honour and virtue, nor did she use to venture to the utmost bounds of what sobriety and religion might allow. Danger of guilt stands near the extreme limits of innocence.

Shall I let this paper inform the world, with what friendly decency she treated her young companions and acquaintance; how far from indulging the modish liberties of scandal on the absent; how much she hated those scornful and derisive airs, which persons, on higher ground, too often assume toward those who are seated in the inferior ranks of life? Is it proper I should say how much her behaviour won upon the esteem of all that' knew her, though I could appeal to the general sorrow at her death, to confirm the truth of it? But who can forbear, on this occasion, to take notice how far she acquired that lovely character in her narrow and private sphere, which seems almost to have been derived to her, by inheritance, from her honoured father deceased, who had the tears of his country long dropping upon his tomb, and whose memory yet lives in a thousand hearts?

Such a conversation, and such a character, made up of piety and virtue were prepared for the attacks of a fever, with malignant and mortal symptoms. Slow and unsuspected were the advances of the disease, till the powers of reason began to faulter and retire, till the heralds of death had made their appearance, and spread on her bosom their purple ensigns. When these disorders began, her lucid intervals were longer, and while she thought no person was near, she could address herself to God, and say, how often she had given herself to him; she hoped she had done it sincerely, and found acceptance with him, and trusted that she was not deceived. The gleams of reason that broke in between the clouds, gave her light enough to discern her own evidences of piety, and refresh her hope. Then she repeated some of the last verses of the cxxxix. Psalm in metre, viz.

"Lord, search my soul, try every thought:

Though my own heart accuse me not
Of walking in a false disguise,

I beg the trial of thy eyes."

"Doth secret mischief lurk within?
Do I indulge some unknown sin ?
O turn my feet whene'er I stray,
And lead me in thy perfect way."

She was frequent and importunate in her requests for the psalmbook, that she might read that psalm, or at least, have it read to her throughout; and it was with some difficulty we persuaded her to be composed in silence; thus sincerely willing was she, that God might search and try her heart, still hoping well concerning her spiritual state, yet still solicitous about the assurance of her own sincerity, in her former transactions with heaven.

The next day among the rovings of her thoughts, she rehearsed all those verses of the xvii. Psalm, which are paraphrased in the same book, with very little faultering in a line

or two:

"Lord, I am thine; but thon wilt prove My faith, my patience, and my love," &c. The traces of her thoughts under this confusion of animal nature, retained something in them divine and heavenly. O blessed situation of soul, when we stand prepared for death, though it come with the formidable retinue of a disordered brain, and clouded reason! It would be too long at present to represent to you the sad consequences of being found asleep when Christ comes to call us away from this world, I shall therefore only make these three reflections:

us

I. "None can begin too early to awake to righteousness, and prepare for the call of Christ, since no one is too young to be sent for by his messenger of death." I do not here speak of the state of infancy, when persons can hardly be said to be in a personal state of trial: But when I say, none can awake too early to mind the things of religion, I mean, after reason begins its proper exercise, and this appears sometimes in early childhood. All our life in this world compared with heaven, is a sort of night, and season of darkness; and if our Lord summon away in the first watch of the night, in the midst of youth and vigour, and the pleasing allurements of flesh and sense, we are in a deplorable state, if we are found sleeping, and hurried away from earth into the invisible world, in the midst of our foolish dreams of golden vanity. Dreadful indeed, to have a young thoughtless creature carried off the stage sleeping, and dead in trespasses and sins! Let those that are drunk with wine fall asleep upon the top of a mast in the middle of the sea, where the winds and the waves are tossing and roaring all around them; let a mad-man who has lost his reason, lie down to sleep upon the edge of a precipice, where a pit of fire and brimstone is burning beneath him, and ready to receive his fall; but let not young sinners, whose rational powers are in exercise, and whose life is every moment a mere uncertainty, venture to go on in their dangerous slumbers, while the wrath of God and eternal misery attend them, if they die before they are awake.

It is granted, that no power beneath that which is divine, can effectually quicken a dead soul, and awaken it into a divine life. It is the work of God, to quicken the dead; Rom. iv. 17. Eph. ii. 5. It is the Son of God, who is the light and life of the world; John i. 4. to whom the Father hath given this quickening power; John v. 26. He calls sinners to awaken them from their deadly sleep; Eph. v. 14. And they live by him, as he lives by the Father; John vi. 57. He awakens dead

souls to life by the same living Spirit, which shall quicken their mortal bodies, and raise them from the grave; Rom. viii. 9, 11, 13. 2 Cor. iii. 3. which Spirit he hath received from the Father; John iii. 34. And on this account we are to seek the vital influences of this grace from heaven by constant and importunate prayer. Yet in my text as well as in other scriptures, awaking out of sleep, and watching unto righteousness, is represented as our duty, and we are to exert all our natural powers with holy fervency for this end, while our daily petitions draw down from heaven the promised aids of grace. Our diligence in duty, and our dependence on the divine power and mercy, are happily and effectually joined in the command of our Saviour on this very occasion in one of his parables; Mark xiii. 33. Watch and pray, for ye know not when the time is, that the Lord will come. And again, chapter xiv. 38. Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation. Trust not in your own strength and sufficiency, for the glorious change to be wrought in your sinful hearts, and yet neglect not your own labours and restless endeavours under a pretence, that it is God's work, and not yours. Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light; Eph. v. 14.

