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The Saints' Everlasting Rest - Richard Baxter

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do a little where Christ hath done so much? Consider what fit objects of pity<br />

ungodly people are. <strong>The</strong>y are dead in trespasses and sins, have not hearts to<br />

feel their miseries, nor to pity themselves. If others do not pity them, they<br />

will have no pity; for it is the nature of their disease to make them pitiless to<br />

themselves, yea, their own most cruel destroyers. Consider, it was once thy<br />

own case. It was God's argument to the Israelites, to be kind to strangers,<br />

because they themselves had been "strangers in the land of Egypt." So should<br />

you pity them that are strangers to Christ, and to the hopes and comforts of<br />

the saints, because you were once strangers to them yourselves Consider<br />

your relation to them. It is thy neighbor, thy brother, whom thou art bound to<br />

love as thyself. He that loveth not his brother, whom he seeth daily, doth not<br />

love God, whom he never saw. And doth he love his brother that will see<br />

him go to hell, and never hinder him?<br />

Consider what a load of guilt this neglect lays upon thy own soul. Thou<br />

art guilty of the murder and damnation of all those souls whom thou dost<br />

thus neglect and of every sin they now commit, and of all the dishonor done<br />

to God thereby; and of all these judgments which their sins bring upon the<br />

town or country where they live. Consider what it will be to look upon your<br />

poor friends in eternal flames, and to think that your neglect was a great<br />

cause of it. If you should there perish with them, it would be no small<br />

aggravation of your torment. If you be in heaven, it would surely be a sad<br />

thought, were it possible that any sorrow could dwell there, to hear a<br />

multitude of poor souls cry out, for ever,"O, if you would but have told me<br />

plainly of my sin and danger, and set it home, I might have escaped all this<br />

torment, and be now in rest!" What a sad voice will this be! Consider what a<br />

joy it will be in heaven, to meet those there whom you have been the means<br />

to bring thither; to see their faces, and join with them for ever in the praises<br />

of God, whom you were the happy instruments of bringing to the knowledge<br />

and obedience of Jesus Christ! Consider how many souls you may have<br />

drawn into the way of damnation, or hardened in it. We have had, in the days<br />

of our ignorance, our companions in sin, whom we enticed or encouraged.<br />

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