These two situations are placed before you, my unconverted readers, and you are called to choose which you will have. We advise and urge you to make haste and renounce the state of misery, and enter into that of joy and pleasure; but you, alas! are pleading for a little time, and wishing to put off salvation to another day. Oh! When will you be wise? Can it then be too soon to be happy? Are you in love with misery? Is it this way you act when pains of body afflict you ? Do you then ask to be left alone? Do you then put off the use of remedies? When sickness comes you are anxious to check it in its first stages. When pain racks you, the physician is always too long in coming, the medicine is never quick enough in its operation. Ah! why, when you show such wisdom in caring for your bodies, should you be so foolish as to neglect your souls?

If the Almighty had acted with no more kindness towards you, than you manifest towards yourselves, you would have regarded his conduct as the extreme of cruelty. Had the Almighty when he formed the plan of man's salvation fixed it as a rule, that no one should be allowed to enjoy its blessings till he had reached the age of thirty or of forty years,-had he made it necessary for every one to spend ten or twenty years of his life the slave of Satan, and the heir of hell-had he made it a law that for ten or twenty years you should endure the regrets and pangs and fears of sin, and that you should not taste the peace and joy and hope of religion till the best of your days were past-had this been the decree of God, it would have filled you with horror. You would have charged God with cruelty, and a thousand times blasphemed and cursed him in your heart. Is this the kindness of a parent?" you would have cried; Is it for this he brings us into life ?" You never could have thought of God with pleasure, nor have enjoyed his favours with satisfaction. "What are all other blessings" you would have exclaimed, so long as I am denied the only one that can give quiet to my troubled spirit? I have life and health,

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but without religion they are a weariness and a curse to me. I have a home and friends, but they bring me no comfort. These gifts of providence only mock me, and make the sense of my misery the keener. Had it pleased heaven to try me with affliction, I could have borne it; but to be sentenced thus to live in danger of damnation, and forbid to flee,-man's nature cannot bear the affliction." Then every event would have alarmed you, and every pain would have cast you into an agony. You would have trembled lest your life should come to an end, before you had reached the period when it would be permitted you to enjoy religion. The whole multitude of sinners, who now unite to put off the business of their souls, would then have united in one loud wailing, and sent to heaven one prayer, beseeching God to change his purpose, and permit them at once to end their sorrows and return to Him. Ah! why will you not act wisely, and while God so graciously invites you, bind yourselves at once with grateful hearts to his service? God has furnished his table, and he invites his perishing prodigals to feast with him; why linger still in your wretchedness, endeavouring to appease your hunger with the husks which the swine do eat? Arise and come to your Father, and share at once your Father's smile, and the rich provisions of your Father's feast. Behold now is the accepted time! Behold now is the day of salvation. Perhaps you shrink from that bitterness which accompanies repentance, that indignation and remorse which spring from serious reflection on your own conduct. But will your procrastination enable you to avoid that bitterness? If you could shut out of your mind every thought of religion, and cast yourself into a deep sleep as lengthened as your life, you might avoid the anguish of such reflections for the present world, but it would come upon you in the next. Your sleep would not remain for ever. Conscience must still awake, and, exasperated by aggravated guilt and folly, reproach and torture you for ever.

But you have no wish to put off reflection to another

world. Then why should you put it off at all? Have you a hope that by delays you may secure a repentance without self-reproach and sorrow? You cannot be so deluded. You know that whenever you turn from your wickedness, you will have to muse upon the same matters, indulge the same humiliating views, and yield to the same unwelcome and distressing feelings. You must still abhor yourself for your ingratitude to God; you must still lament and mourn for the days of mercy and opportunities of happiness which you have thrown

away.

