BELOVED, I am, without a compliment, the devoted servant of your soul’s prosperity: may the Lord Jesus be set up in your hearts: may his name ever live in you, and I have what I ask. If this work be not promoted among you, I shall account all my pains but lost labour. Brethren, I beseech you that none of you live to yourselves, for this were directly to cross the end of Christ’s death; for therefore he died that you should not live to yourselves. O live to him that died for you! Live to him that is the God of your life! Live to him that bought your lives with his own! To him that bought you from destruction, and not only so, but bought you the eternal inheritance. Will a man be easily persuaded to lose his life? How infinitely tender are men here! And yet the most of men do lose their lives, yea, lose them for nothing. *Beloved, consider, I beseech you, that life is lost, that is not lived unto God. If you would not lose your lives that you live, live to him who is the end of your lives. Oh remember this, and reckon that day lost which you have not lived unto God! Brethren, how great a part of our lives have we lost? I beseech you take heed; you are careful about many things; but beware that other things do not put out this, the spending your days and strength for him that made you. Would it not be dreadful for a man to find at last when he comes to his account with God, that his whole life, or at least the main of it had been but damnable self-seeking? That a man should have so many years allowed him by God, and he should at last be found to have been a wicked servant, that had set up for himself with his master’s stock, and alienated his goods? Well, that you may throughly learn the grand lesson of living to God, take these counsels: *First, _Settle it in your heart that it is the sum of all your business and blessedness to live unto God_: ’tis your _business_, for his pleasure you are and were created: what have you to do but to serve your Maker in your general and particular callings! Beloved, what else have you strength for, but for God? Doth he maintain servants, and shall he not look for their work? Would you endure it, that the servants you find with meat and wages should set up for themselves? Beloved, God’s service is your business, and he made you and keeps you for no other end. And it is your blessedness too. Labour to be under the rooted conviction of this, that your happiness lies in pleasing and honouring God. Let the sense of this live fresh upon your hearts, and it will regulate your whole course.