116 TAE WORLD TO COME. " Like a fair prospect still we make Things future pleasing forms to take First, verdant meads arise and flow'ry fields; Cool groves and shady copses here, There brooks and windingstreams appear, While change of objects still, new pleasures yields. " Farther fine castles court the eye, There wealth and honours we espy ; Beyond a huddled mixture fills the stage, Till the remoter distance shrouds The plains with hills, those hills with clouds, There we place death behind old shiv'ring age. " When death, alas! perhaps too nigh, In the next hedge cloth skulking lie, There plants his engines, thence lets fly his dart; Which, while we ramble without fear, Will stop us in ouifull career, And force us from our airy dreams to part." How fond and vain are our imaginations, when we have seen others called away on a sudden, from the early scenes of life to promise ourselves a long continuance here ! We have the same feeble bodies, the same tabernacles of clay that others have, and we are liable to many of the same accidents or casual- ties : The same killing diseases are at work in our natures, and why should we imagine or presume, that others should go so much before us ? And if we enquire of ourselves as to character or merit, or moral circumstances of any kind, and compare ourselves with those that are gone before, what foundation have we to promise ourselves a longer continuance here? Have we not the same sins or greater, to provoke God ? Are we more useful in the world than they, and do more service for his name ? May not God summon us off the stage of life on a sudden, as well as others ? What are we better than they ? Are we not as much under the sovereign disposal of the great God as any of our acquaintance, who have been seized in theflower and prime of life, and called away in an unexpected hour ? And what power have we to resist the seizure, or what promise to hope that God will delay longer ? Let us then no more deceive our- selves with vain imaginations, but each of us awake, and bestir ourselves, as though we were the next persons to be called away from this assembly, and to appear next before the Lord. IV. When we are awake, we are not only fitter for the com- ing of our Lord, to call 'us away by death,. and fitter for his appearance to the great judgment, but we are better prepared also to attend him in every call to present duty, and more ready to meet his appearance in every providence." It is the chris- tian soldier who is ever awake and on his guard, that is only fit for every sudden appointment to new stations and services;
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