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to die for you? and by the workings of his Spirit led you to the Saviour? and made you a child of his own, instead of an heir of wrath? And is this your return to your merciful Creator?

Your sin against God is of the most dreadfully heinous kind. Are you not under the most solemn vows to be the Lord's? Should you forget them, God will not forget them, and if you break them your soul will lie under the horrible guilt of lying unto God. How many solemn engagements have you made to be the Lord's! How many vows in private, when no eye but God's saw you, no ear but God's heard you! What solemn professions before the church and the Lord! The engagements of your baptism, and those repeated again and again at the table of the Lord! Will you break all these promises, and become guilty of telling not one lie only to God, but many? How hateful is a lie! all liars shall have their part in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone. The Lord Jesus describes the devil as the father of lies, and of liars. If lying to men is so hateful, what must it be to lie to God? Of this horrible crime you will be guilty, if you forsake the way of peace. It may be said at last, You promised to be the Lord's; but, miserable liar! you broke all those promises; you took the vows of God upon you, and then became a poor, perjured wretch, by slighting all those vows. O my fellow sinner! no lies are so aggravated as the backslider's lies to God. They are wilful lies; for he goes wilfully from Christ, and will not stop, though God and man entreat him to return. They are lies whose guilt is heightened by the base ingratitude of forsaking a good God and a gracious Saviour; and heightened still more by the horrible choice he makes: he leaves Christ for the world that crucified his Lord; and forsakes God for sin and the devil. I have read of a backslider that said, "I will not have salvation-nothing for me but hell. Come, O devil, and take

me.

Few speak thus plainly; but all that wilfully forsake Jesus, make this dreadful choice; and would they speak what in reality they do, each would say, Lord Jesus, I renounce thee, I leave thee. Satan, I choose thee as my Lord. Heaven I forsake. Come, devil, you shall be my owner, and hell shall be my home. Like Altamont, every backslider

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may say, "I have been too strong for Omnipotence, I have plucked down ruin.”

O when the Judge comes to pronounce the doom of every Iliar, what will be their state who have lied to God!

Oh, my fellow-sinner! how can you live with such a load of guilt upon you! how can you make a choice so horrible! Does not eternity haunt your guilty hours? eternal damnation gained-eternal salvatión trampled under foot-eternal despair-eternal enmity to God-eternal likeness to the damned-eternal hellishness acquired ?-Oh, dreadful choice! Perhaps you laugh; but will you laugh in misery? Perhaps you jest; but will you jest in hell? Perhaps you call that place of woe a bugbear; will you on a dying bed? Did Voltaire? did Tom Paine? did the unhappy wretch once an infidel, who cried, "O thou blasphemed, yet most indulgent Lord God! hell itself is a refuge if it hide me from thy frown?"

Oh listen not to the delusions of unbelief, and the suggestions of an infernal foe! Rather seek mercy. Flee from the wrath to come. Is not death already clad in terrors? Then turn to him who would take the sting of death away.

Behold your once dying, but now risen, Lord! shall all his dying love be lost on you? Will you reject that gracious, heavenly friend? Behold his dying sorrows, his nameless agonies, his torturing cross, his flowing blood-and think of the immense eternal love, that prompted him to bear those sorrows for you. Can you see this, and yet forsake the Lord who bought you? Or think of his kingdom. Think of the meeting of his friends, when all his ransomed flock shall meet in heaven. O unhappy creature! shall your pious friends miss you there? Shall your minister see that you are absent? Shall those, with whom you have often sat down at the Saviour's table here, sit down without you there? When the little flock that you belonged to, are landed safely, and those who were baptized, or who otherwise professed the gospel, with you, rest above, where will you be? and millions of years beyond the day of doom, where will you be? If sorrow could be felt in heaven, your Christian friends might mourn while they exclaim, Where now is our poor companion, our brother or sister, that professed to set out in the way to heaven with us, and then, O foolish creature! turned aside? Where now the

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thoughtless youth, that loved a dying world, and left our Lord? and where all his vain delights? Where now the unhappy girl, that once promised fair for glory? and where all for which she denied her Redeemer, and sold her soul? Ah, had she persevered how different had been her lot! That hapless soul, which is now overwhelmed with eternal night, had then been one of our happy band; had then enjoyed the crown that fadeth not away.

Ah, my friend! these things are not cunningly devised fables. The time will come, when your Christian friends, who cleave to the Saviour, will rest in heaven; and when, if you return not to him, you and they must part for ever.

