by sad experience, and have cried out too late, 'O that we had now that time again which we made so light of!' But none of them did ever attain their wish! No more will you. Take it therefore while you have it. It is now as liberal to the poorest beggar as to the greatest prince! Time is as much yours as his. Though in your youth and folly you spend as out of the full heap, as if time would never have an end, you shall find it is not like the widow's oil, or the loaves and fishes, multiplied by a miracle; but the hour is at hand, when you will wish you had gathered the fragments and the smallest crumbs, that nothing of so precious a commodity had been lost; even the little minutes, which you thought you might neglect and be no losers. Try whether you can stop the present moment, or recal that which is gone by already, before you vilify or loiter away any more ; lest you repent too late.

Direct. x. Think also how exceeding little time thou hast, and how near thou alway standest to eternity". "Is there not an appointed time to man upon earth? Are not his days also like the days of an hireling "?" "Man that is born of a woman is of few days and full of trouble: he cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down: he fleeth also as a shadow and continueth not "." "Now my days are swifter than a post: they flee away: they see no good: they are passed away as the swift ships, as the eagle that hasteth to the prey." O, what is this inch of hasty time! How quickly will it all be gone! Look back on all the time that is past if you have lived threescore or fourscore years, what is it now? Doth it not seem as yesterday since thou wast a child? Do not days and nights wheel on apace? O man! how short is thy abode on earth! How small a time will leave thee in eternity! What a small and hasty moment will bring thee to the state, in which thou must remain for ever! Every night is as the death or end of one of the few that are here allotted thee. How little a while is it till thy mortal sickness!-till thou must lie under languishing decays and pain!-till thy vital powers shall give

:

m Ex vitâ ita discedo, tanquam ex hospitio, non tanquam ex domo. Commorandi enim nobis, natura diversorium non habitandi locum dedit. Cic. Sen. 84. vol. vii. p. 817.

n Job vii. 1.

• Job xiv. 1, 2.

P Job ix. 25, 26.

up their office, and thy pulse shall cease, and thy soul shall take its silent, undiscerned flight, and leave thy body to be hid in darkness, and carried by thy friends to the common earth! How short a time is it betwixt this and the digging of thy grave!-betwixt thy pleasures in the flesh, and thy sad farewell, when thou must say of all thy pleasures, They are gone!'-betwixt thy cares and businesses for this world, and thy entrance into another world, where all these vanities are of no esteem! How short is the time between thy sin, and thy account in judgment!-between the pleasure and the pain!—and between the patient holiness of the godly, and their full reward of endless joys! And can you spare any part of so short a life? Hath God allotted you so little time, and can you spare the devil any of that little? Is it not all little enough for so great a work, as is necessary to your safe and comfortable death? O remember, when sloth or pleasure would have any, how little you have in all !-and out of how small a stock you spend !-how little you have for the one thing necessary!-the providing for eternal life! -and how unseasonable it is to be playing away time, so near the entrance into the endless world!

Yea,

Direct. xI. Remember also how uncertain that little time is, which you must have.' As you know it will be short, so you know not how short. You never yet saw the day or hour, in which you were sure to see another. And is it a thing becoming the reason of a man, to slug or cast away that day or hour, which for ought he knows may be his last? You think that though you are not certain, yet you are likely to have more: but nothing that is hazardous should be admitted in a business of such moment. when the longest life is short; and when so frail a body, liable to so many hundred maladies and casualties, and so sinful a soul, do make it probable as well as possible, that the thread of thy life should be cut off ere long, even much before thy natural period: when so many score at younger years do come to the grave, for one that arriveth at the ripeness of old age; is not then the uncertainty of thy time a great aggravation of the sinfulness of thy not redeeming it? If you were sure you had but one year to live, it would perhaps make you so wise, as to see that you had no time to spare. And yet do you waste it, when you know not

