extended: but to those who have lived to your age, judgment or mercy will be dispensed according as you have remembered or forgotten God. Most awful is that declaration of the Psalmist, " The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations t\\dit forget God*^." If you have forgotten his authority over you, and especially his command to believe in his Son Jesus Christ ; if you have forgotten that his eye was always upon you, inspecting your most secret thoughts, and noting them down in order to his future judgment ; and if you have lived without any concern about the sentence that shall then be passed upon you ; it will indeed be an awful day to you, a com- mencement of such misery as no words can describe, no imagi- nation can conceive. Remember then that God marks down in the book of his remembrance your every act, and every word, and every thought ; and that it is your wisdom so to live, that, whether called at an earlier or later period of life, you may give up your account to him with joy, and not with grief.]
Such is the duty of all without exception : but the text requires me more particularly to shew,
II. Why we should thus remember him in early life — It were easy to accumulate reasons on so plain a point : but we shall content ourselves with assigning a few of the most obvious ;
1. This is the most favourable time — [It is of the nature of sin to harden the heart and to sear the conscience : and therefore the less we have been habituated to sin, the more hope there is that a good impression may be made upon our minds. We cannot agree with those who re- present the hearts of youth as a sheet of white paper, on which you may write either good or evil: for, alas! there is evil, not merely written, but inscribed there in a most abundant mea- sure, and in characters that are almost indelible : but we cor- dially accede to this truth, that the young are as yet only like plants sprouting from the earth, pliable and easy to be trained ; whilst at a more advanced age they become like trees, which retain their form, unyielding, and unmoved. From the very employments too of men in more advanced life, there arise many disadvantages : being drawn to a more vigorous pursuit of earthly things, they are, not unfrequently, so oppressed with " the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lust of other things, that the good seed which has been sown in them, cannot grow up unto perfection." But from these things young people are comparatively free. Besides, at this season they have an express promise from God, which they cannot plead in future life*^ : and therefore in a variety of views
d Ps. ix. 17. e Prov. viii. 17.