DISCOURSE T. 59 which should have been laid out in preparing for death and eter- nity, and seeking things of far higher importance ? 3. Have yon not wasted too much time in your frequent clubs, and what you call good company, and in places of public resort. Hath not the tavern, or the coffee house, or the ale- house seen and known you, from hour to hour, for a whole even- ing, and that sometimes before the trade or labours of the day should have been ended ? And when your bible, and your closet, or the devotion of your family, have sometimes called upon your conscience, have you not turned a deaf ear to them all ? 4. Have not useless and impertinent visits been made to no good purpose, or been prolonged beyond all necessity or improve- ment? When your conversation runs low, even to the dregs, and both you and your friends have been at a loss what to say next, and knew not how to fill up the time, yet the visit must go on, and time must be wasted. Sometimes the wind and the wea- ther, and twenty insignificancies, or, what is much worse, scan- dal of persons or families, have come into your relief, that there might not be too long a silence : But not one word of God m goodness could find room to enter in, and relieve the dull hour. Is none of this time ever to be accounted for ? And will it sound well in the ears of the great Judge, " We ran to these sorry topics, these slanderous and backbiting stories, because we could not tell what to talk of, and we knew not how to spend our time." 5. Have you not been guilty of frequent, and even per- petual delays or neglects of your proper necessary business in the civil life, or in the solemn duties of religion, by busying your- selves in some other needless thing, under this pretence, " It is time enough yet !" Have you learned that important and eternal rule of pru- dence, " never delay till to-morrow, what may be done 'to -day; never put off, till the next hour, what may be done in this ?" Have you not often experienced your own disappointment and folly by these delays ? And yet have you ever so repented, as to learn to mend them ? Solomon tells us ; Eccles. iii. I. There is e time for every purpose, and every work under the sun : a pro- .per and agreeable time for every lawful work of nature and life; and it is the business and care of a wise man to do proper work in proper time; but when we have let slip the proper season, how often have we been utterly disappointed ? Have we not sustained great inconveniencies ? And sometimes it bath so happened, that we could never do that work or business at all, because another proper season for it hath never offered : Time hath been no more. Felix put off his discourse with Paul, about the faith of Christ, and righteousness, and judgment to come, to a more convenient tune, which probably never came ;'Acts xxiv. 25. And the
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