1. To such as are endowed with any natural excellencies of body or mind. Youth and beauty, strength and health, wit and reason, judgment, memory, or sweet disposition; all these are the gifts of God in the world of nature, and render persons so far amiable as they are possessed of them. You that flourish in the vigour and glory of youth, and yet have no saving acquaintance with God in Christ, no right to eternal life; while I behold you, I mourn over you with much compassion. What pity it is that the flower of your age should be employed only to sooth your vanity! to adorn your guilty passions, and to dress up the scenes of sin! That flower will wither in old age, and it leaves no perfume behind, but what arises from virtue and goodness: or, perhaps, you will give it up to untimely decay: by indulgence of irregular pleasures, you devote it to be blasted by the breath of Satan, and in the smoke of hell. But is it not a pity, that a strong and healthy constitution should be wasted in slavery to your appetites, and in making provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts of it? Why should not the powers of nature, in their first bloom and glory, adorn the kingdom of grace? Why should not our sprightly days, and the warmest hours of life, be employed in some useful activity for the interest of God! What a decency and honour is added to religion, by its fairest and youngest votaries! With what peculiar praises does the word of God recommend the character of youthful piety? How is the young king Josiah celebrated in the sacred records? that _while he was yet young he began to seek after the God of David his Father, &c._ 2 Chron. xxiv. 3. How is Timothy commended, _who had known the holy scriptures from his very childhood_: 2 Tim. iii. 15. And there are some young in years, to whom the apostle John might address himself with the same pleasure as he does to the christian converts, whom he calls young men, strong in grace, who had the love of God abiding in them, and had overcome the wicked one; 1 John ii. 14. And he gives them in the next verse a most needful and friendly caution against the _love of the world, and the things of it_, lest they shut the love of the Father out of their hearts. What an abuse and waste of life are ye guilty of, when ye lay out the brightest moments of it upon the works of darkness? and treasure up to yourselves everlasting darkness and fire! I pity the young, the vigorous, the comely figures of human nature, that neglect to seek after divine grace, that are ruined and made wretched to all eternity, by their excessive love of the pleasures, or the pomp, or the riches of this vain world. A thousand such sinners that were once the hope of their families, and the lovely ornaments of the place they lived in, are now cursing the day of their birth, and raging with despair in the midst of the wrath of God.