“O, if you have the hearts of Christians, let them yearn toward your poor ignorant ungodly neighbors. Alas, there is but a step betwixt them and death and hell. Many hundred diseases are waiting ready to seize on them, and if they die unregenerate, they are lost forever.
Have you hearts of rock that cannot pity men in such a case as this? If you believe not the Word of God and the danger of sinners, why are you Christians yourselves? If you do believe it, why do you not bestir yourself to the helping of others?
Do you not care who is damned as long as you are saved? If so, you have sufficient cause to pity yourselves, for it is a frame of spirit utterly inconsistent with grace.
Dost thou live close by them…or meet them in the streets…or labor with them…or travel with them…or sit and talk with them and say nothing to them of their souls or the life to come?
If their houses were on fire, thou wouldst run and help them and wilt thou not help them when their souls are almost at the fire of hell?”
Richard Baxter
November 12, 1615 – December 8, 1691
