onviction, that it cannot be a good future to them.
They have read enough about it from the Bible to make it alarming. At
all events, they have no security for its being to them as happy as
the present; and so, whether from a fearful looking for of judgment,
because of their sins, or from ignorance of the means of salvation,
or from unbelief in the good-will of God as ready to save them, the
result is, that they voluntarily shut their eyes to, and banish all
thought of, eternity. It pains them--it agonises them--to put the
question, "What is to become of me when I die?" And the more pain the
question gives them, the more they fly to the world, and occupy their
minds with its society, its amusements, and even its dissipation and
debaucheries, in order to banish care and snatch a fleeting joy. O my
brother, if you so act, from my soul I feel for you and pity you! For
the sick-bed is coming, and you may be compelled to think there; and
if so, you are treasuring up tenfold agony for yourself, by your
present off-putting apathy and wilful thoughtlessness. And should
you manage, even in the time of sickness, and up to the very hour
of death, to shut out the future from your mind; should long and
inveterate habit enable you to succeed in the terrible, suicidal
experiment, so that you shall die as you have lived--fearing nothing,
because believing nothing,--can you avoid entering the other world?
Can you prevent a meeting between yourself and your God; or silence an
accusing conscience for ever; or hinder Christ from coming to judge
the world; or fly from the judgment-seat, and by any possibility delay
or prevent a minute examination of your life; or stay the sentence
which the omniscient and holy Judge shall pronounce upon you? And if
you cannot do this,--and if, rather, every power, faculty, and emotion
of your heart and soul must one day be roused to the intensest pitch
of earnestness about your eternal destiny,--do you not think it wise,
my brother, to think about all this now?--_now_, when there is a
remedy, rather than _then_, when there is none?

This suggests another reason why possibly you hate to think about the
future. Not only are you conscious of want of any preparedness for it,
but you do not see how it can be much better with you. You have, in a
word, lost confidence in God--have no faith in His good-will to _you_.
You think of Him--if you think of Him at all--as one who watches you
with a jealous or angry eye; w