cannot do both. It is therefore, in fact, incompatible with all prayer, since the prayer of our Lord is the model which he himself has given us for all our devotions.

If, indeed, there are any persons present who neither pray in sincerity, nor care to do it ;-who live avowedly without God in the world, and are content to do so;-who sin boldly, and fear nothing; who have taken their determination,

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to rejoice in their youth, and let their hearts cheer them in the days of their youth;-to walk in the ways of their hearts, and in the sight of their eyes ;"-with such, the argument which I have used will indeed avail nothing.-To such I can only say, "Know ye, that for all these things God will call you into judgment." The day is coming, and none can tell but that it may find you in the very midst of your mirth,-which shall turn your laughter into mourning. "Though a sinner do evil an hundred times, and his days be prolonged; yet surely I know that it shall not be well with the wicked, because he feareth not before God."

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But I trust I am addressing persons of a different character, and of better hopes. There are in this congregation, I doubt not, many young persons who have a regard for religion;-whose minds are opening and awakening to its importance; but who are not sufficiently separated from the world;--who are entangled in its snares,

always hindered, often grievously overcome by the pleasures of this life. It is for such that I feel a jealous fear, it is to such that I have now especially addressed myself. I was desirous of throwing another argument in the right scale. I would determine them on the Lord's side.—I am anxious to keep them from the ensnaring— hardening, dangerous influence of the Theatre.

There is, however, one dangerous device of Satan, by which he may endeavour to counteract in such minds the influence of what you have now heard. He may suggest to you that many persons have become decidedly and eminently pious, after having passed a gay and pleasurable youth; and therefore why may not you enjoy mirth, and make the most of the spring time of life; and then, in after years, give your hearts to wisdom, and turn to more serious thoughts and pursuits? At all events, you may safely venture through another season; and there can be but slight risk in attending these Amusements a little longer, and in going to the Theatre a few times more; and after that you may abandon what you cannot altogether approve.

Now, I would conclude this discourse, by putting you upon your guard against this "wile of the Devil." It is true that there have been instances of persons, who, after they had spent a considerable portion of their lives in worldly dissipation, have become holy and devoted Chris

tians. It will be found, however, for the most part, if not in every such case, that these were persons who had given themselves up to pleasure in thoughtless ignorance; and not as you must do, with their eyes open, and their consciences awake to the sinfulness of such conduct. Oh! the condition of those persons is fearful indeed, who harden themselves in iniquity, and deliberately pursue a course of forbidden pleasure, presuming upon "the riches of goodness and forbearance" which God has manifested to others; and because he has been sometimes pleased to magnify his mercy and grace in so remarkable a manner. Surely you must have too much light -too much knowledge, and too many convictions, to think of sheltering yourselves under the vain plea of ignorance and inconsideration. Your sin would be presumptuous wickedness; and the tendency of such wickedness is, to sear the conscience, and to harden the heart into final impenitence; and the probability is, that presumptuous sins would eventually have the dominion over you. Oh, then! as you value everlasting happiness, and as you would escape eternal woe, do not suffer the great deceiver to beguile you into such a desperate venture as this! Oh! abhor the thought of continuing in sin that grace may abound.

But even admitting, what is but barely supposable and fearfully unlikely to come to pass,

that a course of youthful vanity and sin, deliberately chosen, against conviction, shall terminate in a life of piety;—yet, the acknowledged and recorded experience of persons who by the grace of God, have been reclaimed from dissipation and profligacy, is a powerful and perpetual warning to the young, not to delay a moment in separating themselves from the pollution of a wicked and ungodly world; and to dread the defilement and the dominion of formed and fixed habits of wilful and known sin.

Such persons have had to mourn daily and deeply under the effects of their past course of folly and guilt, both in respect of themselves and of others. They were often ashamed, yea even confounded, because they did bear the reproach of their youth. They have had to weep with anguish over the consequences of their former example, and the success of their former counsels and enticements, which they now strove in vain to counteract. Their "old sins" were remembered against them and cast in their teeth. When they had an opportunity of reproving the sinner and warning the wicked from the error of his way, recollection sometimes stopped their mouth, and compelled them to painful silence; because their admonitions and advice would have been received with contempt, and rejected with scorn; and their own history would have been pleaded as a pretext for disregarding their counsel, and perverted into an argument for putting off all serious

thought and care of the soul to a later period of life.

Such persons, too, have found to their grief, how frequently and how forcibly former scenes of sinful pleasure have revived in the mind, and recurred to the thoughts, defiling the imagination, and distressing the soul;-how impiety and impurity, too well remembered, have clung tenaciously to the mind, and given the enemy an advantage against them. The mind resembled a recently-extinguished firebrand, it was re-kindled with a spark. The remembrance of worldly vanities proved a continual hindrance,- an everpresent temptation. The scenes which they had witnessed, and the pleasures in which they had indulged, and the evil thoughts which had long lodged within them, proved to such persons what the flesh-pots of Egypt were to the Israelites when in the wilderness, enticements to return to the slavery of sin; or, what the remaining inhabitants of Canaan were to the Israelites when settled in the land,-"thorns in their eyes and scourges in their sides, vexing them in the land wherein they dwelt;" and "snares and traps to their feet."? Hence it is, that we sometimes meet with instances of persons, who give satisfactory evidence of sincerity in their religious profession, but who are overtaken in some grievous and open sin, in consequence of former iniquities gaining a temporary victory over them, and because they are overcome