Let us inquire, what is here meant by giving the heart to religion, and what are the peculiar motives which should induce the young to make such a dedication of it.

To give your heart to religion, means simply, to give to it the supreme control over your conduct and affections. It does not mean, that nothing else is to engage your regard; that you can have no duties and no pleasures, which are not strictly and exclusively the duties and pleasures of religion. It means only that you are to seek first and chiefly the kingdom of God; that every thing in life is to be made subordinate to this great object; that you are to do no actions, cherish no thoughts, indulge no feelings, gratify no desires, which religion cannot approve; that in all your plans in life you are to have respect to the proper ends of your being, and are to reduce all the principles and affections of your nature under the guidan ́e of conscience, enlightened by the gospel. In one word, to give your heart to religion must mean, that since there is a God, you should reverence, worship and love him; that since Christ has come into the world to redeem you, he should always command your affectionate obedience and remembrance; that since life has been given you in this world for some important end, you should diligently inquire for, and faithfully pursue that end; that since you are born for another world, you should seek to fit yourself for it; and that since there is to be a day of judgment, you should

seriously prepare for it. The question is simply this; whether you shall pass through life with no aims that look beyond it; pursuing merely the pleasures, or riches, or honours, which open before you; and live and die as if you had no soul to be saved; or whether, remembering that your nature is immortal, and capable of exalted and impeperishable attainments, and that your condition in another life is to be decided by your conduct in this, you should, by habitual benevolence, incorruptible integrity, and sincere and unaffected piety, springing from christian principles, and proceeding on christian maxims, make sure your calling and election to the favour of God, and to the happiness of eternity.

I would call your attention to some of the motives for choosing the better part of the alternative thus presented to us, which are peculiarly applicable to the young. In the first place, religion is never more necessary than in youth. It is a common prejudice, arising from very erroneous views of its nature, to think that it is chiefly intended for the aged, the miserable, and the sick, and not for the young, the vigorous, and the happy. Religion is designed for our consolation, it is true; but it is also intended for our guidance and restraint; for the enlargement and direction of our views, and the progressive purification and exaltation of our natures. But all these objects are as necessary, and ought to be as

interesting, to the young, as to the mature. When indeed do we feel the necessity of all our good principles to restrain and guide us most? Is it in the advance of life, when the first warmth of our wishes is cooled, and a sober selfishness, if nothing else, will preserve us from all wild excess? Or is it not at that season when passion rolls her impetuous tides through our veins; when desires, yet unpalled by gratification, are rebels to our reason; and when the bitter consequences of guilt have^ not taught us to shun it? If too, you admit that any alteration ought to be made in our plans of life, in consequence of believing that there is a world of retribution to follow it, what season so proper for the exertion of this influence as that when our plans may be so arranged, that they shall need no alteration? How far better must it be, to set out in the career of life originally right, than to suffer the pain and mortification of being compelled to retrace our steps. How important, also, is it to our happiness, to be early taught by religion to estimate the world at its proper value; to regard it as a school of virtue, more than a festival of pleasure; a scene of high duties, not unmingled gratifications; to be warned before hand, that we shall have much to suffer, as well as to enjoy ; and thus to be preserved from those cruel disappointments, which sadden the days of those, who have indulged such extravagant hopes of felicity, as this state was never intended to realize. In short, unless

you

are prepared to say that the ardour of youthful passion needs no restraint, that the extravagance of youthful hopes needs no correction, and that the arrangement of life is not to be affected by the views which religion gives of its true design, you must admit, that religion is never more necessary than in the season of youth.

Another consideration is, that religion may be most easily and permanently engrafted on the mind in youth. The soul is not yet filled with the cares of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches. It is not yet torn by ambition, and tortured by envy. It is not yet agitated by the tempests of politics, or swallowed up in the whirlpool of fashionable dissipation. It is not yet so bound down to the pursuits of the world, as to leave it no leisure for the thought of heaven. Those sublime views which religion reveals, if permitted to enter the mind, will not find the place, which they ought to possess, preoccupied by merely terrestrial cares. The soul is yet white, and fair, and unsullied. Seize then this precious moment to engrave on it the everlasting characters of celestial truth.

But not only is the mind most open to religion in youth, the heart also is then most susceptible of its sacred influence. The fetters of habit are not yet bound around us. That tendency of our nature to settle in the course which we have long pursued, not only does not yet obstruct the power of religion, but may be brought to lend its aid to en

throne piety forever in the breast. But unless this law of our constitution is early made the friend of religion, it will become its most formidable foe. There is a constantly increasing disposition to change produced by the influence of habit. The longer the invitations of religion are neglected, the more unsusceptible does the soul become of its impressions. The repetition of the same arguments and the same resistance, of the same calls and the same excuses, renders us more and more fixed and easy in sin. The breast no longer smarts with remorse, the old scruples are no longer felt, the language of the scriptures, and the remonstrances of conscience, strike more and more faintly on the till at length the heart becomes callous, seared, completely selfish, and thoroughly worldly, outgrows every thing but its insensibility to religious truth, and no longer has hope or resolution left.

ear;

But even when this fatal tendency of habit is counteracted, and we are arrested in the course of impenitence, still we can scarcely ever wholly avoid its consequences. There is a sceptical turn of mind too often produced, when we advance into the middle of life in habits of irreligion, which it is extremely difficult to overcome. Perhaps we meet with so much deception in the world, that we get the habit of confounding the evidence of truth with the sophistry of error; at any rate it is certain that distrust and suspicion are apt to creep over and incrust the soul, the beams of truth may strike upon