The Saints' Everlasting Rest - Richard Baxter

their servants to their labor! but how seldom do they call them to prayer, or
reading the Scriptures! What hath this world done for its lovers and friends,
that it is so eagerly followed and painfully sought after, while Christ and
heaven are neglected? or what will the world do for them for the time to
come? The common entrance into it is through anguish and sorrow. The
passage through it is with continual care and labor. The passage out of it is
the sharpest of all. O unreasonable, deluded men! will mirth and pleasure
stay by you? will gold and worldly glory prove fast friends to you in the time
of your greatest need? Will they hear your cries in the day of your calamity?
At the hour of your death will they either answer or relieve you? Will they
go along with you to the other world, and bribe the Judge and bring you off
clear, or purchase you a place among the blessed? Why then did the rich man
want "a drop of water to cool his tongue?" Or are the sweet morsels of
present delight and honor of more worth than eternal rest? And will they
recompense the loss of that enduring treasure? Can there be the least hope of
any of these? Ah, vile, deceitful world! how oft have we heard thy most
faithful servants at last complaining, "O, the world hath deceived me, and
undone me! It flattered me in my prosperity, but now it turns me off in my
necessity. If I had as faithfully served Christ as I have served it, he would not
have left me thus comfortless and hopeless." Thus they complain; and yet
succeeding sinners will take no warning.
As for the profane multitude, they will not be persuaded to be at so
much pains for salvation as to perform the common outward duties of
religion. If they have the Gospel preached in the town where they dwell, it
may be they will give the hearing to it one part of the day, and stay at home
the other; or if the master come to the congregation, yet part of his family
must stay at home. If they have not the plain and powerful preaching of the
Gospel, how few are there in a whole town who will travel a mile or two to
hear abroad though they will go many miles to the market for provisions for
their bodies! They know the Scripture is the law of God, by which they must
be acquitted or condemned in the judgment; and that "the man is blessed who
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