Delay is loss to yourself. You lose all the blessings of the Saviour's favour. Delay keeps you in constantd anger · you are never safe. You lie condemned and perishing. If an eremy were threatening your destruction, would you delay to flee to an offered refuge? If you were condemned to die, would you delay to accept a pardon that might save you from ignominy and death? O reader, the salvation proffered you in the gospel is infinitely more momentous than protection from a murderer's weapon, or an executioner's bloody hands. The danger you are in till you possess this salvation, is infinitely more dreadful than any danger besides that can possibly be imagined. Your danger is the danger of being "cast into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched," Mark ix. 45. Perhaps you have no earthly friends to encourage and assist you in the way to heaven. But if no friend, no relative will go with you in the path of peace, is it not your interest to secure eternal life, and to travel to heaven alone rather than to perish in their company? Perhaps, on the other hand, you have pious friends, shall they only be pious? Shall God be their Father, and Satan yours? Heaven their home, and hell yours? Once more, be intreated to consider that life and death are before you. It comes to this-You must be Christ's disciple, and be saved, or not be his, and be damned. "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned," Mark xvi. 16. "He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life; and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him," John iii. 36. You must be Christ's, and soon wear his likeness, and enjoy his favour in heaven; or not be his, and ere long wail in hell, and there be like a devil in character and woe. This awful, this fearful alternative, is before you. One or the other of the two courses described in this tract you must pursue. A middle way you cannot discover. If the Lord Jesus is not your Lord and Saviour, the devil, that lord of drunkards, swearers, murderers, and atheists, is your ruler also. Decide therefore, as in God's sight decide. Whose will you be? Shall Christ or the world have your heart? Will you have God for your Father, or the devil for your ruler? Shall your life be blessed or cursed? Shall your death be peaceful or despairing? One you must Will you have salvation or damnation? have; which shall it be? Shall heaven or hell receive your soul? Shall your eternal home be mansions in light, or the prison of the lost? One you must inherit; which do you choose? Shall angels or accursed spirits be your future companions? with the former or the latter you must mingle; which shall it be? Shall your future employment be praise and rejoicing, or blasphemy and wailing? One or the other it must be; which will you choose? When others walk over your grave, will you be where death can never enter, or where death is coveted, but never found? In one of those opposite states you must exist; which shall it be? O decide! decide! Answer as in the view of death, judgment, and eternal scenes, the solemn question, Will you also be the Saviour's disciple? Choose now, and choose as for eternity. The solemn alternative is before you, -you cannot evade it; you cannot change it; you may forget, but cannot set it aside. Religion, Christ, and heaven; irreligion, Satan, and hell. Choose which you will, but one you must. Is it the determination of your soul to follow Christ, and seek his great salvation? Go then in prayer to him, and thus draw down the grace to be the Lord's. Your own resolutions will otherwise be like the morning cloud, or the early dew that soon pass away. Ask, and you shall receive. Ask God for his Holy Spirit's influence, while you flee to his crucified Son. Attend to this, and you are blest; neglect this, and you are lost. God of heaven! Father of mercies! without whom wisdom is not wise, nor strength strong, exert thy influence on the reader's heart. The seed is sown, but "neither is he that planteth any thing, nor he that watereth, but thou that givest the increase. Give that increase, and thine through everlasting years shall be the honour, and glory, and praise." London: Printed by WILLIAM CLOWES, Duke-street, Lambeth, for THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY; and sold at the Depository, 56, Paternoster-row by J. NISBET, 21, Berners-street, Oxford-street; and by other Booksellers. [Price 88. per 100.] Considerable Allowance to Subscribers and Booksellers. HE IS GONE SOME THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY THE FACT, FOR THE BENEFIT OF THOSE WHO ARE LEFT TO MOURN [This tract is suitable to be given to those who surround a death-bed, or at funerals.] THE title of this tract does but obscurely hint at its sub ject. "He is gone!" is an expression which may be used with a variety of meanings, and on very different occasions. It may be said of one who has set sail on a voyage to some remote part of the globe, or of one who has started on a journey to some distant place. Perhaps this is the very phrase you employed, when the friend who had been paying you a visit, left your house and returned to the place of his own residence. You saw him off, you accompanied him a little way, and then you came back to your family and said, "He is gone." There is, however, another case to which this language is as applicable as to any of those which I have mentioned, and one in which it is as frequently employed. "He is