will produce its effect without any farther effort on the part of the patient. It is a tool for you to use industriously yourself. The moral powers will not grow unless you cultivate them by your own active efforts. If you satisfy yourself with merely bringing moral and religious truth into contact with your mind, expecting it, by its own power, to produce the hoped-for fruits, you will be like a farmer who should, in the spring, just put a plough or two in one part of his field, and half-a-dozen spades and hoes in another, and expect by this means to secure a harvest. Many persons read religious books continually, but make no progress in piety. The reason is, their own moral powers are inert while they do it The intellect may be active in reading and understanding the successive pages, but the heart and the conscience lie still, hoping that the truth may of itself do them good. They bring the instrument to the field and lay it down, and stand by its side wondering why it does not do its work.

I beg my readers not to treat this volume in that way, and not to suppose that simply reading and understanding it, however thoroughly it may be done, will do them any good. The book, of itself, never can do good. It is intended to guide its readers to Christ, and show how they may get good to themselves, and it will benefit none who are not willing to be active in its application and use.

Do you, my reader, really wish to derive permanent and real benefit from this book? If so, take the following measures; it is a course which it would be well for you always to take at the close of every book you read on the subject of duty. Recall to mind all those passages which, as you have read its pages, have presented to you something which at the time you resolved to do. Recollect, if you can, every plan recommended, which, at the time when you were reading it, seemed to be suited to your own case, and which you then thought you should adopt. If you have forgotten them, you can easily call them to mind by a little effort, or by a

cursory review. You will thus bring up again to your minds those points in which the instructions of the book are particularly adapted to your own past history and present spiritual condition.

After having thus fully reconsidered the whole ground, and gathered all the important points which are peculiarly adapted to your own case into one view, consider deliberately, before you finally close the book, what you will do with regard to them. If any thing has been made plain to be your duty, consider and decide distinctly whether you will do it or not. If any thing has been shown to be conducive to your happiness, determine, deliberately and understandingly, whether you will adopt it or not. Do not leave it to be decided by chance, or by your own accidental feelings of energy or of indolence, what course you will take in reference to a subject so momentous as the questions of religious duty. I fear, however, that notwithstanding all that I can say, very many, even among the most thoughtful of my readers, will close this book without deriving from it any permanent good, either in their conduct or their hearts. It will have only produced a few good intentions, which will never be carried into effect, or aroused them to momentary effort, which will soon yield again to indolence and languor.

There is no impression that I would more strongly desire to produce in these few remaining pages, than that you should be in earnest, in deep and persevering earnest, in your efforts after holiness and salvation. If you are interested enough in religion to give up the pleasures of sin, you cannot be happy unless you secure the happiness of piety. There are, at the present day, great numbers in whose hearts religious principle has taken so strong a hold as to awaken conscience and to destroy their peace, if they continue to sin; but they do not give themselves up with all their hearts to the service of the Saviour. They feel, consequently, that they have lost the world; they cannot be

satisfied with its pleasures, and they are unhappy, and fee. that they are out of place when in the company of its votaries. But though they have thrown themselves out of one home, they do not, in earnest, provide themselves with another. They do not give all the heart to God. No life is more delightful than one spent in intimate communion with our Father above, and in earnest and devoted efforts to please him by promoting human happiness; and none is perhaps more unhappy, and prepares more effectually for a melancholy dying hour, than to spend our days with the path of duty plain before us, and conscience urging us to walk in it, while we hang back, and walk with a slow and hesitating step, and look away wistfully at the fruits which we dare not taste. Do not take such a course as this. When you abandon the world, abandon it entirely; and when you choose God and religion for your portion, do it with all your heart. Outrun conscience in the path of duty, instead of waiting to have your lagging steps quickened by her scourge.

Once more. Much less of life is left to you than you generally suppose. Perhaps the average age of the readers of this book is between fifteen and twenty, and fifteen or twenty years is probably, upon an average, half of life. I call you young, because you are young in reference to the active business of this world. You have just reached the full development of your powers, and have consequently but just begun the actual work of life. The long years that are past have been spent in preparation. Hence you are called young-you are said to be just beginning life, understanding, by life, the pursuits and the business of maturity. But life, if you understand by it the season of preparation for eternity, is more than half gone; life, so far as it presents opportunities and facilities for penitence and pardon-so far as it bears on the formation of character, and is to be considered as a period of probation—is unquestionably more than half gone to those who are between fifteen and twenty. In

a vast number of cases it is more than half gone, even in duration, at that time; and if we consider the thousand influences which crowd around the years of childhood and youth, winning to piety, and making a surrender to Jehovah easy and pleasant then, and on the other hand look forward beyond the years of maturity and see these influences losing their power, and the heart becoming harder and harder under the deadening effects of continuance in sin, we shall not doubt a moment that the years of youth make a far more important part of our time of probation than all those that follow.

You will do right then, when you are thinking of your business or your profession, to consider life as but begun, but when you look upon the great work of preparation for another world, you might more properly consider it as nearly ended. Almost all moral changes of character are usually effected before the period at which you have arrived, and soon all that will probably remain to you on earth is to exemplify, for a few years, the character which in early life you formed. If, therefore, you would do any thing in your own heart for the cause of truth and duty, you must do it in earnest, and must do it now.

I have intended this book chiefly for the young, but 1 cannot close it without a word at parting to those of my readers who have passed the period of youth. If the work shall at all answer the purpose for which it is intended, it will, in some instances at least, be read by the mature; and I may perhaps, without impropriety, address a few words respectfully to them.

You are probably parents; your children have been reading this book, and you have perhaps taken it up because you are interested in whatever interests them. You feel also a very strong desire to promote their piety, and this desire leads you to wish to hear, yourselves, whatever on

this subject is addressed to them. I have several times in the course of this work intimated, that the principles which it has been intended to illustrate and explain, are equally applicable to young and old. It has been adapted, in its style and manner only, to the former class; and I have hoped, as I have penned its pages, that a father might sometimes himself be affected by truths which he was reading during a winter evening to his assembled family; or that a mother might take up the book purchased for her children, and be led herself to the Saviour by a chapter which was mainly written for the purpose of winning them. I do not intend, however, to press here again your own personal duties. I have another object in view.

That object is to ask you to coöperate fully and cordially in this, and in all similar efforts to promote the welfare of your children. If you have accompanied them through this volume, you will know what parts of it are peculiarly adapted to their condition and wants. These parts you can do much to impress upon their minds by your explanations, and by encouraging them to make the efforts they require. The interest which a father or a mother takes in such a book, is a pretty sure criterion-it is almost the very regulator of that felt by the child.

If you notice any thing in the volume which you think erroneous, or calculated to lead to error; or if there is any fault which your child discovers and brings to you, with a criticism which you feel to be just, do not deny or attempt to conceal the fault because it occurs in a book whose general object and aim you approve. Separate the minute imperfections from the general object and design of the whole; and while you freely admit a condemnation of the one, show that it does not affect the character of the other, and thus remove every obstacle which would impede what is the great design of the book, to press the power of relig'ous obligation in its most plain and simple form.