without worldly pleasures, or health, or life, you may have the favour of God and life eternal. But without the one thing needful, you have nothing that is durably or satisfactorily good, but are undone for ever. Without the things of the world, you live in want for a little while, and then you will be equal to the greatest princes. But without this one thing, you must live in endless woe and misery, and be far worse than the basest prisoner in the dungeon, or than the toads and vermin that lie in the most unclean holes or sinks of the earth. And yet dare you delay another day before you make so necessary a change? You have hearts of stone, if your own necessity thus urged upon your consideration will not awake you. If your hearts were not dead within you, while you hear these things, one would think such a necessity should make you feel, and resolve upon a speedy change, and make you stir in the diligent performance. Can you go on in security, in negligence, and worldliness, when you hear of your necessity, that you must change, or you are lost for ever? O stupid souls, that will not be moved with necessity of everlasting consequence! O what hath God, or Christ, or heaven, or holiness done against these men, that will rather lie in hell for ever, than they will live in the love and service of this God, and in the practice of holiness, and in the hopes of heaven! How meet are they for hell, that will venture upon it deliberately and upon choice, to escape the trouble of living in the holy love, delight, and service of the ever blessed God! that is, to escape the trouble of heaven. Is it so great a sin to shut up the bowels of compassion against our brother in his need? And it is not more unnatural to deny compassion to yourselves in your own necessity, and in the greatest necessity? O poor sinners, remember your necessities! Your own, your great, your absolute necessities. When you hear men that gather alms cry, • Remember the poor,' doth it make thee think, What a poor, necessitous soul have I to remember? As Paul saith of preaching to others, I may say much more to you, of minding and practising this great work of your salvation; "Necessity is laid upon you, and woe to you if you do it not;" 1 Cor. ix. 16. Woe to you that ever you were born, and that ever you were reasonable creatures, or rather, that ever you so abused your reason, if you neglect and miss of the one thing necessary.

I know you have other wants to be supplied, and other matters to look after in the world. But alas, how small are they! God will supply all your other wants, if you will first and faithfully look after this; Phil. iv. 19. Matt. vi. 33. 1 Pet. v. 7. Or if life and all go, you will find all in heaven. But if you miss of this one thing, nothing in the world can make supply, or do you good. And though now your feelings tell you not these things, alas how quickly will God make you feel, and teach you by that sensible way that you would needs be taught by!

Awake then, you sluggish, careless souls! Your house over your heads is on a flame! The hand of God is lifted up! If you love yourselves, prevent the stroke. Vengeance is at your backs. The wrath of God pursueth your sin; and woe to you if he find it upon you when he overtaketh you: Away with it speedily. Up and be gone, return to God; make Christ and mercy your friend in time, if you love your lives. The Judge is coming; for all that you have heard of it so long, still you believe it not. You shall shortly see the Majesty of his appearance, and the dreadful glory of his face, and yet do you not begin to look about you, and to make ready for such a day? Yea, before that day, your separated souls shall begin to reap as you have sowed here. Though now the partition that stands between you and the world to come, do keep unbelievers strange to the things that most concerneth them, yet death will quickly find a portal to let you in; and then sinners, you will find such doings there as you little thought of, or at least did sensibly regard on earth. Before your corpse can be wrapped up in your winding-sheets, you will see and feel that which will tell you to the quick, that one thing was necessary. If you do die without this one thing necessary, before your friends can have finished your funerals, your souls will have taken up their places among the devils in endless torment and despair; and all the wealth, and honour, and pleasure, that the world afforded you, will not ease you. This is sad, but it is true, sirs, for God hath spoken it.

Up therefore, and bestir you for the life of your souls! Necessity will awake the sluggard. Necessity, we say, will break stone walls. The proudest will stoop when they perceive necessity. The most slothful will bestir them when

they feel necessity. The most careless will look about them and be industrious in necessity. Necessity is called the tyrant of the world, that can make men do any thing that is possible to be done. And yet cannot necessity make you cast away your sins, and take up a holy and heavenly life? Necessity will make men fare hard, and work hard, and travel hard; go bare, and suffer much; yea it will even cut off a leg or arm to save their lives. And yet can it not prevail with reasonable creatures, to cast away the poison of a fruitless, filthy, deceitful sin, and to be up and doing for their salvation! O poor souls! Is there, think you, a greater necessity of your sin than of your salvation? and of pleasing your flesh for a little time, than of pleasing the Lord, and escaping everlasting misery? I beseech you consider your own necessities.

