member thy Creator; that is, honour, fear, love, obey, and serve him; and, in a word, do every thing that becomes one who has God always in his thoughts.

II. I shall in the next place consider what there is in the notion of God, as our creator, that is more particularly apt to awaken men to the remembrance of him. The text does not barely require us to remember God, but to remember him as the author of our beings; remember thy Creator. This consideration of God, as our creator, naturally suggests to our minds, that his goodness brought us into being, called us out of nothing, and made us to be what we are; for of his good pleasure we are and were created. And he is not only our creator, as he gave us our beings at first, but likewise as we are preserved by the same goodness which gave us life and breath; for of his goodness we ARE, as well as were created.

And can we forget so great a benefactor, and be unmindful of the God that formed us Can we choose but remember the founder of our beings, the great preserver of our lives? And so soon as we discover him to whom we owe our lives and all the blessings of them, can we forbear to do homage to him, and to say with David, O come, let us worship and fall down and kneel before the Lord our Maker, for he is the Lord our God; it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.

III. Let us consider the reason of the limitation of this duty more especially to this age of our lives. Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth; while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them: NOW in the days of thy youth; by which Solomon plainly designs two things:

First, To engage young persons to begin this necessary work of religion as soon as ever they are capable of taking it into consideration, remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth.

Secondly, to engage them to set about it presently, and not to adjourn it to the time of infirmity and old age.

And how much reason there is to press both these considerations upon young persons, I shall endeavour to show in the following particulars.

1. Because we have the greatest and most sensible obligation to remember God our Creator in the days of our youth; in that age, when the blessing of life is new, and the memory of it fresh upon our minds; when our health is in its strength and vigour, and the pleasures and enjoyments of life have their full taste and relish. So Job describes the days of his youth, O that I were as in months past, as in the days when God preserved me: when his candle shined upon my head, and when by his light I walked through darkness, as I was in the days of my youth, &c.

Thou art inexcusable, O man, whoever thou art, if thou art unmindful of God in the best age of thy life, and when the sense of his benefits ought, upon all accounts, to make the strongest and deepest impressions upon thy

mind.

2. The reason will be yet stronger to put us upon this, if we consider, that notwithstanding the great obligation which lies upon us to remember our Creator in the days of our youth, we are most apt at that time to forget him.

Youth is extremely addicted to pleasure, because it is most capable and most sensible of it; and where we are most apt to be transported, there we are most apt to transgress. Nor doth any thing so besot the mind, and extinguish in it all sense of divine things, as sensual pleasures. If we fall in love with them, they will take off our thoughts from religion, and steal away our hearts from God. For no man can serve two masters; and the carnal mind is enmity against God.

Besides, youth is rash and inconsiderate, because unexperienced; and consequently not apt to be cautious and prudent, no not as to the future concerns of this temporal life; much less of that which seems to be at so much a greater distance, and for that reason is so very seldom in our thoughts.

3. This age is the fittest to begin a religious course of life. And this does not contradict the former argument; for as it is true of chil

dren, that they are most prone to be idle, and yet fittest to learn; so in the case before us, both are true, that youth is an age wherein we are too apt, if left to ourselves, to forget God and religion; and yet at the same time fittest to receive the impressions of it.

Youth is the proper age of discipline; the age of suppleness, obedience, and patience for labour; which should be plied by parents, before that rigour and stiffness which grows with years comes on. It is a very difficult thing to make impressions upon age, and to deface the evil which hath been deeply imprinted upon young and tender minds. When good instruction has been neglected at first, a conceited ignorance commonly takes possession, and obstructs all the passages through which knowledge and wisdom should enter into us.

It is a mighty advantage to any thing to be planted in a ground newly broken up; and just the same thing is it for young persons to be entered into a religious course, and to have their minds habituated to virtue before vicious customs have got place and strength in them; for whoever shall attempt this afterwards will meet with infinite difficulty.

Let us, therefore, do that which must be done, when we may do it with the greatest advantage, and are likely to meet with the least opposition. We should anticipate vice, and prevent the devil and the world, by letting God into our hearts betimes, and giving

religion the first possession of our souls. This is the time of sowing our seed, which must by no means be neglected: for the soul will not lie fallow. If our minds be not cultivated by religion, sin and vice will spring up in them; but if our tender years be seasoned with the knowledge and fear of God, this, in all probability, will have a good influence upon the following course of our lives.

4. This is the most acceptable time, because it is the first of our age: under the law, the first-fruits and the first-born were God's. In like manner we should devote the first of our time to him. He is the first and most excellent of beings, and therefore it is fit that the prime of our age, and the excellency of our strength should be dedicated to his service.

An early piety must be very acceptable to God, because it is a sign that we have a true value for his service, when we can give him our good days, and the years which we ourselves have pleasure in; and that we have a grateful sense of his benefits, when we make the quickest and best returns we can, and think nothing too good to render to him from whom we have received all. It is also an argument of great sincerity, which is the soul of all religion and virtue, because we are not drawn to God by those forcible constraints which lie upon men in time of sickness and old age.