Page:Address to an emigrant.djvu/6

 you reach the colony, you will be full of hope. Visions of future greatness, of accumulating wealth, and of growing respectability may present themselves to your imagination. Endeavour, then, to recollect, that without the blessing of God your toil will be in vain; that if you realize in any degree your expectations, you cannot enjoy them long; and pray for grace to imitate the merchantman, who, seeking goodly pearls, found one of great price, and went and sold all that he had, and bought it, Matt. xiii. 45, 46.

In choosing for yourself a habitation, have, as much as possible, regard to its nearness to a place of worship, to which you may repair on the sabbath, and at other times, to hear the word of eternal life, and to worship God. Wherever you pitch your tent, there erect an altar to the honour and worship of the one living and true Jehovah. It is a mournful fact, that many persons who, in Great Britain, made a profession of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ have, after their emigration, gradually relapsed into a state of indifference and irreligion, and have sunk into a condition of guilt and immorality which it is fearful to consider. This has been in part attributable to the circumstance, that they have settled in a remote part of the colony, where Christian friends or Christian instruction could seldom be met with. In addition to the want of public worship, they have neglected to read the Scriptures at home, and omitted to pray with their families, and have thus rapidly cast off even the forms of godliness, while their children have grown up in a state little better than that of the heathen aborigines by whom they were surrounded. As you value the favour of God, as you love your own souls, and as you are anxious for the welfare of the rising generation, I beseech you to avoid that course of apostasy to which I have referred. Perhaps a limited income at home, and a desire to make a