before them, to which they can make their offerings and their prayers.
Thus daily are they engaged in a service which, above all others, is the
most offensive and provoking to a holy God--a service which has caused
him to declare, that idolaters shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.
This, too, is the service in which every person, who has never given
himself to the Saviour, is engaged; and, of course, in which you are
engaged if you have not given your hearts to him. Those who think more
of their money than they think of Christ, just as certainly worship the
image which is stamped on a dollar or a cent, as the heathen worship
their idols. Those who love their fathers and mothers, and brothers and
sisters more than Christ, make these their idols. And are you, my dear
children, yet out of Christ? If so, you have your idols. And what are
these idols? Are they the world and its vanities? Then God is as angry
with you as he is with the heathen, and unless you give up these idols,
you too must be lost.

In a tract of mine, published by the American Tract Society, entitled,
"Knocking at the Door"--a tract which I _most earnestly_ entreat you to
get and read--you will find an account of the death of a young lady, who
had chosen the world and its vanities as her idols. I was her physician.
After having attended her for about a month, I perceived, one morning,
that her disease must soon prove fatal. I told her that she could not
live. She then exclaimed, "Doctor, can I not live a month?" I informed
her that she could not. Again she exclaimed, "Can I not live two weeks?"
She was told that she could not live two weeks. And such a scene of
horror followed as I never before witnessed, and may God be pleased to
grant that I may never witness such another. Until laid upon a dying
bed, I fear that she had neglected to think about her soul's concerns.
Now she requested to be taken from it, and placed upon her knees, that
she might call upon God to have mercy upon her. As her case excited much