Do we find
in these young persons the characters, which the holy Scriptures lay
down as the only satisfactory evidences of a safe state? Do we not on
the other hand discover the specified marks of a state of alienation
from God? Can the blindest partiality persuade itself that _they_ are
loving, or striving "to love God with all their hearts, and minds, and
souls, and strength?" Are _they_ "seeking first the kingdom of God, and
his righteousness?" Are _they_ "working out their salvation with fear
and trembling?" Are _they_ "clothed with humility?" Are _they_ not, on
the contrary, supremely given up to self-indulgence? Are _they_ not at
least "lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God?" Are the offices of
Religion _their_ solace or _their_ task? Do _they_ not come to these
sacred services with reluctance, continue in them by constraint, and
quit them with gladness? And of how many of _these_ persons may it not
be affirmed in the spirit of the prophet's language: "The harp, and the
viol, the tabret and pipe, and wine, are in their feasts: but they
regard not the work of the Lord, neither consider the operation of his
hands?" Are not the youth of one sex often actually committing, and
still more often wishing for the opportunity to commit, those sins of
which the Scripture says expressly, "that they which do such things
_shall not_ inherit the kingdom of God?" Are not the youth of the other
mainly intent on the gratification of vanity; and looking for their
chief happiness to the resorts of gaiety and fashion, to all the
multiplied pleasures which public places, or the still higher
gratifications of more refined circles, can supply?

And then, when the first ebullitions of youthful warmth are over, what
is their boasted reformation? They may be decent, sober, useful,
respectable, as members of the community, or amiable in the relations of
domestic life. But is _this_ the change of which the Scripture speaks?
Hear the expressions which it uses, and judge for yourselves--"Except a
man be _born again_, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God."--"The
_old man_--is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts;" an expression
but too descriptive of the vain delirium of youthful dissipation, and of
the false dreams of pleasure which it inspires; but "the _new man_" is
awakened from this fallacious estimate of happiness; "_he_ is renewed in
knowledge after the image of him that created him"--"He is created
_after God_ in righteousnes