and possessions. His views of his case are quite correct. He is withdrawn from the gay circle, and the scenes of business, as soon as he has entered them; and as he has lived without religion, and secured the possession of nothing else, he has lived in vain. His case is the very opposite of that which we have considered in the former part of this chapter. He has not sought the one great end of existence, the salvation of his immortal soul, and all the secondary and inferior ends are failing him. The supreme objects of our being, which God proposed to him, he turned away from; and the inferior ones, which he proposed to himself, are turning away from him. He lived only for this world, and the deity to which he consecrated his life left him almost as soon as he entered his service. He has had no time to gain worldly wealth or distinction, and has wilfully put away from him the opportunity, which he once possessed, to lay up treasures in heaven: and there he now lies, with all his hopes of time a wreck, and no hope of heaven and immortality rising up in their place. Follow him on to eternity. He finds there no compensation for what he has lost here. It is not in his case as it is in that of the religious young man, whose early death is so much taken from earth to be added to heaven; for he has not sought heaven, and has no portion there. He has lost the possession and enjoyment of both worlds at once; his few fleeting pleasures on earth are not followed with the fullness of joy which is at God's right hand, and the pleasures that are for evermore in his presence. He has been suddenly hurried away from the springs of earthly delight, and no fountain in heaven, no "river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding from the throne of God and the Lamb," comes in to supply their place. Earth rolls from beneath his feet, and heaven stoops not to sustain and receive his sinking spirit. He rises not to glory

as does the young departing Christian, exulting as he looks on the fading scenes of terrestial beauty, and exclaiming, "I have lost nothing." It is his, on the contrary, as he resigns his spirit, mournfully to confess, "I have lost everything. I am early driven out of earth, and the portals of heaven open not to receive me. Nor is this all; for the death of an irreligious young man reaches the climax of its distress and misery in the consideration that his early removal is so much time taken from the occupations, possessions, and pleasures of earth, to be added to the bitter pains of eternal death, the inconceivable torments of the bottomless pit. To the religious man who dies in youth, whatever he may part from, still death is gain. He gains infinitely more than he can lose; but the irreligious young man not only loses all he had, and all he hoped for on earth, but gets nothing in exchange but the loss of his soul's salvation with it, and has in his miserable condition the agony of contrasting what he has left on earth with what he has to endure in the dark world of hell. He will not have the poor, wretched, meagre, satisfaction, if such it can be called, of reflecting that on his way to perdition, he had his fill of earthly pleasure and business, and, like the rich man, lived long and fared sumptuously every day, before he descended to that place of torment. On the contrary, he will have through eternity to reflect that he received nothing in exchange for his soul but the vices and follies of youth, and sacrificed his immortal interest, for the pleasures of sin, confined, as in his case they were, to the brief season of his short life. O! how mean, how insignificant a price this for which to barter away immortal bliss! How far below even the folly and impiety of that profane man who sold his birthright for one morsel of meat!

These things, young men, are submitted for your most serious consideration. Presume not upon long life. Millions die in youth every year. How know you that you