Page:Address to an emigrant.djvu/4

 benefit you have derived from the means of grace, with which you have been so long favoured. How many sabbaths have rolled over you, how many sermons you have heard, how many opportunities you have had of knowing God, and of enjoying his salvation! And yet perhaps you are going forth to a distant land, with the guilt of all the sins you have committed in Britain on your conscience; and should you die in that state, either before or after you finish your voyage, your immortal spirit would be landed on the shores of perdition, and be for ever undone. Surely it is time for you to seek the Lord; arise and call upon his name, that you perish not. Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved, and go forth a new creature in him.

The voyage on which you are entering is a long one, and many of its hours may become tedious to you on the great waters. Let me urge you by all means to secure a Bible, if you have not one, and to make that the companion of your days and nights. Search the Scriptures, for they testify of Christ, and are able to make you wise unto salvation. Do not be ashamed to acknowledge God, or to commend your spirit to him in morning and evening prayer, though you may be surrounded by persons prepared to treat devotional exercises with indifference or contempt. During your detention in the vessel, you may have much to try your temper, and to call for mutual forbearance on the part of the passengers; under these circumstances, endeavour to exemplify that meekness of wisdom, that courtesy and readiness to do good to others, which the Scriptures command, and which is so strikingly and beautifully enforced upon us, by the example of our Divine Lord and Saviour, who pleased not himself, but who lived and died for the good of others. As