gone," is the very form of words in which men commonly speak of the death of a fellow-mortal, and it is a very significant mode of communicating that affecting intelligence. Reader, especially if you are a mourner, let me lead your thoughts for a few minutes into the channel which my own have sometimes been carried into when it has been said to me, of one and another whose welfare I have inquired after, He is gone. You may have heard this exclamation, and perhaps uttered it at the foot of the bed on which lies the lifeless body of the individual whose death is lamented: but he, the husband, father, brother, neighbour, or whatever relation he sustained, he is not there, he is gone. He hears no voice, he sees no tears, he is insensible to the kiss imprinted on the THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY, INSTITUTED 1799; coid damp forehead; it is not he, for he is not in the flesh, He is gone. So, then, the body was not the man, it was but his temporary habitation. It has fallen, and lies in ruins, deserted by the living and intelligent mind which once dwelt in it. Here let us recognise a fact of great importance. "There is a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding," Job xxxii. 8. That spirit, and the body it inhabits, are perfectly distinct; and, however intimate their union, while it lasts, no two things can be more dissimilar in the elements and properties of their nature. The body perishes and returns to dust, for it was originally dust, Gen. iii. 19; the spirit, or soul, is essentially a living thing: it is not dead, neither doth it sleep: it is "absent from the body," 2 Cor. v. 8. It is gone. I need not ask you, then, which is the more worthy of your attention and solicitude, that, the end of which you see when you "bury your dead out of your sight," Gen. xxiii. 4, or that which then exists apart, in the full possession of all its powers, a living, conscious, intelligent, immortal creature? But I may ask, to which is your first care directed? Which gives you most anxiety and occupation? Is it not the perishing body? Are not your daily thoughts and inquiries, "What shall we eat? What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed ?" Matt. vi. 31. The whole earthly existence of many is spent in making provision for the flesh, while the soul, which takes upon itself all this trouble, employs none of its careful thoughts upon its own interests. What a degradation to its nature,—to make it the mere drudge and slave of the body, which ought to be under its command! You would think it a proof of surprising folly in a man, to busy himself, and spend his property in beautifying and furnishing a house which he held by a short and uncertain tenure, and which he might be compelled to quit at a moment's notice; especially if he thus exhausted all his resources, and left no means of providing himself with another abode. What, then, is to be thought of your conduct, if you are spending your days in labouring for the ease, and comfort, and indulgence of the flesh, and neglecting the welfare of your soul, which death will soon, and perhaps without warning, dislodge from its present dwelling-place, and compel to seek another home Let us take another suggestion from these familiar words-He is gone! WHITHER has he gone? Who can tell us where his present habitation is? What may be the nature of his present occupations? What the character of the society with which he mingles? Has he, after the toils and troubles of this world, found, at length, a place of rest in that world, for which he has exchanged it, or is he a greater stranger to repose than ever? Has he entered into the possession of an "inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away," 1 Pet. i. 4, or has he found his eternal abode in a region of pain and woe, where not a single ray of hope can reach him? Does he feel his existence to be a blessing of unspeakable value, or is he tormented with the bitter reflection, that, "it had been good for him if he had never been born ?" Matt. xxvi. 24. In a word, is he in heaven, or in hell? It is certain that he is in one or the other. The Bible (the only authority to which we can appeal) determines this point. It does not tell us directly whether the departed spirit has ascended to the habitation of the just, or has gone down to the gates of everlasting death. But it answers our inquiry, by assuring us, that he that repenteth and believeth, shall be saved, while all who remain in impenitence and unbelief shall perish, Luke xiii. 3; that "he that believeth on the Son of God hath everlasting life;" while "he that_believeth not the Son, shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him," John'iii. 16. 36. With regard to the departed, whose mortal remains you are about to commit, or have committed to the grave, this, too, is certain; that, whatever may be his or her doom, it is irrevocable; whatever the present state, it is fixed for ever. How then, you may ask, can we answer the question which so naturally presents itself? Answer it not at all: be dumb, and open not your mouth, Lev. x. 3; Ps. xxxix. 9. Drop the question for another, and, instead of asking-Where is he? let the inquiry be WHITHER AM I GOING? 66 It is plain you are going hence, "for here have we no continuing city," Heb. xiii. 14. By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned," Rom. v. 12. As you have followed the bodies of your kindred, or vour neighbours to |