ings, crying as to the church, Grace, grace, unto it. How shall I give thee up, Ephraim, how shall I deliver thee, Israel, how shall I make thee as Admah and Zeboim? Mine heart is turned within me, my repentings are kindled together. I will not execute the fierceness of mine anger, I will not return to destroy Ephraim. Listen to this voice. It speaks very specially to the young. You have understandings free as yet of passions and prejudices, fresh hearts that the world has not yet seduced. You are exactly at the time of life most favourable for salvation : you have all the dispositions necessary to comprehend the truths of religion, and for subjecting your heart to its laws. What penetration, what conception, what pliancy, and consequently what preparation to bear the Lord's yoke. Suffer not yourselves to lose these dispositions: profit by every instant of a season so precious. Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth. With all your facility, alas! you will have still much difficulty in overcoming the wicked inclinations of your hearts. And what would it be if, adding to the corruption of your nature, the force of habit, you should drown yourselves in vice?

And you, old men, who have nearly finished your career, but who have given the best of your days to the world: you who now seek the Lord, groping after Him in the dark as it were, and who

make vain attempts, in your old age, to recover from the world a heart of which it has already taken possession. What shall we say to you? Shall we tell you that your disease is without remedy, that your sentence is pronounced, and that nothing remains for you but to cast yourself headlong into the pit, which you have voluntarily dug for yourselves? God forbid that we should be the ministers of His vengeance. We address you in the words of our prophet, Seek ye the Lord while He may be found. Mourn over the remembrance of your past life; tremble at the thought of that God who sends strong delusions to those who resist the truth. Happy docility of my youth: whither art thou fled? A soul more overwhelmed under the burden of my corruption than under the weight of years, indifference, prejudices, a fatal readiness to sin, are the deadly fruits I have reaped by serving the enemy of my salvation.

But while fearing, hope, and while hoping, work. Oh, at the very least devote to your salvation such remaining portion of life as God may grant you. You have much more to do than the others, your task is greater and your time is less. You have to turn your feet towards God's testimonies, as the prophet expresses it. Strive against the current; enter in at the strait gate; above all, beyond all, send up fervent prayers to heaven. So that perhaps,

moved by your penitence, He may recall His sentence; stirred to pity by your misery, He may remedy it by His grace. And, it may be, overcoming by the supernatural operations of His Spirit the plagues of your nature, He may give you ideas so clear, feelings so powerful, that you will be changed at once into new men.

Whatever we are, let us reform. There is still time, but the time is perhaps more limited than we think. After all, why delay? I see what hinders you: you look upon conversion as a burdensome work, and the position of a real Christian as a situation painful and troublesome, on which you ought not to enter till the latest possible moment. But if ye only knew, if ye knew the gift of God, if ye knew the pleasures felt by a man who seeks God in His Word, who obeys His oracles, and who drinks in knowledge and truth at their very source! If you comprehended the joy of the man who is renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created him, and who day by day traces in his heart some fresh resemblance to the all-perfect I Am! If you realised the comfort of a man of faith who seeks God in prayer, who mixes his voice with that of angels, and who begins on earth those sacred exercises which will one day form his eternal felicity! If you had experienced what joy succeeds the bitterness of penitence, when the sinner, having

returned from his wanderings, prostrated at the footstool of a merciful God, received at the throne of grace, leaves all his sins at the foot of the cross of the Saviour of the world, and mixing tears of joy with those of his deep sorrow, tries to make up by redoubled love for his coldness and indolence! If you could conceive what is the ravishment of a heart persuaded of its salvation, of a heart which places its hope as an anchor sure and steadfast in that within the veil, which defies hell and the devil, which anticipates with certainty heavenly felicities, which is already justified, already raised up, already glorified, already seated in heavenly places with

Christ Jesus!

Ah, why put off a work so glorious? We should delay things hurtful and pernicious, and when we cannot free ourselves from an unmixed evil, we ought at the least to do what we can to keep it off. But this peace, this tranquillity, this joy, these transports, this resurrection, this anticipated Paradise, do you reckon these in this class? No; I will delay no longer, my God, to keep Thy commandments. I will advance. I will press towards the mark of my high calling. Happy it is to form such noble resolutions. Happy to see them carried into practice. Amen. To God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, be honour and glory for ever. Amen.

PART SECOND.

EEK ye the Lord while He may be found,

We

call ye upon Him while He is near. have already written at some length on these words. We then proposed to ourselves less to weigh the terms scrupulously, than to seize the occasion to combat the delay of conversion, and certain unwarrantable ideas regarding the Divine mercies. We purposed in starting to draw our reflections from three sources; from man, from Scripture, from experience. We have accomplished the first part of this plan; we now intend to take up the second; and if Providence permit, we shall in due course set forth the third, and thus give the closing touch to this matter.

If you have been attentive, my readers, to what was brought under your notice in the first part; if the desire of salvation induces you to continue the investigation, you will have become wiser. You will have felt strongly how utterly worthless is the