The text speaks an awful language to the gay and the dissolute, who may be said to be earning, by a hard drudgery, the worst wages under the worst master. How many, in the full career of dissipation, are so infatuated by the splendid outside of glittering trifles, the pomps and vanities of this wicked world, and so deluded by the hope of happiness, that phantom which flies from them as fast as it is pursued; that to the pursuit of sensual pleasure every consideration of honor and virtue is sacrificed. Let those, who are running the same fruitless chase, remember, that though their path should be strewed with rose-buds of delight, yet there lurk under them corroding care, remorse, and shame, and anguish, more to be dreaded than the poison of asps. If their minds are unawed by the threatenings of the Lord, and steeled against the remonstrances of truth, and conscience, Oh that they would but look into the house of mourning! and behold the sad spectacle of a youth cut off in his prime, either by a series of debaucheries, that brought rottenness into his bones, and infamy on his reputation, or that had been hurried to an act of desperation, the effect, often, of frequent intoxication, infidel principles, or of disappointed projects at the gaming table! Or, let them look at yonder pale corpse, that has fallen a martyr to the etiquette of dress and all the parade of fashion; that lived such a life of dissipation, that she hardly ever knew there was a God, till she saw him at his tribunal. Do not such instances, while they declare the folly of mankind, loudly preach to you, ye sons and daughters of dissipation? You, who flutter in gaiety, though on the brink of ruin? O listen to the solemn lecture! Fly from the wages of sin. You have sought happiness in the world, but have been disappointed. Pleasure’s gilded bait hath promised you much, and looked fair; but its promises have been delusive, and its enjoyment a shadow. Come now, and try what the gifts of God in Christ Jesus can do for you. He gives a peace, which the world cannot, and ascertains happiness, of which earth and hell are not able to deprive. “His ways are ways of pleasantness, and all his paths are peace.”