And is there any such thing to be hoped for on earth? Will health or wealth, will the highest places or the greatest pleasures, make men happy? You know it will not. Or if it would, the happiness would be so short, as maketh it little worthy of our regard. Have you not seen an end of all perfection? Have you not observed and tried what a deluding dream, and shadow of felicity, the world puts off its followers with? How they act their parts as players on a stage; and they that in a dream, or mask, did yesterday seem princes, lords, or conquerors, to-day are buried in a darksome grave! And they that yesterday seemed great and rich, to-day have no more of their furniture, or possessions, than a coffin and a winding-sheet, and a place to hide their loathsome flesh! And they that yesterday were merry, and jovial, and in health, and honour, to-day lie groaning in painful misery, are leaving their dear-bought, beloved riches, never to be delightful to them any more. How little doth it concern them, that must dwell in heaven or hell for ever, whether they live in wealth or poverty, in honour or shame, in a palace or a cottage, in pain or pleasure, for so short a time as this transitory life, which is almost at an end as soon as it is begun! How many millions of dying parents have cried out of the world as vanity and vexation! and yet their besotted posterity admire it, and through the love of it lose their souls and everlasting hopes! They boast or rejoice in the multitude of their riches, as if their houses would continue for ever; though in their honour they abide not, but are like the beasts that perish, and death feedeth on them, when like sheep they are laid in the grave; and though this their way is their folly, yet their posterity approve their sayings, and follow them by the same sin to the same perdition, Psal. xlix. 6, 7, 10-14, 17, 19, 20. And is this a world for a holy soul to be in love with? Hath it merited our affections? Doth it love us so much, or use us so well, that we should be loth to leave it? John xv. 18-20. As it loved our Lord, it will love his followers: as it used him, it will use us, if he restrain it not. Is a blinded, bedlam world, a malicious, cruel, and ungodly world, a false, perfidious, deceitful world, a place for a saint to be loth to leave? O blessed be that love, that blood, that grace, which hath provided better for us! And shall we be unwilling to go to so sweet a feast? and to partake of a happiness which cost so dear?[151]
Come on then, dear friend, and faint not at the last; and fear not to encounter with the king of fears! It is the last enemy, and it is a conquered enemy! Conquer this, and you have no more to conquer. Lift up your head, and look to your victorious, reigning Lord; gird up the loins of your mind, and let faith and patience hold out yet a little while, and play well this last part, and all is your own.[152]