Part 428

_Direct._ IV. Consider on the contrary how sad the review of ill-spent time is, and how you will wish you had spent it when it is gone. Hast thou now any comfort in looking back on thy despised hours? I will not so far wrong thy understanding, as to question whether thou know that thou must die. But thy sin alloweth me to ask thee, whether at thy dying hour it will be any comfort to thee to remember thy pastimes? And whether it will then better please thee, to find upon thy account, so many hours spent in doing good to others, and so many in prayer, and studying the Scriptures and thy heart, and in preparing for death and the life to come; so many in thy calling obediently managed in order to eternity? or to hear, so many hours spent in idleness, and so many in needless sports and plays, hawking and hunting, courting and wantonness; and so many in gathering and providing for the flesh, and so many in satisfying its greedy lusts? Which reckoning doth thy conscience think would be most comfortable to thee at the last? I put it to thy own conscience, if thou wert to die to-morrow, how thou wouldst spend this present day? Wouldst thou spend it in idleness and vain pastimes? Or if thou wert to die this day, where wouldst thou be found, and about what exercises? Hadst thou rather death found thee in a play-house, a gaming-house, an alehouse, in thy fleshly jollity and pleasure? or in a holy walking with thy God, and serious preparing for the life to come? Perhaps you will say, that, if you had but a day to live, you would lay by the labours of your calling, and yet that doth not prove them sinful. But, I answer, there is a great difference between an evil, and a small, unseasonable good. If death found thee in thy honest calling, holily managed, conscience would not trouble thee for it as a sin: and if thou rather choose to die in prayer, it is but to choose a greater duty in its season: but sure thou wouldst be loth on another account to be found in thy time-wasting pleasures! And conscience, if thou have a conscience, would make thee dread it as a sin. Thou wilt not wish at death that thou hadst never laboured in thy lawful calling, though thou wouldst be found in a more seasonable work; but thou wilt wish then, if thou understand thyself, that thou hadst never lost one minute's time, and never known those sinful vanities and temptations which did occasion it. O spend thy time as thou wouldst review it!