A Door Unto Everlasting Life
A Door Unto Everlasting Life, Containing Several Arguments For Leaving Sin and Living Holily
by Andrew Gray (1634—1656)
Reader, I have always thought that good books (being silent teachers of goodness) are the best part of a man's furniture in his house, and the choicest goods of a country. Yet, many are so far from reading them, that they revile them, and employ their wicked wits in jeering whatever tends to make them wise to salvation. The profaneness and corruption of this present age is too visible. Many who bear the Name of Christ are enemies of the cross of Christ, and of the power of Christianity. They are even sunk below beasts in enormous sensuality, and whoever does not approve of, yes, and practice such detestable wickedness, such beastly and satanical sins as they do; whoever is not metamorphosed into a devil incarnate, is reproached by them as a devilish hypocrite.
With such, this plain piece will find no cordial respect, no practical entertainment; it will be as an unsavory breath in their nostrils. Yet if you are serious and solicitous for savory and wholesome truths; if to have the kingdom of Christ set up in your heart and life be what you do breathe after; if you be really sick of sin and sick of love for Him who is altogether lovely; if you be one of Zion's mourners, one whose heart is shaken with devils, scruples, and fears concerning the condition of your soul; if you be one of Zion's citizens, one whose conversation is in heaven, and would have your heart and affections more elevated, and set upon the things above, I am confident the ensuing treatises will be grateful and welcome to you. The very subject matter of them will allure you to read them, and I question not, but through divine blessing, this little book will be a great blessing unto you. Let not any despise it because it is destitute of those elaborate and rhetorical flourishes with which many pieces are beautified, for the design of it is not to please the fancy, but to profit the soul, and to warm the heart. Sure I am that what profits the soul, and makes a Christian more devout and pious, is to be valued far above what only tickles the fancy of the curious.
Read it therefore, yes, read it seriously. It may be you may find something that may refresh your heart and do your soul good. What human frailties you discern in this small piece (which doubtless are not a few), pity them, and so much the more pray for me that God would pardon and amend all the errors both of my heart and life. Good reader, I shall detain you no longer in the porch, but only beg of you, that when you do begin to read this book, you would at least send up some short petitions to that God from whom all our fruit is found, that by His blessing upon it (without which you may read it often over, and yet profit little or nothing by reading it), it may distill as the precious dew upon the tender herb.
May it make your barren soul more fruitful, your treacherous soul more faithful, your weak soul more powerful, your troubled soul more joyful. It may pour you out a blessing of light for your understanding, a blessing of life for your affections, a blessing of peace for your conscience, and a blessing of joy and gladness for your heart and soul; in the attaining whereof I shall think my pains well bestowed, and my labors abundantly recompensed, especially if you will gratify with your remembrance at the throne of grace, him whose utmost design and ambition is to be serviceable in promoting the eternal interest of souls.
It is a very sad, but yet an apparent truth, that there is no creature in the world so merciless and mischievous to itself as man is. For whereas everything naturally desires, or tends to its own preservation, man unweariedly endeavors his own destruction. He becomes his own murderer and executioner, by loving vice, and hating virtue, by forsaking Christ, to follow the world, by poisoning his soul to please his senses, by leaving the safe and pleasant way of holiness, to walk in the dangerous and destructive way of wickedness. Wicked men turn their backs upon God, and are ruled by sin and Satan at their pleasure. Such profane beasts are many. They glory in their shame. Like Sodom, they carried their sin in their foreheads, oathing it, telling of their cheats, how many they have defrauded, and of their whoredoms, how many they have defiled. Alas, they have not so much as one grain of grace in their hearts, nor the least sign of holiness in their lives. Though, by the ministry of the word, they be called upon to be holy, yet the more they are called unto holiness, the further do they run into all sin and wickedness.
Yes, God's own children make but little progress in holiness. The estate of many is a declining estate. They have lost the savouriness of their spirits, and their delight in communion with God. They are weak in resisting temptations to sin, from the devil, the world, and the flesh. They are often overcome by sensuality, pride, worldliness, envy, etc. Their heart is less watched, their tongue less bridled, and their conversation more vain than formerly. What then more needful, than to have before our eyes such arguments, as are most likely to deter us from sin, to prevail with us to loath and leave all our lusts and transgressions, and to walk humbly and holily before God all our days. May the Lord open our eyes, to see the baseness of sin, and sanctify our hearts, that we may never welcome nor embrace it anymore, but may grow holier every day than the other. So living holily, may we die happily, and after death, reign with God gloriously forever.