that you shall live another day? Many a one is this week trifling away their time, who will be dead the next week; who yet would have spent it better if they had thought but to have died the next year! O man! what if death come before thou hast made thy necessary preparation? Where art thou then? When time is uncertain as well as short, hast thou not work enough of weight to spend it on? If Christ had set thee to attend and follow him in greatest holiness a thousand years, shouldst thou not have gladly done it? And yet canst thou not hold out for so short a life? Canst thou not watch with him one hour? He himself was provoked by the nearness of his death, to a speedy dispatch of the works of his life. And should not we? He sendeth to prepare his last communion-feast with his disciples, thus : "My time is at hand: I will keep the passover at thy house with my disciples." And Luke xxii. 15. "With desire have I desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer." So should you rather say,' My time is short; my death is at hand; and therefore it concerneth me to live in the knowledge and communion of God, before I go hence into his presence,' especially when, as Eccles. ix. 12. "Man knoweth not his time." Many thousands would have done better in their preparations, if they had known the period of their time. But know this, that if the good man of the house had known, in what watch the thief would come, he would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be broken up therefore be ye also ready; for in such an hour as ye think not, the Son of man cometh." "Take ye heed, watch and pray; for ye know not when the time is "." Direct. XII. Never forget what attendance thou hast whilst thou art idling or sinning away thy time: how the patience and mercy of God are staying for thee: and how sun and moon and all the creatures are all the while attending on thee.' And must God stand by, while thou art yet a little longer abusing and offending him? Must God stay till thy cards, and dice, and pride, and worldly, unnecessary cares will dismiss thee, and spare thee for his service? Must he wait on the devil, and the world, and the flesh; to take their leavings, and stay till they have done with thee? Canst thou marvel if he make thee pay for this? If he turn

4 Matt. xxvi. 18.

away, and leave thee to spend thy time in as much vanity and idleness as thou desirest? Must God and all his creatures wait on a careless sinner, while he is at his fleshly pleasures? Must life and time be continued to him, while he is doing nothing that is worthy of his life and time? "The longsuffering of God did wait on the disobedient in the days of Noah." But how dear did they pay for the contempt of this forbearance?

Direct. XIII. Consider soberly of the ends for which thy life and time are given thee by God.' God made not such a creature as man for nothing he never gave thee an hour's time for nothing. The life and time of brutes and plants are given them to be serviceable to thee: but what is thine for? Dost thou think in thy conscience that any of thy time is given thee in vain? When thou art slugging, or idling, or playing it away, dost thou think in thy conscience that thou art wisely and honestly answering the ends of thy creation, and redemption, and hourly preservation? Dost thou think that God is so unwise, or disregardful of thy time and thee, as to give thee more than thou hast need of? Thou wilt blame thy tailor if he cut out more cloth than will make thy garments meet for thee, and agreeable to thy use and thou wilt blame thy shoemaker, if he make thy shoes too big for thee: and dost thou think that God is so lavish of time, or so unskilful in his works of providence, as to cut thee out more time, than the work which he hath cut thee out requireth? He that will call thee to a reckoning for all, hath certainly given thee none in vain. If thou canst find an hour that thou hast nothing to do with, and must give no account for, let that be the hour of thy pastime. But if thou knewest thy need, thy danger, thy hopes, and thy work, thou wouldst never dream of having time to spare. For my own part, I must tell thee, if thou have time to spare, thy case is very much different from mine. It is the daily trouble and burden of my mind, to see how slowly my work goes on, and how hastily my time: and how much I am like to leave undone which I would fain dispatch! How great and important businesses are to be done, and how short that life is like to be, in which they must be done, if ever! Methinks if every day were as long as ten, it were

t 1Pet. iii. 20.

not too long for the work which is every day before me, though not incumbent on me as my present duty (for God requireth not impossibilities,) yet exceeding desirable to be done. It is the work that makes the time a mercy: the time is for the work. If my work were done, which the good of the church and my soul requireth, what cause had I to be glad of the ending of my time, and to say with Simeon, "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace." Remember then that God never gave thee one minute to spend in vain; but thy very ease, and rest, and recreations must be but such and so much as fit thee for thy work; and as help it on, and do not hinder it. He redeemed and preserveth us, that we " might serve him in holiness and righteousness before him all the days of our lives"."

Direct. XIV. Remember still, that the time of this short, uncertain life is all that ever you shall have, for your preparation for your endless life.' When this is spent, whether well or ill, you shall have no more. God will not try those with another life on earth, that have cast away and misspent this. There is no returning hither from the dead, to mend that which here you did amiss. What good you will do, must now be done and what grace you would get, must now be got: and what preparation for eternity you would ever make, must now be made! "Behold, now is the accepted time! Behold, now is the day of salvation." "Wherefore, as the Holy Ghost saith, To-day if you will hear his voice, harden not your hearts. But exhort one another daily, while it is called to-day, lest any of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin." Have you but one life here to live, and will you lose that one, or any part of it? Your time is already measured out: the glass is turned upon you. "And the angel-lifted up his hand to heaven, and sware by him that liveth for ever and ever, that time should be no longer "." Therefore "whatever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave whither thou goest." What then remaineth, but that "the time being short, and the fashion of these things passing away," you

" Luke i. 74, 75.
2 Cor. vi. 2.

b Eccles. ix. 10.

* See my book called "Now or Never."
a Rev. x. 5, 6.

Heb. iii. 7. 13.