Page:Affectionate address to children.pdf/2

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"they are more than the hairs of your head, which cannot be numbered." What thousands, what millions of your best, your earliest moments, are departed from you, and gone to Jehovah’s tribunal, to bear witness how treacherously you have squandered them away in wickedness and unconcern; especially consider how basely you have discredited the faithfulness of God, by your unbelicving rejection of his unspeakable gift, his dear Son; who, in the gospel, is offered, and made of God unto you "wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption." How justly he complains, "You will not come unto me, that ye might have life!" and even my little children "would have none of me!" O! why thus grieve a divine Saviour!

My dear child, how great is thy misery! While without Christ, thou art a stranger to the covcnant of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world. God is angry with thee everyday: all his perfections are ready to heap "indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish" upon thee: in vain dost thou expect thy righteousness will profit thee at his bar, and recommend thee to his favour. His law condemns thee to ctcrnal ruin: for, "cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in thc book of the law to do them. He that believeth not, is condemned already, and the wrath of God abideth on him. "Nor hast thou a moment’s'security for thy life: death, the king of terrors, incessantly advanceth to drive thee away in thy wickedness. Oh! how will thy heart endure the tremendous blast of the archangel's trumpet! In vain shall thou cry to the hills and mountains to fall on thee, and hide thee from thine angry Judge. How terrible to hear the now despised Saviour, denounce against thee the unalterable sentence, "Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels!"

But there is yet hope conccrning thy case: it may now be remedied: "God so loved the world, that he gave his only begottcn Son, that whosoever believeth in him, should not perish, but should have everlasting life. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us," and laying our iniquities upon his Son, sent him in thelikeness of sinful flesh, made him under the law, to fulfil its precepts and endure its penalty in our stead, and so be the propitiation