In order to realize this, let these following considerations sink into our hearts. We must be holy, because the Lord our God is holy. "You shall be holy—for I the Lord your God am holy" (Lev. 19:2). "It is written, Be holy, for I am holy" (1 Pet. 1:16). God's holiness is the great ground and cause of our holiness, and the motive of all obedience. "Let them praise Your great and awesome Name, for it is holy" (Psalm 99:3). "Exalt the Lord our God, and worship at His holy hill; for the Lord our God is holy" (Psalm 99:9). We are not bound to be essentially and infinitely holy—as God is holy; yet are we bound to be perfectly holy for our state, as God is holy. You call God Father, and if He is your Father indeed, you will be like Him in holiness.
You will both have the same nature for likeness. You read a Holy Bible, serve an holy God, pretend to be led by a Holy Spirit. Oh, what shame and trembling then should cover you, if you be unholy! You pretend to love God, and why are you not an imitator of God? Is it not a known saying, likeness makes love? Likeness is the cause of love, and an effect of it. If you would have God to love you, you must labor to be like Him. If you remain unholy, think with yourself, how can an infinitely holy God delight in such an unholy wretch, in such an unlovely and loathsome soul, in such a vile abominable sinner? How unfit am I for His love and embracements! If unholy, you will not endure the purity and presence of God, nor will God's purity and presence endure you.
We must leave sin and live holily, because to sin is very unsuitable work; and very unbecoming to Christians–
(1) Are we not strangers, and therefore to abstain from whatever is contrary to holiness? "Dearly beloved, I beseech you, as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul" (1 Peter 2:11). We are traveling to an higher country, where pure souls breathe in an uninfected air and are partakers of heavenly visions to the full. Oh, do not by living unholily, belie your great and glorious hopes. "Every man that has this hope in him purifies himself, even as he is pure" (1 John 3:3). Show yourselves to be the true seed of the woman, by flying from the face of the old serpent, and abhorring his image. Strangers must not be meddlers; oh, meddle not with sin, but put off the old man with his deceitful lusts. Trouble not yourselves with anything that will hinder you in your journey heavenward. You expect a room among the angels, and will you live as slaves in the world? You are in the way to Canaan, why then are you in love with the flesh-pots of Egypt? "Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God" (2 Cor. 7:1).
(2) Are not your relative conditions changed? Once you were Satan's slaves, now God's servants. Once in darkness, now children of the light. Once the devil's drudges, now Christ's followers. Are your relative conditions thus changed, and shall not your work be altered? "You are all the children of the light, and the children of the day—we are not of the night, nor of darkness. Therefore, let us not sleep as do others; but let us watch and be sober" (1 Thess. 5:5-6). "As obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance; but as He who has called you is holy, so be you holy in all manner of conversation" (1 Pet. 1:14-15). Is not sin the devil's creature? His old sorceress? And will you have any communion with it? Oh, you children of the Most High!
(3) What does baptism into the name of Christ stand for? Why were you baptized? Was it not for the renunciation of all sin, and the mortification of every lust? "How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein? Know you not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into His death? Therefore we are buried with Him by baptism into death that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life" (Rom. 6:2-4). As God promised on His part to be your God, so you promised to forsake His enemies, to dedicate yourself to His service, to obediently keep God's holy will and commandments, and to walk in the same all the days of your life. Surely it is a most wretched forgetfulness, to forget yourself to be a Christian. Live holily, because the wicked lives of Christians are far more sinful than the wicked lives of pagans and heathens, for—
(1) The sins of pagans are only against natural light; but the sins of Christians, both against natural and supernatural. And to sin, not only against a natural conscience, but an enlightened conscience, is a great aggravation of sin. Was it not an aggravation of Solomon's sin, that "his heart was turned from the Lord God of Israel, who had appeared unto him twice"? (1 Kings 11:9).
(2) The sins of pagans may have fairer excuses than others; they may plead in another sense than the apostle—"How can we call on Him, of whom we have not heard? And how shall we hear without a preacher? The sun, moon, and stars were but silent preachers. Had we, O God, heard the joyful sound, we would have received it gladly. We never knew that your Son was crucified, for had we known it, we would have believed in Him. We would have taken Him for our rightful Sovereign, and obeyed His laws."
