LIFE OF FAITH. 443 as miserable fools, when it is gone ! If our Lord said, " I must do the work of him that sent me while it is day; for the night cometh, when no man can work ; " (John ix. 4.) what need, then, havesuch as we to be doing, and make much of time ! O, let not company, mirth, or business make you forget the work of time ! Can you play, or loiter away your hours, with eternity in your eye? Get the sun to stand still, and time to make a truce with you; and to waste no more of the oil of life, before you lose an- otherhour. O, what heads, what hearts have all those men, that, standing at the verge of an endless world, can think they have any time to spare ! Hath God given you too much ? If not, whydo you lose it? Ifhe hath, why are you loath, that he should shorten it? You would not throw away your gold, as contemptuously as you do your time, when anhour's time is more valuable than gold. Frown on that company that would rob you of half an hour's time. Tell them you have something elseto do than to feast, or play, or talk away your time unnecessarily. O, tell them you were not made for nothing. You are in a race, and must not stand still; you are in a fight, and must not cease. - Your work is great ; much of it is undone. Your enemies are not idle ; death will not stop ; the Judge is coming, and still beholds you; and heaven and hell are ready to receive our ending life, and tell us how we spent our time: and can you find time to spare? You are not made as weathercocks, to stand up on high for men to look at, and, by turning about with every wind, to show themwhich way it stand - eth. Turn not your lives into that curse "You shall spend your strength in vain ; " Levit. xxvi. 20. Believe it, time must be re- viewed. The day is near when every man of you had rather find it in your accounts, ' So many hours spent in self-examination and holy meditation ; so many in reading the word of God; so many spent in fervent prayer; and so many in doing good to others,' than, ' So many spent in needless sports and pleasures ; so many in idlenesses and vain discourses ; and so manyof the less necessary matters of the world.' Ask those that tempt you to misspend your time, whether, at death and judgment, they had rather them- selves have a life of holy diligence to review, or a life consumed in vanity and transitory delights. You will not suffer impertinences to interrupt your counsels and serious business in the world. You will tell intruders that you are busy, and cannot have while to attend them. And are' you going into heaven or hell, and have but a fewdays' time of prepa- ration, (Godknows how few,) and yet can you have while to pass this precious time in vain? O, what would you not give, ere long, for one of the hours that you now misspend, when the oath. is
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