NOW OR NEVER. 191 undervalued, and slept away in dreaming idleness, and fooled away for things of nought! The language of that rich man, Luke xvi. may help you in your predictions. 0 how will you wonder at yourselves, that ever you could be so blind and senseless, as to be no more affected with the warnings of the Lord, and with the forethoughts of everlasting joy and misery! To have but one small part of time to do all that ever must be done by you for eternity, and say all that ever you must say, for your own or others' souls, and that this was spent in worse than nothing! To have but one uncertain life, in which you must run the race that wins or loses heaven for ever; and that you should be tempted with a thing of nought, to lose that one irrecoverable opportunity, and to sit still or run another way, when you should have been making haste with all your might! 0 sirs, the thoughts of this will be other kind of thoughts another day than now you feel them; you cannot now think how the thoughts of this will then affect you! That you had a time in which you might have prayed, with promise of acceptance, and had no hearts to take that time ! That Christ was offered to you as well as he was offered to them that entertained him; that you are called on, and warned as well as they, but obstinately despised and neglected all ! That life and death were set before you, and the everlasting joys were offered to your choice, against the charms ofsinful pleasures, and you might have freely had them if you would, and were told that holiness was the only way, and that it must be now or neve1·, and yet that you chose your own destruction ! These thoughts will be part of hell to the ungodly. They will wonder that reason could be so unreasonable; and that they, who had the common wit of man in other matters, should be so far beside themselves in that which is the only thing that is commendable to be wise for; that such reasonings should prevail with them against the clearest light, and nothing should be preferred before
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