But what will you pretend? Can you say, you never heard of heaven and hell? Never heard of faith, repentance, and remission of sins preached? Never heard a strict and circumspect course of life pressed upon you? Did you not know that drunkenness, cursing, etc. were sins? That piety, sobriety, and righteousness was your duty? Why then do you the one, and leave the other undone? Surely, if heathens shall be damned, wicked professing Christians cannot think to be saved.
(3) The sins of heathens bring not so much dishonor to God and Christ, as our sins do. We pretend greater holiness than they, and shall our holiness better than theirs, as if the death and resurrection of Christ was not able to make us live more holily, than the foundation of civility and morality among them? What scandal and reproach this brings to Christ. "The Name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you" (Rom. 2:24). What! Has the gospel no more efficacy than a pagan's ethics, or a Turkish Koran? Devout Salvian brings in the pagans insultingly over the professing Christians, whose lives were not agreeable to their knowledge. Both Christ and His law are scandalized by such professors—behold, this is the common report of pagans concerning them—"Where is this Christian law which they believe? Where are those precepts of piety and chastity which they learn? They read the gospel, and yet are unclean; they hear the apostles, and frequent sermons, and yet are drunkards. They follow Christ, and yet are thieves. They lead a wicked life, and yet boast that they have a righteous law. It is altogether false (say the heathens) that they learn good things, and retain the rules of an holy law, for if these things which they learn were good, they then would be good themselves."
Thus we who would be accounted Christians, do bring our God, our religion, and our profession into contempt, if our lives be not answerable to our knowledge.
I would to God that everyone of us would take this into his consideration, so that, at length, we may be careful to adorn our holy religion with a holy and circumspect life and conversation. The love of God in giving His Son for us, should forcibly overcome us to live holily. "The grace of God, that brings salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world" (Titus 2:11-12). What moved God to give His Son, but His own grace and love? That pure love, that lodged in His bosom from all eternity. "God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son" (John 3:16). If like Gideon, He had had threescore and ten sons, it had still been much to part with one of them. Oh, but it was His only Son.
Jacob tore his clothes, and went mourning many days, for losing one son of twelve (Gen. 37:34). Even a harlot pitied the fruit of her womb (1 Kings 3:26). But God gave the onlySon of His love, and does not this eternal and astonishing love teach us to deny ungodliness? "I denied not", says the Lord, "My Son a suffering body for your sake. I denied not His precious blood. The consolations of the Spirit, and the joys of the higher world—I kept back nothing, but exposed all for your sake. Oh, deny not your sins a sacrifice unto Me, but give them up to be condemned and crucified, and to be nailed to the cross of Christ, that they may languish and give up the spirit. I ask nothing of you that you can not easily deny. It is not your estate, your life, or your little ones I require. Nothing, but what you can well spare; nothing, but what is better parted with than kept. Nothing, but what, if it were never required at your hands, yet were it your wisdom and happiness to reject—even your base, vile, scarlet lusts. That sin may die in you, and you may live to God."
Oh, what will prevail with us to leave sin, and live holily, if love does not? Shall the consideration of death, or heaven, or hell move us? And shall not the consideration of Christ's wonderful love move us much more? "Death is certain," says one. "It may come suddenly, and will come certainly; therefore, I will avoid sin, and serve God." "I care not so much for death", says another. "It is but parting soul and body for a season. Oh, but I fear hell-torments, the worm that never dies, and the fire that never shall be quenched!" "Therefore I will leave sin, and live holily. I hope", says a third, "for the joys of heaven—that I shall live though I die; and that I shall eat and drink at Christ's table in His celestial kingdom. Therefore I will reject the fawning pleasures of sin, that would beguile me of the pleasures of heaven." "Oh, but Christ loved me", says a fourth, "and gave Himself for me, that He might redeem me from all iniquity. And this love of Christ constrains me, that I dare not, I will not sin."
This is the best motive. Holiness will not hinder you, but bring a blessing upon you, in your private and particular callings. Say not, I shall suffer loss, by leaving my worldly concerns to mind religion. Suppose your estate did suffer, and your body fared the worse by it; yet, sure I am, the cumberings and carings of worldlings bring them more grief, than religious duties bring loss to you. Say not, "My affairs and employments in the world are so great, and so many, that I cannot spare time." The more and greater your affairs are, the more need to mind religion, lest your heart be swallowed up of your affairs.
