CHAPTER II.

"To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your heart." Heb. iii. 15.

As to the time when a preparation for death should be made, Scripture and reason are explicit: "Now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation." "To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts." "Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near." In health, prepare for sickness. In life, prepare for death.

Perhaps you dislike to think of death, because it is to you a gloomy subject, and one from the contemplation of which, you can derive no pleasure. Because death

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is marked with sadness and melancholy, and fraught with dangers to an unprepared soul, you drive it from your mind and refuse to meditate upon it. But this is the very reason why you should think of it. If you were under the necessity of travelling a dark and narrow path, beset with difficulties and dangers, would you, on that account, refuse to think of it, and choose to travel it blindfold, that you might not see its dangers? You dread surprise at death. A timely preparation will relieve you from the horror of such a surprise. "Be ye always ready," and death, though sudden and unexpected, can not harm you. But by putting far off the evil day, driving it from your thoughts, and deferring a preparation, you render surprise both painful and inevitable. Court familiarity with death. Bring in imagination the scene of your own dissolution before your mind. Fancy yourself just on the verge of eternity,

this world receding from your view, all things around becoming indistinct, light itself turning pale and fast fading away, the sobs and cries of weeping friends, faintly falling on the ear, and becoming less and less audible, the light of eternity just bursting on your soul, now wafted to the world of spirits. What if you are then unprepared! without a Saviour! without a hope! O let me persuade you now to prepare while you are blest with abundant means of grace, and such a favourable opportunity.

A preparation deliberately deferred to your last moments, is at best suspicious as to its genuineness. A changed life is the scriptural evidence of a changed heart; but death-bed penitents have no opportunity for applying this test to their own supposed conversion. How hard is it for such to discover their sincerity, and how uncomfortable must it be to die, without

this trial of our faith. But all things are possible with God.

"We may consider," says Barrow, "that no future time which we may fix on, will be more convenient than the present is for our reformation. Let us pitch on what time we please, we shall be as unwilling and as unfit to begin as we are now; we shall find in ourselves the same indisposition, the same averseness, or the same listlessness toward it, as now. There will occur the like hardships to deter us, and the like pleasures to allure us, from our duty objects will then be as present, and will strike as smartly on our senses; the case will appear just the same, and the same pretences for delay will obtrude themselves: so that we shall be as apt then as now to prorogue the business. We shall then say, to-morrow I will mend; and when that to-morrow cometh, it will be still to-morrow, and so the morrow will prove endless. If, like the sim

ple rustic, who staid by the river side waiting till it had done running, so that he might pass dry-foot over the channel, we do conceit that the sources of sin, (bad inclinations within, and strong temptations abroad,) will of themselves be spent, or fail, we shall find ourselves deluded.” Barrow's Works, vol. iii. p. 243, Hughes' ed.

If you are not now on your death bed, or in the last stages of your disease, I conjure you by all the solemnity of death, by the value of your soul, and the fearfulness of its destruction, not to defer the work of preparation to any future period. It is no time to repent of sin, to put your trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, and be reconciled to God, when your body is racked with pains, and your mind wandering in delirium. You will have enough to do to grapple with your agonies, your burning fevers, and your decaying strength. How often is the pa