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DJSe.
III1
SVRPRd2E IN DEATH,
395
morrow." They
put
this
evil
day
afar
off,
and indulge
themselves
in
their carnal
delights,
without due solicitude
to prepare
for the
call
of God. There
is
scarce any
thing produces
so
much
evil
fruit
in
the
world,
so
much
shameful wickedness
amongst the sensual and the
pro-
fane,
or
such neglect of
lively
religion among
real
christians, as this
bitter
root of
presumption upon
life
and
time before
us.
Mat.
xxiv.
48, 49.
" The
evil
ser-
vant did
not
begin to smite
his fellows,
and to
eat and
drink
with the
drunken,
till he
had
said in.his
heart,
my
lord
delayeth
his
coming
:
It
was while
the bridegroom
tarried,
Sand
they imagined
he would
tarry
longer,
that
even
the
wise
virgins
fell
into slumbers
;"
Mat.
xxv.
5.
Ask
your
own
hearts,
my
friends does
not
this
thought
secretly
lurk
within
you, when you
comply with a
temp-
tation,
"
Surely
I
shall
not
die
yet,
I
have no sickness
upon
me,
nor tokens
of
death,
I
shall
live
a little
longer,
and
repent
of
my follies
?"
Vain
expectation,
and
groundless
fancy
-1
when you
see
the
young,. and
the
strong, and
the healthy
seized away from
the
midst
of
you,
and
a
final
period
put at
once
to all
their
works
and
designs
in
this
life.
Yet
we
are
foolish enough
to
ima-
gine
our
term of
life
shall
be
extended, and
we
presume
upon months and
years which
God
bath
not
written
down
for
us
in his own book,
and
which he
will
never
give us to enjoy.
We are
all
borderers upon the river
of
death, which
conveys us
into the
eternal
world, and
we
should
be
ever
waiting the call
of
our Lord,
that
we
may
launch
away,
with
joy,
to
the regions
of
immortality
:
But thoughtless
creatures
that
we
are,
we
are perpetually wandering far up
into the
fields
of
sense
and
time,
we
are gathering the
gay
and
fading flowers
that
grow there, and
filling
our laps
with
them
as
a
fair treasure,
or
making garlands for
ambition
to crown
our
brows; till
óne
and
another of
us is
called
off
on
a
sudden, and
hurried
away
from this
mortal
coast Those
of
us,
who survive,
are surprized a little,
we
stand
gazing, we follow
our
departing
friends,
with
a
weeping
eye,
for
a minute or
two,
and then
we
fall to
our
amusements again, and grow
busy,
as before,
in
gather-
ing
the
flowers'
of
time
and
sense.
O
how
fond
we
are
to
enrich ourselves
with
the
perishing
trifles,
and
adorn
our heads
with
honours and withering vanities, never
VOZ. IL
2
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