368 THE CHRISTIANS TREASURE. Life is not yours ; it is not for your final advantage, while you waste it in ,vanity and sinful amusements A long life spent in this manner, shall but add to your guilt, and aggravate your condemnation. Death is not a benefit, but a dreadful hour to you, for it delivers you over to the full power of Satan that cruel tormentor, and opens the scene of your everlasting sorrows. Things present are not blessings to you, while you resolve to continue in this sinful state. You abuse the day-light, and waste it in trifles or in crimes ; or at best you spend it in an eager pursuit of the things of the world, with the neglect of God. The night is given to recruit nature for new services, but you seize the shadows of the evening to make a screen for your secret iniquities, and hide your sins behind the curtains of midnight. You feed on the fruits of the earth, and other rich provi- sions of divine bounty ; but perhaps you make them instruments of shameful intemperance: Or at best you lay out the strength of them in empty follies, or in low earthly designs, without a thought of God or heaven. The morning and the evening wait upon you in longsuccessions, but you are heaping up iniquities from morning to evening. Youwalk daily in the paths of death, and the suns-beams do but light you onward to everlastingdark- ness. You are nourished by your food for the day of slaughter. Daily and hourly you abuse the goodness of God, and even these abused blessings of his goodness shall call for greater de- grees of vengeance at his awful judgment seat. Thus neither the light of the sun, nor the fruits of the earth, neither day nor night, are yours ; for you abuse them to sinful purposes, and they yield you no realprofit. And if things present are not yours, if ye have no solid and lasting benefit by them, much less can you pretend to claim any comfortable share in the things that are to come. There isahea- ven of happiness provided for the saints, but you are utterly un- prepared to fulfil the business of it, or to taste the blessed- ness. There is no room nor place there for you. There is no- thingglorious and delightful among all the promises of God, or all the joyful scenes of the world to come, that you can claim anytitle to, nor have you any interest in them. When hell shall open its month indeed, to receive millions of the damned,accord- ing to the final sentence of the Judge, there you will find a place and room provided for you ; but it is an uneasy and dreadful one. Hell is yours, the vengeance. of God is yours, endless misery is yours; you have been treasuring ùp wrath against the dayof wrath ; and you can claim, nothing but this painful portion, this dismal and everlastinginheritance.
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