NOW OR NEVER. 201 have the Lord's day to spend in holy exercises, for the edification and solace of your souls; you have choice of sound and serious books: 0 what invaluable mercies are all these! 0 know your time, and use these with industry, and improve this harvest for your souls! For it will not be thus always: it must be now or nevet·. You have yet time and leave to pray and cry to God in hope: yet if you have hearts and tongues, he hath a hearing ear; the Spirit of grace is ready to assist you. It will not be thus always: the time is coming when the loudest cries will do no good. 0 pray, pray, pray, poor needy miserable sinners; for it must be now or never. You have yet health and strength, and bodies fit to serve your souls: it will not be so always: languishing, and pains, and death are coming. 0 use your health and strength for God; for it must be now or neve1·. Yet there are some stirrings of conviction in your consciences: you find that all is not well with you; and you have some thoughts or purposes to repent and be new creatures. There is some hope in this, that yet God hath not quite forsaken you. 0 trifle not, and stifle not the convictions of your consciences, but hearken to the witness of God within you. It must be now or neve1·. Would you not be loath to be left to the despairing case ofmany poor distressed souls, that cry out, '0 it is now too late! I fear my day of grace is past; God will not hear me now if I should call upon him: he hath forsaken me, and given me over to myself. It is too late to repent, too late to pray, too late to think of a new life; all is too late.' This case is sad; but yet many of these are in a safer and bett,er case than they imagine, and are but frightened by the Tempter: and it is not too late, while they cry out, • 'It is too late;' but if you are left to cry in hell, 'It is too late;' alas, how long and how doleful a cry and lamentation will it be! 0 consider, poor sinner, that God knoweth the t~me and season of thy mercies. He giveth the
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