482 CHRISTIAN MORALITY, VIZ. [SERM. XXIX. any degree inferior, or the younger parts of a house And ,yet it might easily be prevented, by taking the first opportunity for every business. O it is an excellent, a golden rule, " Never leave that till to-morrow, which maybe done to -day, nor trust the business of this hour to the care of the next," for the next hour is not mine. When servants are of this dilatory and trifling humour, they waste their master's time perjetually, and put their superiors to many inconveniences. They prevent one another's business, as well as neglect their own. You would wonder how they could spend three or four hours in a common errand, and make a family wait half a day for a 'message, that might be dispatched in half an hour. They cannot keep their eyes or their ears from attending to every object they meet ; their endless curi- osity of enquiry, and their irresistible inclination to talk of every thing that does not concern them, is an ever- lasting hinderance to their proper work. This active sort Of idleness is much harder to be cured than that of the slow and stupid kind ; and you see it belongs to the poor as well as the rich; though it is a matter of disrepa- tation and infamy to both. Persons of this unhappy conduct, whether of high or low degree, are in great danger of trifling in the most sacred and divine concernmonts, as well as in common life. They sometimes manage their spiritual and immor- tal affairs in the same dilatory manner, but with more dreadful and fatal consequence. They put off repent- ance from day to day, and delay their solenn transac- tions with God, till sickness seizes them, or till death approaches: Then what hurry of spirit ! What dreadful confusion of soul ! What tumults and terrors overwhelm them ! And it is well if the matters of their salvation be not unfinished at the last hOur, and themselves made miserable to all eternity, because they trifled away life and time. A second enemy to_this regular conduct of life, and which indeed is derived from the former, is this, an in- version of the order of nature, and a change of the sea- sons which God bath appointed for business and rest. I confess this is not now-a-days a matter of ill report in itself, however contrary it be to the laws of nature and the creation: But it is attended with many irregu- J
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