road." Will you not pause, before you join that multitude, who, however distinguished by variety of pursuit, are in spirit essentially one; inasmuch as the things they seek, whether grave or frivolous, inherently valuable, or intrinsically baubles, are equally destructive, as occupying the place of God? Or will you live on in this wretched uncertainty, this inward strife, which embitters a season that might be one of sweet, and even bright serenity? Day after day will you continue to see the right, and yet pursue the wrong? to stifle your convictions? to call good evil and evil good, and put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter? My heart mourns over you with true and tender pity; for I know all that you must endure, unless divine grace shorten these days of your wandering in the wilderness, and incite you to go up at once and possess "that good land," that fair inheritance, which God chooses for his people: unless you are drawn with full, and influential, and appropriating purpose of heart to say, "The Lord he is the God; the Lord he is the God." Many are

happy (as they estimate happiness,) without a sense of God's favour, without caring or even knowing what is the true end of their being; but you cannot be So, for two reasons. You have been too well instructed, and too often impressed, for your conscience to be stupified by those opiates which avail for ignorance. Your heart may rebel against God, but your judgment will rebel against your heart, and with not enough religion to make you happy and ensure your safety, you will have just enough to render you miserable and increase your condemnation. Others may immerse themselves in the gay vanities of life and feel no compunction, and you may make the attempt, but only to experience a thorny conscience. To you, the pleasures of the world will grow beside the precipice of remorse, and whatever be the phantom of your pursuit,

"Still as you run you'll look behind,
And hear a voice in every wind,

And snatch a fearful joy."

Others may be satisfied without God, be

cause they take false views of his character,

and do not realize eternity; but your understanding is enlightened by sound doctrine, your memory is stored with scripture statements, and even should devotional habits be cast off, remembrance will haunt you like an accusing spirit. The sight of Christians will sadden and reproach you, because you will feel that they possess a treasure which you have not, and which you will strive in vain to despise. Your bible will be “a flaming sword, turning every way" to keep you from happiness; your eyes will be open to discern its threatenings, while you will not dare to reach forth your hand and take of its promises. Ordinances will be "a savour of death unto death," alternately increasing your stubbornness, or rousing the stings of conscience and your sabbaths will be emphatically wretched, days of weariness or days of remorse. In affliction, in danger, even in common cares, your soul will be desolate; as your heart is against God, so will you feel his heart against you; and every effort to ask his protection or his counsel, will be checked by the remembrance of a verse like

K

this, "Where are thy gods that thou hast made thee? let them arise if they can save thee in the time of thy trouble." Thus will. you "wander from mountain to hill, ashamed of the oaks which you have desired, and confounded for the gardens you have chosen." There is yet another reason, why, in the event of your remaining alienated from God, you may expect unhappiness; a reason grounded on your natural character. Ardent, ambitious, impatient of control, consumed even now by romantic fancies, tell me, how can you be happy without that principle which, by regulating your mind, would reconcile you to life as it is really constituted; not the life

you now picture, nor that depicted in a novel, but the life of common occupations, relieved only by common pleasures? I admit, you have a resource in your excellent abilities and taste for mental cultivation; but so long as your present feelings continue, and you consider them merely available to ambitious purposes, you will derive more disappointment than comfort from their possession. Knowledge, loved and sought for its own

sake, enhances happiness: knowledge, merely sought and loved for purposes of display and self-aggrandizement, induces much evil and many mortifications.

Dearest

let me break off this melancholy sketch, and picture the bright reverse which might be yours, if only you were God's. I do not say that religion would keep you in that constant excitement in which you now deem happiness to consist; but once received into your soul as a controlling and subduing power, new desires and new affections would arise, and induce a taste for a new style of happiness, even the happiness of peace. Only ask him, and God will enable you to see honour in utility,

Once his child and

and pleasure in duty. follower, the promise that "no good thing will be withheld," is yours; and He whose eyes are over all his works, pledges himself to afford you all that shall minister to your real welfare and solid comfort. I know that you are disinclined even to ask God to subdue your disinclination! I fear that you cherish a dislike to that surrender which is in fact