NOW OR NEVER. 193 late to hope, or pray, or strive for your salvation. Yet a little longer, and mercy will have done with you for ever; and Christ will never invite you more, nor ever offer to cleanse you by his blood; nor sanctify you by his Spirit. Yet a little longer, and you shall never hear a sermon more, and never more be troubled with those preachers that were in good earnest with you, and longed once for your conversion and salvation. 0 sleepy, dead-hearted sinners, what should I do to show you how near you stand to eternity, and what is now doing in the world that you are going to, and how these things are thought on there! What should I do to make you know how time is valued, how sin and holiness are esteemed in the world where you must live for ever ! What should I do to make you know those things to-day, which I will not thank you to know when you are gone hence! 0 that the Lord would open your eyes in time! 0 that I could but make you know these things as believers should know them! I say not as those that see them, nor yet as dreamers, that do not regard them, but as those that believe that they must shortly see them, what a joyful hour's work should I esteem this! how happy would it be to you and me! If every word were accompanied with t ears; if this sermon cost me as many censures or slanders as ever sermon did, I should not think it too dear, if I coulJ but help you to such a sight of the things we speak of, that ·you might truly understand them as they are: that you had I:tut a true awakened apprehension of the shortness of your day, of the nearness of eternity, and of the endless consequence of your present work, and what holy labour and sinful loitering will be thought of in the world to come for ever. But when we see you sin, and trifle, and no more regard your endless life, and see also what haste your time is making, and yet cannot make you understand these things; when we know ourselves as sure as we speak to you, that you, will shortly be astonished at the review of your present sloth and 17
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