DELUSIVE HOPE FROM PRIVILEGES. 101 ed a Christian land, but this does not make you a Christian; for a true Christian is a child of God "by faith in Christ Jesus." The young ruler was favoured with outward privileges. The inhabitants of Capernaum had enjoyed them; but sunk the deeper in hell through abusing them. And many, who ate and drank in the presence of Christ himself, and in whose streets he taught, will hear him say, "Depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity." The man without the wedding garment had been invited to the gospel feast; though his dreadful doom was outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. Perhaps you, my young friend, have enjoyed all the privileges of a pious education; yet think not that these will take you to heaven. You must be born again. Your parents' prayers will not fix you in glory, if you do not learn to pray. Your parents' faith will not be accounted yours. Though you should have had parents as pious, and as beloved by God, as Abraham himself; yet the language of the divine word is, "Think not to say within yourselves, we have Abraham to our father, for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham;" and not merely is he able, but sooner would he do so than violate his word, by admitting an unconverted soul to heaven. Many parents will be found at the right-hand of Christ, whose children will never join them there; and many children who found the way to glory, though their parents lost it. § 5. Trust not, my young friend, your eternal hopes to the strictest attention to the outward Gal. iii. 26. Matt. xi. 23, 24. Luke, xiii. 27. Matt. xxii. 13. Matt. iii. 9. 102 CAUTIONS. FORM OF RELIGION. forms and duties of religion. Though you should say, All these have I observed from my youth; yet this observance is not a foundation on which to rest for eternity. O eternity, eternity! who can be anxious enough to build their hopes aright, when building for eternity! Perhaps, from your infant days, the house of God may have been your resort. Perhaps, few sabbaths could be named, on which you have not been there. Perhaps, in your chamber, or your closet, your morning and evening devotions have been regularly paid. Possibly, few days could be found, in which from your earliest childhood to the present period, you have missed this stated offering to heaven. Perhaps, you are disposed to ask, What more can I want? Alas! you may have done all this and yet want every thing that most concerns you. You may want a new heart, and an interest in Jesus Christ. The Christian cannot live without prayer; but some attention to its outward forms does not make a Christian. God, it is true, may have had your words, but who has had your thoughts? Who has had your heart? Has he had these too? Have not these often been employed on other subjects, when, on your knees, you professed to be engaged with God? While some have passed months and years without prayer, you may have constantly attended to religious duties; but how little earnestness, how little sincerity, how little life, has there been in them! Consider how often, in private, you have knelt down and rose again, without a serious thought of God; how often, in public, you have listened with careless indifference: and then think, whether you, too, may not be said to have spent days and months without prayer; and FREEDOM FROM OPEN VICE. 103 whether you have not really resembled those, who live without God in the world. But if your devotions have been ever so fervent and sincere, still they are not the foundation for a sinner's hope. Jesus alone is that foundation. 6. Trust not your eternal all to the greatest freedom from open vice, and to, what the world might term, an innocent life. You have already been shown, that there is no life so innocent as to give a well-founded hope of meeting God with comfort; that the young, as well as the aged, without a Saviour, are undone for ever; and that what the world esteems almost an innocent life, is, in the sight of God, a life of base ingratitude and iniquity. Perhaps, the open vices which ruin many, have not debased your character. Perhaps, the impious profanations of the swearer never escaped your lips. Perhaps, the excesses of the drunkard or the libertine have not polluted you. Perhaps, your tongue has usually uttered truth, and the arts of the liar have been unknown to you. You may have been free from these and other open vices; yet this cannot give you the faintest well-founded hope of acquittal at the great day of judgment, for you have sins, and it is impossible to express the evil of the smallest sin. Christ represents those whose sins are least and fewest, as owing to God ten thousand talents; none owe less, though some may owe more. Thus the most virtuous and the most abandoned, in the sight of God, approach much nearer to each other in guilt than you probably imagine. Trust not, then, to any fancied freedom from sin. It can hardly be urged on you too earnestly, that a single unpardoned sin is sufficient to damn a soul to all eternity. Did 104 CAUTIONS. -MERE MORALITY. not one sin sink angels from heaven? Did not one, that would now be termed a little sin, turn Adam out of Paradise? § 7. Rest not your everlasting all upon the goodness or morality of your life. Morality is a lovely thing; it will adorn, but it cannot make a Christian. A person may be moral, yet a stranger to religion; but cannot be religious, and not be moral. Various causes may produce morality of conduct, while the heart is altogether estranged from God. The young ruler, already mentioned, could say, respecting an outward attention to many of the commandments of God, All these have I observed from my youth; yet he was perishing in sin. In his case, you see how moral may be the life, how lovely the deportment, how earnest after religion, the desires of one, who, after all, may fall short of religion, and thus fall short of glory. Has your morality been stricter than his? has your deportment been more amiable, or your desire after eternal life more earnest? If not, how can you hope for heaven on this ground, when he had all these, and yet was in the way to hell? § 8. If you should not rest your eternal hopes on any of these things, much less should you on any other amiable qualifications. Many young persons are possessed of a variety of these, who are destitute of all true piety. Though they trifle with God and eternity, yet affection to relatives and friends seems to dwell in their hearts. Cheerfulness and goodhumour beam from their countenances, and the accomplishments of science adorn their minds. All they seem to want is the one thing needful; but wanting that, as to the eternal world, they AMIABLE QUALIFICATIONS. 105 want every thing. Only the recommendations of that humble piety, which makes Jesus all in all, would avail them there. The charms of religion only will bloom beyond the grave; those of person, of disposition, of deportment, will not fong keep their power to please. Where true piety is absent, these are momentary attractions, that must shortly fade, and leave no trace behind. Very quickly the most sensible tongue will be as silent as the most silly. Loveliness and defor mity will be alike in the grave; and those of the most amiable manners, and most engaging deportment, there be on an equality with the savage and the brute. The charms of beauty, of manners, of wit, may adorn the young in their hasty journey to an endless world; but religion only will prepare them for a heavenly home. Those may glitter on the casket; but only that will beautify the jewel. If then, my young friend, you would know your real state, examine not from what pollutions you may have been kept free; not what moral duties you have practised; not what religious ordinances you may have regarded; or with what attractions you may be adorned: but inquire, are you acquainted with the sinfulness of your own heart? Have you ever experienced repentance towards God? Have you ever committed your helpless soul to the Lord Jesus Christ? and sought your happiness and eternal good in him? If you are a stranger to all this, you are a stranger to religion. § 9. I may not improperly add, that if you would guard against deception on this most momentous of all subjects, you should endeavour to fix on your mind an abiding impression of the absolute necessity of real conversion. Con |