176 THE WORLD TO COME. which are necessary for so solemn and glorious an appearance? 1f you are designing in this life to commence any trade or busi. ness for your employment and your support, you are willing 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 a week to learn the business of heaven, and to pre- pare for the blessedness of it? And let parents 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 appear- ance 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 consider with yourselves what a blessedness it is to be prepared for hea- ven ; 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 fear 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 satisfaction it is to walk up and down in this desart land, ready prepared for an entrance into the land of promise, the inheritance of the saints in light. Thick of the solid joy and inward consolation of those souls who feel in themselves an habitual readiness for a departure hence; and who are wrought up by divine grace to a preparation for the business and the joys above. Think of the victory over death, which is obtained by such a readiness for heaven, and hose glo- rions a thing it is to meet that 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 entering 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 me, how the children of men, who are dying daily off from this stage of life, who must all shortly die, and enter into a world of eternal futurity, should be no more concerned about a preparation for their departure hence: That they should be so stupidly thoughtless of a world to come, while they are on the very borders of it, and eternal joy or eternal sorrow depends on this one question, " Am I prepared for hea- ven, or not ?" O those two awful regions of the unseen World ; where the love of God shines with its brightest gloríes, or where the vengeance of God is discovered in all its anguish and horror !
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