bountiful Preserver. Besides, you are ever in His hand, ever before His eyes, He surrounds you. And He is great, wise, powerful, holy, and just. His love and favour are heaven; His anger and frowns are hell. +II. Ourselves.+ What are we? What our powers? our capabilities? our end and destination? the claims of God? our duties to others? the improvement we should make of the present? the preparation we should make for the future? Are we answering the end of our being? &c. +III. Our spiritual state before God.+ Is it one of ignorance, or of knowledge? folly, or wisdom? guilt, or pardon? condemnation or acceptance? alienation, or sonship and adoption? safety, or imminent peril? Are we heirs of wrath or perdition, or of God and salvation? +IV. The importance of life.+ Life is the seedtime for eternity, the period of probation, the only opportunity of securing eternal blessedness. How short it is, how fragile, how uncertain! How criminal to waste it, to pervert it! &c. +V. The solemnities of death+ (Deut. xxxii. 29). Consider its certainty, its probable nearness, its truly awful character. Try to realise it. Consider if you were now dying, &c.[2] +VI. The great concerns of eternity.+ The judgment-day. Heaven, with its eternal glories; hell, with its everlasting horrors. Eternity itself, how solemn, how overwhelming! How blissful to the saint! how terrific to the sinner! ETERNITY! +VII. That salvation which will fit us for living, dying, and for eternity.+ Provided by the mercy of God, obtained by the Lord Jesus Christ, revealed in the gospel, offered to every sinner, received by simple faith, and which delivers from guilt, pollution, fear, and everlasting wrath. +VIII. Our present duty and interest.+ Men are supposed to care naturally for these. But their care usually relates merely to the body, and the things of time. Consider whether it is not your _duty_ to obey and serve God; whether it is not your _interest_ (1 Tim. iv. 8). +IX. That there is no substitute for religion+ (Jer. ii. 13). _Application._--Urge consideration upon all present. 1. _Some have never considered._ Now begin. Retire and reflect; weigh and consider these things. 2. _Some have considered occasionally_--in church, or when sick, in the house of bereavement, &c. Cultivate the _habit_ of consideration,[3] and carry into effect the conclusions to which you will inevitably come. 3. _There is hope for all who will consider._ 4. _They are hopeless who will not consider._[4]--_Jabez Burns, D.D., Pulpit Cyclopædia,_ vol. ii. pp. 34-37. FOOTNOTES: