ANXIETY OF MIND REASONABLE. 19 enjoying peace with God, and rejoicing in the hope of immortal glory. But yours is, in one respect, a middle state. You have felt somewhat of the "powers of the world to come." Your conscience is yet susceptible, your mind is thoroughly aroused to a sense of your guilt and insecurity; you see your danger, but have not yet found refuge. You feel the disease, but have not yet applied the remedy. You know that you are still in the "broad way," but would fain discover and enter upon "the narrow way that leadeth to life." And now, in addressing myself to your case, let me say that yours is a reasonable anxiety. You do well to be anxious. Your concern is the highest wisdom. Is the merchant anxious when his richly-freighted vessel is on the stormy sea? Is the mother anxious when her child is at the crisis of some fearful disease, and life is in the balance? Is the criminal at the bar anxious when his case is being tried, and all the evidence is going against him? But the anxiety of the merchant, the mother, and the criminal are not a thousanth part so reasonable as yours, when you consider what mo 20 ANXIETY OF MIND REASONABLE. mentous interests you have at stake. For look around you and consider what is your present state--look behind you and consider what has been your past-look before you and ponder upon what may be your future, and there is reason enough for your most earnest thought and anxiety. Let me point out to you in the next few pages some considerations adapted to your present state of mind, and fitted by God's blessing, to deepen and direct your anxiety. And may God bless these pages to your soul, leading you to seek peace and safety where they are to be found, in JESUS ONLY. Rock of ages cleft for me, Save from wrath, and make me pure. A Time to Die! DEAR READER,-There are many reasons to justify your anxious inquiry about your future well-being. The wonder is, not that you are now so anxious, but that you have lived so long without being so; yea, the wonder is that all men do not feel the same intense concern about their everlasting future that you now feel. You do well to be anxious, for remember YOU ARE MORTAL! You are destined to decay. nal curse upon man's sin. unto men once to die." It is the origi "It is appointed Your bodies are of dust. Thy have in them the very elements of dissolution. "Dust to dust " is inscribed on the fairest forehead. No fact is so certain, and none so solemn as this. Again, you belong to a dying race. "One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh." Neither affection nor piety can retain those who, being of mortal mould, are destined to pass away from the stage of 22 A TIME TO DIE. life into the world unseen. "Your fathers, where are they? And the prophets, do they live forever?" You are the marked victims of the King of Terrors. You are appointed to die. The fact of your death, the time of your death, the manner of your death, the place of your death, are all as much appointed as the fact, the time, the place of your birth, and the bounds of your present habitation. The place that now knows you will know you no more for ever. Your name will but live in memory; you yourself will have passed away. Then your anxiety about the world beyond death is reasonable. It is the highest wisdom. And the more so when you remember that death which is certain as to the fact of it, is to you uncertain as to the time of it. You must die some time. You may die at any time. You may die soon; you may suddenly. This year thou mayest die; yea, this night thy soul may be required of thee. And with these solemn facts before you, do you not well to be anxious? Do you not well to inquire how you may die safely, how you may be saved? Were you expecting to be summoned away suddenly and soon die A TIME TO DIE. 23 to spend the rest of your days in some foreign land, would you not often think about it; and would not the thought that soon you would quit your country excite peculiar reflections, and beget a different estimate of things around you here? How much more should you be excited to serious reflection when you remember that soon you will be called to quit earth for ever! Day of Judgment, day of wonders, Will the sinner's heart confound! See the Judge our nature wearing, You who long for his appearing, Own me in that day for thine. |