bISC. ViII.] A SOUL PREPARED FOR HEAVEN. 489 business for your employment and support, you are will- ing to serve an apprenticeship of seven years in order to a preparation for the exercise of this public business ; and can you not afford one day in the week to learn the business of heaven, and to prepare for the blessedness of it ? And let patents also consider with themselves, what pains they have taken that their children may be fit for the trades and employments of life to which they design them, and then let each enquire of their own consciences, {( have I ever done so much to train up my son for the heavenly world, to fit him for the appearance before God, and saints and angels, and for all the unknown services of that celestial country ?" 7. Go on yet further, O impenitent sinners, and cones sider with yourselves what a blessedness 'it is to be 'pre- pared for heaven ; for then you are prepared for death, and at once you take away all the terrors of it. O what an unspeakable happiness is it to pass through this world daily without the f!ar of dying? What is it that makes life so bitter to multitudes of souls, and every malady or accident so frightful to them, but the perpetual terrors of death? Think what a divine satisfactionit is to wall up and down in this desart land, ready prepared for an entrance into the land of promise, the inheritance of the saints in light : Think of the solid joy and inward consolation -of those souls who feel in themselves an ha- bitual readiness for a departure hence, and who are wrought up by divine grace to a preparation for the bu- siness and the joys above. Think of the victory over death, which is obtained by such a readiness for heaven; and how glorious 'a thing it is to meet thát last enemy the king of terrors, and encounter himwithout fear, and to triumph over him with divine language, "O death! where is thy sting ?" 1 Cor. xv. 55. How joyful a scene would it be to take leave of all our friends in this land of mortality, with an assured hope that we are enter- ing into a happier climate, and a better country, ready . prepared for all the more glorious scenes that shall meet us in the invisible world-? It is an amazing thing to rile, how the childrenofmen, who are dying daily off from this stage oflife, who must all shortly ate, and enter into aworld of eternal futurity,
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