2. This watching consisteth in preparation. If we expect a thing to come, and do not prepare accordingly, we do not watch for it but neglect it. Now this preparation must be speedy, thorough, and con- stant.
[1.] Watching implieth a speedy preparation. That we may be in a nt capacity to receive Christ at his coming, we must take the next
VER. 13.] SERMONS UPON MATTHEW XXV. 419
advantage, lest we be surprised and called home before we are ready. This is not a work to be put off to age or sickness. Why should we provide a burden for that time when we are weakest and least able to bear it ? And therefore now we should begin it. Every day brings burden enough for itself. He is an unthrifty tenant that suffers the rent of one year to run into another : how shall that crop discharge two years' rent that cannot pay one ? If it be tedious now to turn to God, it will be more tedious when thou art hardened in sin, and thy neglects of God and Christ will provoke him to deny his grace. And what assurance have we of another year ? We have this by the favour of pro- vidence. Our life was forfeited and lost in law the first moment, and therefore we have but a reprieve during pleasure. What warrant have I to expect another day but my own hope and fancy ? He that is security for himself to himself is no whit the better secured ; he doth but take the word of a spendthrift. If we had a. lease of our lives, yet what hope of grace ? when we have resisted the Spirit of God all our lives, what hope that he should assist us at death ? We do but pro- vide matter of despair to ourselves ; every day will prove worse and worse. A traveller may easily pass over the head of a brook, but when he goeth down, thinking to find it narrower, it is so broad that he can- not pass at all. Every delay brings on a new degree of hardness of heart on our part, and a new desertion on God's part. Now how wilt thou untwist the former web which thou hast been so long a- weaving ? That soul must needs be in perplexity at the hour of death that seeth the day spent and the business appointed to him not yet begun, and a disease disabling him for any serious reflections ; as if a traveller seeth the sun setting when he is entering upon his journey ■ the evening of the day and the morning of the task do not well agree together. All the time that remaineth is too short to lament the lost time already past. Therefore, if watching inferreth preparation, it inferreth speedy preparation ; and a man is not in a good condition to live that is not fit to die.
[2.] It must be a serious and thorough preparation, such as will serve the turn, and be accepted by Christ at his coming. The whole design of this parable is to caution us against the shallowness and slightness of the work of grace upon our hearts. Heathens have a con- science (as Felix trembled) ; much more Christians. Men may see and have a taste of sin's bitterness, and have a longing mind after Christ, but the life of grace is not begun in them ; they do not ' awake to righteousness/ 1 Cor. xv. 34. We should often think what is required in order to that day, and what the scripture maketh our readiness to consist in. Eepentance and actual conversion to God, this is pressed upon us, Acts iii. 19, ' Eepent, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshment shall come from the pre- sence of the Lord.' Eepentance is the soul's return to God in love. And Acts xvii. 30, 31, ' Now he commandeth all men to repent, because he hath appointed a day in which he will judge the world- in righteousness.' That day is kept off that we might have time to repent, 2 Peter iii. 9. So faith in Christ, that will unite us to him, or a hearty taking him for our Lord and Saviour : Eom. viii. 1, ' There is no condemnation to them that are in Christ ;' Phil. iii. 9, ' Pound
420 SERMONS UPON MATTHEW XXV. [SER. X.
in liim ;' 1 John ii. 28, ' And now, little children, abide in him ; that when he shall appear you may have confidence, and not he ashamed before him at his coming.' We must be in Christ, and abide in Christ. To abide in Christ is to persevere in our adhering to him as our Lord and Saviour, in the profession of his name, observation of his precepts, recumbency on his merits, imitation of his graces, com- munion with his person. Certainly he will not cast off those who are members of his mystical body, and abide in him by faith, nor condemn those whom he hath redeemed and washed in his blood, and sanctified by his Spirit. This is our preparation ; yea, the scripture doth not only look to our hearts, but to our lives, James ii. 1, 2.