must know that not only does our eternal destiny depend on a single moment, but also it is quite uncertain when that moment will come. Any minute of our lives may be the last. Therefore I will not be satisfied with merely exhorting you and myself, as I have hitherto done, to make straight the way of the Lord; but I say, moreover, “be prepared;” let us always be ready to die.
Plan of Discourse.
It is unknown and uncertain when the Lord will come to call us away by a death that will occur but once; therefore, etc. Continues as above.
SEVENTH SERMON.
THAT DEATH WILL COME UNEXPECTEDLY.
Subject.
We shall die when we least expect it.—Preached on the twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost.
Text.
Ut sitis sinceri, et sine offensain diem Christi; repleti fructu justitiæ.—Philipp. i. 10, 11. (From to-day’s Epistle).
“That you may be sincere and without offence unto the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of justice.”
Introduction.
The holy Apostle has left us a beautiful exhortation in those words: “This I pray, that your charity may more and more abound in knowledge and in all understanding.”[1] To what end? “That you may be sincere and without offence unto the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of justice.” “Unto the day of Christ;” that is, the day when Our Lord will come to take us from this world by death; and the meaning of the Apostle is, that we should now, during life, gather the fruits of justice, so that the day of our death, the day of the coming of the Lord, may find us filled with them. My dear brethren, it is infallibly certain
- ↑ Hoc oro, ut charitas vestra magis ac magis abundet in scientia, et in omni sensu.—Philipp. i. 9.
