How are christian parents bound, to watch over the offspring they so tenderly love! Watch they do, with continual anxiety, for the temporal benefit of their children, for all that can minister to their comfort and honour and advancement in life: they rejoice in the joy of their children, and weep when their children weep: but O how infinitely more important is the provision for eternity: earthly ties will soon be broken; how important, that we should provide for a happy renewal of intercourse and love hereafter! Parting now, to meet no more, were enough to break the heart; but the bright prospect of a re-union in paradise consoles and reconciles; forbidding us “to sorrow as those who have no hope.” See then, ye christian parents, to the nurture and training of the “olive branches round about your table;” bestow, upon their spiritual well-being, an especial and exceeding care; that ye may behold them “flourishing in the house of the Lord” above: that, whether ye be taken from them, or they from you, there may be comfort in the parting. See, all christian relatives and friends, by whatever name ye are endeared; see that ye live not in worldly, but heavenly affection: instructing, admonishing, animating one another in the profession of the true faith and the exercise of all godliness; that so your converse and communion may never be embittered by the fear of eternal separation. Lastly, let the truth, here declared by the infallible word of God, check the presumption of the careless and the wicked; and give comfort and encouragement to the faithful. The worldling may fancy, because no great distinction, between him and others, is made upon earth; because he perhaps can see no great reason for such distinction; that, therefore, he shall escape in the end; but in the day when “God will judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ,” {307} when “every one shall receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad,” {308} he will find, that an immeasurable distinction will be made between him “that hath served God, and him that hath served him not;” between him, whose heart has been given to his Creator and Redeemer, and sanctified by the Spirit of grace, and him, who has only made it his object to maintain a decent appearance in the world. If we do believe in the final judgment, if we believe in the perfect truth and justice of the Almighty, we must conclude, that this fearful difference will be made. And if it were so dreadful a calamity, to be left to fall in the tremendous overthrow of Jerusalem, what will it be, to be left an everlasting-prey to the tortures of Satan and of sin?