Nor should frail dying creatures in their youngest years, delay this work one day, nor one hour, since the consequences of being found asleep when Christ calls, are terrible indeed. We are beset with mortality all around us; the seeds of disease and dissolution are working within us from our very birth and cradle, ever since sin entered into our natures; and we should ever be in readiness to remove hence, since we are never secure from the summons of heaven, the stroke of death, and the demands of the grave.

There was a lovely boy, the son of the Shunamite, who was given to his mother in a miraculous way, and when he was in the field among the reapers, he cried out, My head, my head; he was carried home immediately, and in a few hours, died in his mother's bosom; 2 Kings iv. 18. Who would have imagined, that head-ache should have been death, and that in so short a time too? This is almost the case which we lament at present; the head-ache was sent but a few days before, nor was the pain very intense, nor the appearance dangerous, yet it became the fatal, though unexpected fore-runner of death.

This providence is an awful warning-piece to all her young acquaintance, to be ready for a sudden removal; for she was of a healthy make, and seemed to stand at as great distance from the gates of death as any of you: But the firmest constitution of human nature is born with death in it. From every age, and every spot of ground, and every moment of time, there are short and sudden ways of descent to the grave. Trap doors, if I may

use so low a metaphor, are always under us, and a thousand unseen avenues to the regions of the dead. A malignant fever strikes the strongest nature, with a mortal blast, at the command of the great author and disposer of life. My youngest hearers may be called away from the earth by the next pain that seizes them. Nothing but religion, early religion and sincere godliness, can give you hope in youthful death, or leave a fragrant sayour on your name, or memory, among those that survive.

II. If such blessedness as I have described, belong to every watchful christian at the hour of death, then it may not be improper here to take notice of "some peculiar advantages, which attend those who shake off the deadly sleep of sin in their younger years, and are awake carly to God and religion."

1. They have much fewer sins to mourn over on a deathbed, and they prevent much bitter repentence for youthful iniquities. Holy Job was a man of distinguished piety, and God himself pronounces of him, that there was none like him in all the earth; Job. i. 18. but it is a question, whether his most early days were devoted to God, and whether be was so watchful over his behaviour in that dangerous season of life, for he makes a heavy complaint in his addresses to God; Job xiii. 26. Thou writest better things against me, and makest me to possess the iniquities of my youth. The sooner we begin to be awake to holiness, the more of these follies and sorrows are prevented: Happy those who have the fewest of them to embitter their following lives, or make a death-bed painful!

2. Young persons have fewer attachments to the world, and the persons and things of it, which are round about them, and are more ready to part with it when their souls are united to God by au early faith and love. They have not yet entered into so numerous engagements of life, nor dwelt long enough here to have their hearts grown so fast on to creatures, which usually make the parting-stroke so full of anguish and smarting sorrow. A child can much more easily ascend to heaven and leave a parent behind, without that tender and painful solicitude, which a dying parent has for the welfare of a surviving child. The surrender of all mortal interests at the call of God, is much more easy when our souls are not tied to them by so many strings, nor united by so many of the softer endearments of nature, and where grace has taught us to practise an early weaning from all temporal comforts, and a little loosened our hearts from them by the. faith of things eternal.

3. Those that have been awake betimes to godliness, give peculiar honours to the gospel at death, and leave this testimony to the divine religion of Jesus, that it was able to subdue passion and appetite in that season of life, when they are usually strongest and most unruly. They give peculiar credit and glory to the

christian name, and the gospel, which has gained them so many victories over the enemies of their salvation, at that age wherein multitudes are the captives of sin, and slaves to folly and vanity.

4. Those christians who are awake to God in their early years, leave more happy and powerful examples of living and dying to their young companions and acquaintance. It is the temper of every age of life, to be more influenced and affected by the practice of persons of the same years. Sin has fewer excuses to make in order to shield itself from the reproof of such examples, who have renounced it betimes; and virtue carries with it a more effectual motive to persuade young sinners to piety and goodness, when it can point to its votaries of the same age, and in the same circumstances of life. "Why may not this be practised by you, as well as by your companions round about you of the same age?" But I must hasten to the last reflection.

III. "When we mourn the death of friends who were prepared for an early summons, let their preparation be our support." Blessed be God, they were not found sleeping! While we drop our tears upon the grave of any young christian, who was awake and alive to God, that blessedness which Christ himself pronounces upon them, is a sweet cordial to mingle with our bitter sorrows, and will greatly assist to dry up the spring of them. The idea of their piety, and their approbation in the sight of God, is a balm to heal the wound, and give present ease to the heart-ache.

We are ready to run over their virtues, and spread abroad their amiable qualities in our thoughts, and then with seeming reason, we give a loose to the mournful passion; whereas all these, when set in a true light, are real ingredients towards our relief.

We lament the loss of our departed friend, when we review that capacious and uncommon power of memory which the God of nature had given her, and which was so well furnished with a variety of human and divine knowledge, and was stored with a rich treasure of the word of God, so that if providence had called her into a more public appearance, she might have stood up in the world as a burning and a shining light, so far as her sex and station required. This furniture of the mind seems indeed to be lost in death and buried in the grave; but we give in too much to the judgment of sense; did not this extensive knowledge lay a foundation for her early piety? And did it not by this means, prepare her for a more speedy removal to a higher school of improvement, and a world of sublimer devotion? And does she not shine there among brighter and better company?

We mourn again for our loss of a person so valuable, when we think of that general calinness and sedateness of soul which