Since, then, there will be a certain and swiftly approaching interview between God and sinners, at the solemn hour of death; and a more awful and decisive one, at the general assize: O how deeply incumbent it is upon all, to prepare for both! But, are you ready? Should death call, or God-Messiah descend to judgment; would you be found in circumstances of security and preparation? Ask your _hearts_. Are there no guilty misgivings there? Ask your _lives_. Are they such as correspond with the temper of persons, looking out for, and hastening unto, the coming of the day of God? Ask _conscience_. Sprinkled from the evil of guilt by the blood of Christ, does it witness to your salvation? or loaded with sin, and fraught with pollution, does it proclaim you the subject of misery, and the heir of hell, and bear a loud testimony to your condemnation? Ask the _word of God_. Will your hearts and lives bear to be tried by that touchstone of truth? If you profess Christianity; are you _Bible_ Christians? If you think you are sound in the truth; will you bear to be probed? If you shrink from this examination; is there not cause to fear, that there is some latent sore you wish to conceal? some morbid part, you are unwilling to be touched even with a gentle hand, though it is festering deep, and spreading wide, and threatens death everlasting? You may _think_ you _are prepared_, when you _are not_. The thought, in such a case, arises from a spiritual mortification, that deadens the conscience, and deprives it of feeling. And a supposition of safety, where there is no scriptural ground to warrant it, is only the reverie of a sick man, or the chimera of one that dreameth. That you may not be deceived, or flattered, in a point of such vast moment; let us now consider, 2. What kind of _preparation_ it is incumbent upon sinners to make, in the prospect of an interview with God at death, and in the day of judgment.