Page:Thinkwellonit.pdf/78

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only time we can call our own; and God only knows how long it will be so. It is short, it flies away in an instant, and when once it is gone, it cannot be recalled: the very moment in which we are reading this line is just passing, never, never more to return. Every hour is posting away, without stopping one moment, till it be swallowed up in the immense gulf of eternity: and as many of these hours or moments as are lost, are lost for ever; the loss is irreparable. Learn hence, O my soul, to set a just value upon thy present time; learn to husband it well, by employing it in good works.

2. Consider, Christian soul, what thy thoughts will be, at the approach of death, of the value of this time, which thou makest so little of at present. What wouldst thou not then give for some of those hours, which thou losest now in vanity and sin? Ah! the dreadful anguish that will rack the soul of the dying sinner, when, seeing himself at the brink of a miserable eternity, he shall wish a thousand times, but all in vain, that he could but call back one day, or even one hour of this time past, and had but the same health and strength as he formerly had, to employ it in the love of God and sincere repentance for his sins. Ah! worldlings, why will you then be so blind as not to see, that any one of these hours which you daily squander away, is indeed more valuable than ten thousand worlds!

3. Consider what will be the sentiments of the damned in hell of the value of time, when time shall be no more: how bitterly will they regret for all eternity all those hours, days, months and years, which were allowed them by the bounty of their Creator, during the space of their mortal life; by the due employment of which, they might have prevented that misery, to which they are now irrevocably condemned;