china - Permit me, then, to address you as dying persons

You may have noticed that a full 5 of my last 10 posts have been basically direct quotes from church fathers of of the last few centuries. I have done this not only because I have been busy, with little time to write myself, but because these guys were so smart and wrote such godly, Biblical stuff.

We would do well to study their words and lives, because these are true heroes who have "fought the good fight... finished the course (and) have kept the faith".

Today's quote is from Charles Simeon of Cambridge (click on his name to visit a great page about the man):

"Permit me, then, to address you as dying persons, and to ask what you will think of these things when standing on the brink and precipice of eternity?

Now you can speculate, and dispute, and speak with confidence about the justness of your views. Now you can discuss these matters as if it were of little moment what your sentiments are, or what is the ground of your affiance. But if you hold fast any of the foregoing delusions, you will not find them so satisfactory in a dying hour as you now imagine. Doubts will arise in your mind.

Would you but place yourselves where you must all very shortly be, on a dying bed, we should not find it so difficult to convince you that it is better to trust in the righteousness of Christ, which is commensurate with all the demands of law and justice and adequate to the wants of the whole world, than to be trusting in any respect to any poor defective righteousness of your own."