Oh! if you leave them now, this wilful parting is the dread forerunner of an eternal separation. Now to be parted from the flock of God perhaps you feel but little; but what will it be to be parted from it for ever?

If you would return to the ways of peace, inquire seriously, what has been the occasion of your fall? and forsake it, though it may cause you as much pain as to cut off a right hand. Forsake especially worldly associates; or every attempt to return to God will be in vain. Begin with religion again as you began at first. Seek salvation through the blood of Jesus. Pray much. Frequent divine ordinances. Cherish religious conversation: and God will hear your prayers, and help your soul, and give you grace to escape from the snare of the devil. Then who will sing of redeeming love with a heart so warm as you? All the motives that love and gratitude can furnish, urge you to return. All the motives. that can spring from pity for yourself, urge your immediate return. All the blessings of eternal life invite you back to God. All the sorrows of the Saviour urge you to flee to him. And all the terrors of eternal death should frighten you from the paths of the destroyer.

§ 7. Shall I, by a statement of painful facts that I have witnessed, endeavour to offer one motive more for your immediately returning to the Saviour, who is willing to have mercy upon you, or for your watching, praying, and persevering. I was once called to see a person in much distress of mind, who professed religion, but who declared that his conduct had been inconsistent with his profession. He spoke of the extreme distress that he then felt, and observing that he

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had been two months in that condition, said, that those two months seemed like two millions of years. At another time he said, "If I possessed it, I would give ten thousand millions of worlds to be out of my present misery." Depend upon it, if you forsake the Saviour, or if you have forsaken him, and return not to him, you are hastening to sorrows thus excruciating and severe. On another occasion I repeatedly visited a young woman, who had been a professor of religion, but who had fallen, and led a life of carelessness. She was confined to a bed of affliction, and apparently near the grave. With a countenance full of bitter distress, she often spoke of her guilt and folly in such expressions as the following: "I once knew the way; I once could look at death with comfort; but now I cannot-I fear there is no mercy for me." Unexpectedly her illness took a favourable turn; she would then say, "I have suffered much, but not half so much as I deserve for my base ingratitude to God." Speaking of her views when at the worst, she observed, she would have given the world to have had her sins forgiven; and said, that at that time she saw nothing before her but death, and hell along with it! How dismal a prospect for the day of suffering or dissolution! Yet if you are, or ever become, a backslider, what other prospect can be yours! O watch and pray. Return to the Saviour, or cleave to him. So, when your fainting head can rise from its pillow no more; when the blood grows cold at your heart, and your spirit is about to take its final flight; your prospect may be bright as eternal life, and your peace unshaken as the promises of Christ.

CHAPTER XIX.

CONSOLATIONS AND ENCOURAGEMENTS FOR THE
CHRISTIAN IN HIS SPIRITUAL PILGRIMAGE.

§ 1. YOU have now contemplated some of the duties of the Christian life, and some of the trials of the

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Christian warfare; yet many are the fountains of consolation to which the sacred Scriptures direct the thirsty pilgrim's view. For happiness, look to your Redeemer, to your God, and to your home.

Look to your Redeemer, and listen to the gracious words that proceed from his compassionate lips. "Let not your heart be troubled; ye believe in God, believe also in me. He that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him. If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him. Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you; not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid."a "The Father himself loveth you,

because ye have loved me, and have believed that I came out from God." "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: and I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand."b

Perhaps your soul may, at times, be cast down and distressed; but remember, when friends are absent, the Lord Jesus is present. The chief Shepherd is for ever near you; and he who laid down his life for you, will doubtless make your comfort and welfare his care. Let your faith but repose aright upon the Saviour's love, and nothing will seem dark on this side the grave, and all appear bright beyond it. If at times you sow in sorrow, you will doubtless reap in joy. Hear your Lord saying, "I will never leave thee nor forsake thee." Above all, hear him saying, "My grace is sufficient for thee. Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world."d What more can you desire? Jesus always with you-can you then ever indulge distress? Jesus always with you can you then ever want a counsellor? Jesus always with you-can you then ever despair of final conquest? He who laid down his life for you, ever attentive to your welfare -no moment passing in which he is absent; no moment coming when he shall leave you, or his helping hand be far away. O rejoice in these promises! they are worth more than all the world.

(a) John xiv. 1, 21, 23, 27.

(6) John x. 14, 27, 28. (d) 2 Cor. xii. 9. Matt. xxviii. 20.

(c) Heb. xiii. 5.

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