509 / 674
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
him
without
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 children
of
men,
who
are
dying daily off from this stage
of
life,
who
must
all
shortly ate, and
enter
into
a
world
of
eternal futurity,