The Contenders

I just read the famous Edwards sermon on “The Preciousness of Time.”. You can read the whole thing here. Please take a moment to read it. It would not be a waste of your time. Here are a few excerpts from the sermon just as an appetizer for you:

“First. That you are accountable to God for your time. Time is a talent given us of God. He hath set us our day, and it is not for nothing our day was appointed for some work. And doubtless, therefore, he will call us to account at the day’s end; we must give him an account of our improvement of all our time. We are God’s servants; and as a servant is accountable to his master, how he has spent his time when he has sent him forth to work, so we are accountable to God. Our time is God’s much more than a servant’s time is his master’s. If men might consider this, and kept it in mind, would not they improve their time otherwise than they do?”

“The devil makes fools of ‘em. For when they are young, he tells them there is time enough hereafter; there is no need of being in haste; it will be better seeking salvation afterwards. And then they believe him. And then afterwards, when their youth is past, he tells them that now they have lost so much time, and the best of their time, now ‘tis not worth their while to pretend to do anything. And they believe him now, too. So that no time is a good time with them. The time of youth is not a good time, for that is most fit for pleasure and mirth, and there will be time enough afterwards. And the time that there is afterwards, when that comes, is not a good time. It won’t do, because the best of their time is gone. Thus are men befooled and ruined.”

“There is no necessity of your spending such times in idleness, because you have no worldly business to do. Therefore don’t spend such times unprofitably, and so as you can give no good account thereof to God. Don’t waste away these long winter evenings wholly in idle, unprofitable talk by your own or your neighbor’s firesides, nor in useless diversions and amusements.”

Jonathan Edwards

 
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