For Preparation for Death
“Prepare to raeet thy God.” — Amos i’^. 12.
O ETERNAL, evei’lasting God — Author of my being — my continual, unwearied Benefactor — I desire to come anew this moruinoj into Thy presence, thanking Thee for Thy sparing mercies. Instead of making my last night’s pillow a pillow of death, I am again among the living to praise Thee. O that I were enabled to live every day, and to rise every morning, as if it were to be my last, as if my next waking were to be in the morning of immortality!
Lord, how little am I influenced and impressed by the solemn records of death all
around me. Friend after friend is departing no THE MOENING WATCHES.
—the circle of acquaintance is narrowed. The proclamation is ever sounding with fresh emphasis in mj ears, “Be ye also ready;” and yet how prone to disregard the solemn monitions! how apt to peril my preparation on the peradventures of a dying hour! Blessed God, my prayer is, that I may have my loins girded, and my lamp burning. Let me not wait to have my vessel replenished till the voice of the Bridegroom be heard, and I am summoned to meet Him. May I now so repose my every confidence in Jesus, that death may be disarmed of its sting, — that the hour which to the unwary and unwatchful is one of darkness and terror, may be to me the eve of the blessed Sabbath of eternity — the threshold and the portal of a world of endless joy.
Lord, give me to feel that “the sting of death is sin” — that, not till I get the blessed sense of all my sins cancelled and forgiven in the blood of the Surety, can I be ready for my departure. “To me to live may it be Christ,”
FOR PREPARATION FOR DEATH. Ill
that SO “to die” may be great and eternal “gain.” Let me be enabled, by faith in death’s great Conqueror, to cultivate that holy familiarity with a dying hour, that I may be enabled, when it comes, to fall sweetly “asleep in Jesus,” and to hear His voice of love saying, “It is I, be not afraid.”
Look in mercy on the multitudes who are content to live on, unmeet and unprepared for their great change. Awaken them to a sense of their guilt and peril. Show them their affecting need of Jesus — that time is wasting and eternity is hasting — that, “as the tree falleth, so must it lie.”
I pray for the heathen who are perishing for lack of knowledge. Countenance and bless all the efforts of Thy Church to disseminate among them the gospel of the grace of God. May Thy missionary servants, who have gone with their lives in their hands to the dark places of the earth, experience a peace which the world knows not of. May they have many souls as their glory and joy and crown at the day of Christ’s appearing.
O give us all grace, in our varied stations and relations in life, to do something for Thee. Let us not bury or hide our talents; but, as members of a ransomed priesthood, may we lay our time, our opportunities, our substance, on Thine altar, and seek to “show forth the praises of Him who hath called us out of darkness into His marvellous light.” And all I ask is for Jesus’ sake. Amen.
CAUSE ME TO HEAR THY LOVING-KINDNESS IN THE MORNING, FOR IN THEE DO I TRUST.”