2. Consider also, that it is but one thing which God hath made necessary for you. And I shewed you before, how that the means themselves, though they are many, have a certain unity in their harmony and connexion, and as they centre in the ultimate end, which is one. If God had sent you upon such a multitude of errands as the flesh and the world doth, and set you on such disagreeing, contrary works, then you had been excusable if you had neglected some of them. But he hath sent you but upon one errand; even to seek and make sure of everlasting life; and therefore if you neglect this one, you are inexcusable. If the world be divided into a thousand opinions, or go a thousand several ways, they may thank themselves, who are the authors of this confusion; but God is no cause of it, or friend to it. He hath made them but one work, and set them but one way to heaven, and given them one Master, Jesus Christ, to teach that way; and written but one law, even his holy Scripture, to be their sure and constant guide. And if men would stick to this one Master, and not make flesh and blood their master, or the multitude their master, or the rulers of the world, or the custom of their forefathers the master of their faith; and if they would stick to this one word of God, and not run after the traditions of men, they would not be in such a maze, nor of so many minds as now they are. But they do in their doctrines as they do in their practice. God hath marked them out but one way in the holy Scripture, which is the good and the sure way, the way that Peter and Paul,

and the rest of the apostles went to heaven in, and this way will not serve men's turns, but will run a hundred ways instead of this one: and they must make new ways which the apostles of Christ were never acquainted with.

If God had loaded your memories with many things you might possibly have said, we cannot remember them all; but he hath set you finally but one thing to remember, even to lay hold on everlasting life, and press on to the crown that is set before you: and he hath an ill memory that cannot remember one thing, and such a thing as this too.

It may be you are ignorant and cannot learn many things; but God hath set you but this one thing to learn as of absolute necessity and he is dull indeed that cannot learn one thing, and such a thing too. If you cannot understand the depths of sciences, nor reach the height of learning that others do attain, yet learn this one thing, to know God in the Redeemer; and if you know this, you know all. Paul was not only contented with this knowledge, but "resolved to know nothing else but Christ and him crucified;" that is, nothing that is wholly alien to this: nothing but what doth keep its due subordination to this, and so may be reduced to the knowledge of Christ; 1 Cor. ii. 2. He would not own any other knowledge as knowledge, but disclaimeth it as ignorance and foolishness, though it seemed wisdom in the eyes of the world: chap. iii. 19. This seeming knowledge and wisdom of the world, that is totally disjunct from Christ, is part of the all that we must sell to buy the pearl, if we will obtain it; Matt. xiii. 46. And part of the "all things" which Paul accounted dung and loss, that he might "win Christ and be found in him;" Phil. iii. 7-10. For they that know not this one thing, know nothing, whatsoever they may seem to know: and they that would go beyond the knowledge of Christ, and think it too low for them, and trouble their brains and the church with their speculations, they do not know indeed, but dream. And if they would see their faces in the glass of Scripture, 1 Tim. vi.4. "They are proud, knowing nothing, but doating about questions and strifes of words; whence cometh envy, railing, evil surmisings, perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the truth."

Moreover, if your strength be so small that it will not

suffice for every thing, at least you should lay it out on this one thing.

Your time, I know, is small, your lives are short, and therefore you may say, We have not time for many things; but when you have but one thing given you to do, that must be done, you may sure find time for this, for which you have your time.

If you set your servant to work, and bid him be sure to do one thing, whatever else he do, you will not take it well if that one shall be neglected. If you send him on an errand, and bid him be sure to remember one thing whatsoever he forget, you will not take it well if he forget that one. If you trust him but with one thing, and bid him be sure to keep that one, you will not take it well if that be lost; especially if he wilfully throw it away.

O consider whether this be not your case. God hath sent you into this world but on one errand, even to make sure of everlasting life, and will you neglect that one? He hath trusted you with one thing, and will you cast away that one? He hath given you one lesson to learn, even to please him and to save your souls, and will you not learn and remember that one. If you had forgot your food and raiment, or forgot the houses you dwell in, it had been a small matter in comparison; but to forget that one work that must be done, that one friend that you must always trust to, that one place that you must live in for ever, this is most unreasonable; and when you have recovered your understandings, you shall confess it to be so.

3. Consider further, that this one thing is that good part: you see it is here called so. "Mary hath chosen that good part-." Other things seem good to sense, and to perverted reason that is blinded by sense; but this is it that seemeth good to reason illuminated by the spirit of faith. Other things seem good for a while, but this is that good that will still be good.

I may not only say, that the good of other things is small in comparison of this, but that it is nothing at all, but as it is related unto this. This is that good that makes all things else good that are good. As they come from God, and reveal God to us, and lead us up to God, and are means to this eternal life, so they are good; but otherwise there is no goodness in them.