something more than even a husband can impart. Call to your recollection the term for which your union is formed, and the very phrase employed will convince you that you need something beyond it: "Till death us do part." Then death will come and dissolve your union. It may come first to your husband, and take him from you; then how complete will be your desolation, unless God be your friend! Death may come first to you; then how wretched will be your condition, if, when you must leave your husband, you have not a God to go to! Do bear in mind, that you have a soul, a never-dying soul; and that, however pleasing and prosperous your outward circumstances, you can neither be safe nor happy unless you have, by a lively faith and a voluntary surrender, committed your immortal interests to the keeping of the everlasting God, and till you have established habits of intercourse with him, going to him as a child to a father, for daily direction, support, and supplies.

Must it be supposed that, to some reader of this little volume, these views of the necessity of the religion of the heart as a supreme, a constant, and all-pervading principle, are new? Is there one who has hitherto been accustomed to consider a moral life, together with a decent attendance on the public ordinances of religion, and a daily acknowledgment of God in prayer, with some sort of reference to the name of Jesus Christ, all that is necessary to religion; at least during the season of youth, health, and prosperity and that, if anything more is required, some far distant season of sickness or affliction will

afford ample opportunity to attend to it; but that to give her heart and mind to religion would be altogether unnecessary and unseasonable in her present joyful circumstances? This strain of reasoning and feeling, it is to be feared, is too common; but it proceeds altogether upon mistaken principles, and mistakes which must be productive of serious and immediate evils, and which, if not corrected, will lead to fatal results. It is therefore desirable to make an effort to direct the attention of the reader to those things which belong to her present, no less than to her everlasting peace.

Let me then endeavour to correct these mistakes about religion, into which persons who reason and act in the manner above supposed have evidently fallen. The first regards the nature of religion. Religion is that which binds the mind of man to God: it regulates the course of our feelings and actions in reference to God, just as filial duty expresses the regulation of the feelings and actions of children in reference to their parents, or conjugal duty expresses the regulation of feelings and actions between husbands and wives. A truly religious individual, is one whose principles, affections, and conduct are regulated by the will of God, as revealed in his holy word. The constant prevailing desire and endeavour of such a one is, to live in obedience to the Divine commands. The object of supreme desire and expectation is, to enjoy the Divine approbation and communion, both on earth and in heaven. Now this, you will readily perceive, is something very different from merely uttering a few formal ̧

prayers, attending outward observances, and abstaining from gross acts of vice, from which we might be restrained by a sense of our own interest, honour, and happiness, even if we never had a thought of God. And has your religion, dear young reader, hitherto been nothing more than this inferior kind of thing, so altogether unworthy of the name? If so, may the present important change in your outward condition, prove the season and the occasion of your being roused to aspire after the religion of the heart. And do you ask in what it consists, and how it may be obtained? "Search the Scriptures." There alone you may find words of salvation; there you may learn the character, and designs, and will of God, all revealed to man, so far as is suitable to his nature and necessities. There you are taught that God is holy, just, and true; that he abhors evil, and will not suffer sin to go unpunished, Deut. xxxii. 4; Hab. i. 13; Ezek. xviii. 4, 20. You will meet the awful declaration that "all have sinned," that "judgment came upon all men to condemnation," and that "there is none righteous, no, not one," Rom. iii. 10, 23; v. 18. It is very possible, that you may often have read or heard these tremendous statements with indifference, or, at least, without serious self-application. But be entreated now, at this turning point of your life, to pause upon them; consider that that all includes yourself. Apply, then, each of these expressions to yourself, as if there were not another individual of the human race to whom they could apply. Look within, listen to the voice of conscience, and you will find that it echoes that of

God in his word. It will testify, if you allow it to speak out, that you are a sinner, that you have transgressed the laws of God, and deserved the condemnation and wrath revealed from heaven, "against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men," Rom. i. 18.

Perhaps a self-justifying feeling may arise in your heart: "But I have not been guilty of unrighteousness: we are all sinners, to be sure, but my life has been, on the whole, as blameless as that of most people." It may be so; but recollect, that the character and condition of others is not your standard, but the immutable law of God. Beside, if you could shelter yourself under a fancied freedom from unrighteousness, what does conscience say about ungodliness? Does it not

testify that God has not been in all your thoughts? You have risen up and laid down, you have pursued your pleasures, and sought your enjoyments, and formed your connexions, without any direct reference to the will of God, and without any supreme regard to his approbation and favour: in short, you have lived "without God in the world." Inseparably connected with such a state of heart, is the awful condition of being without hope, "dead in trespasses and sins," walking according to the course of this world; children of disobedience; children of wrath, even as others, Ephes. ii. 12, 1—3.

If this be, indeed, your true condition, (and such, upon the testimony of Him who searches the heart, it certainly is,) ought it not to be a matter of serious consideration and anxious inquiry, whether there is any way of escape; whether it

is possible for the sentence of condemnation to be reversed, and for you to be reconciled to God. If these all-important inquiries are awakened, again it may be said to you, "Search the Scriptures;" for in them ye have the words of eternal life, and they testify of Jesus, John v. 39; "whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; to declare at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus," Rom. iii. 25, 26. "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have everlasting life," John iii. 16. "This," then, "is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life," 1 John v. 11, 12. "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved,” Acts xvi. 31. "Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out. Unto you first God, having raised up his Son Jesus, sent him to bless you, in turning away every one of you from his iniquities," Acts iii. 19, 26. From these passages of Scripture, and many more that might be quoted, it appears that true religion, the religion of the heart, begins in repentance, faith, conversion. "Repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ," Acts xx. 21. Turning from sin and the power of Satan unto God, from dead works to serve the living and true God, Acts xxvi. 18.

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