But this is not all. Your grief must be the more severe, in proportion to the length of your delays. The reckoning is already too long; the state of your affairs with God is already too distressing to be thought upon; and yet you are increasing the reckoning, and making the state of your affairs more desperate. There is already more occasion for remorse and tears than you are aware, and yet your case grows worse as your days and sins increase. Even the sinuer who is yet in the bloom of youth, when awakened to a proper consciousness of his deserts, often weeps both day and night. He mingles his drink with tears, and his soul fainteth within him. He is ashamed before God; he cannot look up to heaven; because he has abused the kindness of his Maker, and fought against the author and supporter of his life. How then will it be with you, if you should defer your repentance till the bloom of life is past If ever you should repent, what augmented woes must rush upon you! Perhaps the figure of a mother shall stand by, uncovering a heart broken by your sins. A father's form perhaps will haunt you in your path, sighing as he goes, and seeming to reproach you for "bringing down his gray hairs with sorrow to the grave. The ignorance of your little ones, whom you have neglected to instruct; the vices of your companions, whom you have led on and encouraged in sin; the miseries of those whom your sins have injured, will all reproach you. Satan will have a thousand arguments to persuade you that you have no right to

hope for mercy, and that you ought to abandon yourself to despair. Then you will wish you had repented earlier, but wishes come too late; they will never bring back the days of mis-spent youth, Now you would give worlds of sinful pleasures, to obtain again the advantages of former days; but they are gone for ever. You shrunk from a shower, and lo! a flood has overtaken you; you sat by the brook, as if you had hoped that its waters would subside, and behold! the winter torrents overflow the banks, and threaten to bear you away. Do you not foresee that thus it must be with you? Ah! why will ye resist the will of God, and heap up sorrows for your latter days? Return ye wanderers to the way of peace; return, "before your feet stumble upon the dark mountains,” and your souls are numbered with the lost,

CONVERSATION.

William.-What becomes of those little children that die unbaptized?

Joseph.-No evil can happen to them. "God is good to all, and his tender mercies are over all his works;" and they are in his hands. Those persons must have strange thoughts of God, who can suppose that he could punish a helpless innocent. A man could not punish an unoffending babe, and God is kinder than the kindest man.

W.-If children are safe without being baptized, what need is there of having them baptized?

J.-There is no need at all, if the little ones are not likely to live. I should never baptize mine, if they seemed likely to die. It does the little ones no good, and I know no good it can do to any one else.

W.-But people are always most anxious to have them christened when they are ill, and not likely to mend.

J.-I suppose they have some notion that it is necessary to their salvation. The Papists used to teach people so, and many have learned no better yet.

W.-But can they be buried if they are not baptized?

We never ask The Ministers of

J.-Just the same as if they were. whether they were baptized or not. the established church do not read over unbaptized persons, I suppose; the law says they shall not; but dissenters have no such law. And as for reading and praying over the dead, they are for the benefit of the living, and can do no good to the dead.

W.-But why do you baptize them at all?

J.-When I carry mine to be baptized, I consider myself as professing before the congregation, that the child is the Lord's, and that it is my intention to train it up for his service.

Ŵ.-Then children are not born again in Baptism? J. Of course not. To be born again is to become' wise and holy, but baptism makes children neither. Men are "begotten again by the word of truth," but children are generally baptized before they are able to understand any thing of the Bible, and of course before they are capable of being born again thereby.

W.-Then it is not necessary to have children bap

tized ?

J.-I think it very proper to have them baptized, if it be done with right views and intentions; but it is no where required in the Bible.

W.-Do you not suppose

teach your notions ?

that it would do harm to

J.-I should think not. I should rather think the other notion does harm, and that true notions would do good. When people fancy that Baptism regenerates the soul, they are more likely to neglect to instruct their children and train them aright, which are the proper means of regeneration. If they were taught that the regeneration of their little ones depended on their instructions and good examples, and not on what the Preacher can do for them, they might be led to pay more attention to their religious education than they do. If truth be the occasion of a little evil at first, it will do good at last. We cannot teach any truth without seeming to cause evil effects sometimes; but the truth is not to blame, but the prejudices or evil dispositions of those