The Middle Class

 2. The middle class.

I would apply myself to those that possess a greater measure of this world’s goods, and are in higher circumstances in the world.

If you are more regarded than some of your neighbours and have greater respect shewn you, if your words are looked upon as of greater weight than theirs, yet if you are in a natural state, you are contemptible in God’s eyes... If you have more land than some of your neighbours, a larger stock, and more comfortable and plentiful accommodations, yet none of those things can make you any other than a miserable creature if you are not of Christ... If you had the favour of God with your worldly enjoyments, they might well be sweet to you, you might eat your meal with gladness; but instead of that, you eat and drink under the wrath of God, you lie down and rise up under His wrath. When you look upon your buildings, your cattle, your stores that you have laid up, you may consider that brimstone is scattered upon them all.

When you sit down at a full table, yet there is God’s bow bent, His arrows ready, the dart pointing at your heart all the while you are satisfying your appetite. You eat and drink, and sleep and walk, and march over this part of hell, in slippery places. The ground you are upon is not solid ground, but is as it were hollow ground, and there is the dreadful pit of hell underneath. The covering is very thin and weak, men are continually dropping through into the pit, and lost irrecoverably; but one in many escapes, and you are in danger every moment.

Men are apt to rely much on their worldly possessions and advantages, and to be much pleased to be themselves so much higher in the world than others, and to be greatly taken with it that they have so much more than they... Men’s worldly possessions and worldly honour with which they are so taken very commonly prove their undoing; setting their hearts so much upon them occasions them to neglect God, and so they have their portion in this life, and then they have enjoyed all that comfort that they have to enjoy in those things, they have ruined their soul’s salvation, there remains nothing else for them.

If you continue in a Christless condition, all that you have in the world will prove only to have fatted you for the slaughter, and ripened you for the wine press... And though now you sit forward in the meeting house, and have a higher seat than your poor, inferiour neighbours, yet hereafter you shall be set in a lower place in hell than those wicked men ho now sit behind you in the meeting house. Therefore now hearken to the calls brought you from God, do not let your worldly possessions be a weight to hinder you.

Therefore do not make excuse, and go away, one to his farm and another to his merchandize; but go and sell all that you have, and buy the pearl of great price... As to the world, you have already a considerable measure of it; but as to the good things of another, if you that are in a Christless condition have nothing of them, you have no part in the good of God’s chosen in the inheritance of Gods children. How many earthly things soever you have, you have not Christ, and so are aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenant of promise, having no hope, and are without God in the world, and therefore are miserably poor, and have nothing of your precious an immortal souls.

Now God is opening His grand treasure among us, His treasure of spiritual blessings; He has been letting open a fountain for the supply of the wants of poor souls. Therefore now improve your time, and put in for a share that you may not continue famishing, and perish in the midst of plenty.

Sermon