Page:Profit and loss, or, The Christian merchant.pdf/8

 their point. They will have their reward. If they do not gain the whole world, they may gain a great deal more than enough for the gratification of every carnal desire; so far as such desires can be gratified. But after all, where is the profit when God shall require their souls at their hand? That may be very speedily. It will be at an hour when they think not. It may be this very night—this very hour. Reader, suppose this to be your case; then what profit is there in all your wealth? What, then, could the world do for you, though it were all your own? Your soul is lost,—then all is lost, and lost for ever.

Think of these things ere it be too late. "You cannot serve God and Mammon.” If Mammon be your choice, of course you will serve him, and, while you satisfy your conscience with external forms of religion, you will renounce the service of the true God. But can Mammon save you? When you call upon him in the time of trouble, will he answer you? In the hour of death, will he help you, or eave your soul? You know that he will not,—that he cannot, for he is no God; he has no power, he has no existence but in your own covetous heart and deluded imagination. But the true God has all power in heaven and on earth: that God, whose service you disown, whose law you have broken, and whose gospel you reject, as unworthy of your regard amidst, what appear to you, more important matters: he is able to save and to destroy: to save you, if you come to him by Jesus Christ ere it be too late: but if you allow the day of mercy to pass away, he will destroy you with an everlasting destruction “Now is the accepted time; now is the day of salvation.”

These things are not addressed to those only