Are not the affairs of a kingdom more, and greater, than those of an household? And yet David, who had the affairs of a kingdom to look after, made religion his chief care. Say not, "My children must be educated and provided for." What! will you lose salvation, and damn your souls, to gather an estate, and to provide a portion for them? Provide for them a portion in God's Name—but especially let God be their Portion forever. Give them pious education and an holy example.
Is it not more comfortable to see children, in their parent's lifetime, just heirs of their parents' graces, than to see them, when parents are dead, heirs of their parents unjust gains? Oh remember, that providing for your children's bodies, will not answer the damning of your own soul. Your present welfare lies in divorcing sin and living holily.
Were there no commandment from heaven to leave sin, yet should you leave it, because it is the ulcer that sits on a creature's heart, and robs him of all true contentment and sound joy. Suppose no torment, no horror did follow sin hereafter; yet it disquiets and torments for the present. Oh the secret gnawings that envy, and pride, and covetousness give a man's soul. Oh, what a sweet life leads the contented and quiet spirited Christian when God and he are both of a mind! Compare him with the fretful and discontented, who would be always correcting God's providence, and vex themselves daily with crosses to no purpose. Oh, what peace and comfort crowns the heart of the godly! Oh, what outward miseries and inward horror fall upon the wicked!
Besides, sin is the soul's disease, a burning fever; it blinds the mind, hardens the heart, enthralls the will, defiles the conscience, deadens the affection, and hurls the whole man into confusion. It brings more evils, external and internal, for the present, than either tongue can speak or heart can think. Shall it not be divorced? Holiness is the way to the enjoyment of all visible blessings. "Godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come" (1 Tim. 4:8). "Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you" (Matt. 6:33). Who has not seen or heard, how large revenues, riches, and estates, have been wasted by vice and wickedness? There is a secret consuming cancer in the wicked man's estate; a worm in the gourd. Some men's wealth melts away, but how does this come about? Alas, it is banished by impiety. "Cursed shall you be in the city, and cursed shall you be in the field. Cursed shall be your basket and your store" (Deut. 28:16-17). Oh but, "All these blessings shall come on you, and overtake you, if you shall hearken unto the voice of the Lord your God. Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the field" (Deut. 28:2-3).
Thus the Lord puts a difference between the godly and the wicked, as He did between the Egyptians and the Israelites (Exodus 11:7). Will holiness bring disgrace? No. "By humility and the fear of the Lord are riches, and the honor, and life" (Prov. 22:4). Will holiness bring poverty and need? No. "If you be willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land" (Isa. 1:19). "The young lions lack, and suffer hunger—but those who seek the Lord shall not lack any good thing" (Psalm 34:10). See Job 22:21-30. God will be the godly mans gold and silver. Many of the godly have fuller treasure, and more riches than ever they enjoyed in their unregenerate condition. Who ever lost by serving God? Sin and the world have made many a beggar, but never did God and Christ, for in their worst and poorest condition, the godly are rich. "As dying—and behold we live; as chastened—and not killed; as sorrowful—yet always rejoicing; as poor—yet making many rich; as having nothing—and yet possessing all things" (2 Cor. 6:9-10), all things in hope and all things in the promise. God's people are possessors of Him who possesses all. Godliness with contentment is great gain.
Christian, when you are about to die, gather up your accounts, and see how much you have laid out for God, and how much He has rewarded you. You must needs confess that God is not behind-hand with you as your debtor, should He deny you heaven. Look on Abraham, Lot, Jacob, Jehoshaphat, Job, David, etc. I grant, a good man may suffer hardships and scarcity, but it is not due to his godliness, but because of some unmortified corruption, idleness, indiscretion, voluptuousness, or the like. He who lives wickedly is self-condemned—
(1) Condemned in his own conscience. What Paul said of the heretic, in Titus 3:11, may be said of every wicked man, he is condemned of himself. "Happy is he who condemns not himself in that thing which he allows" (Rom. 14:22). But wicked men condemn themselves in that thing which they allow. Ask even the grossest and most profane wretch in a country, Is it not excellent and desirable to live holily, to beware of open impiety, and resist Satan's temptations, to be pure, and holy, and chaste, and temperate? Yes, without question, will he say, it is very good. And yet he will hate what he has commended, and do what he has condemned. He will hate sanctity, and act wickedly. He says, he detests wickedness; but his own wickedness he detests not.
(2) He is condemned by his profession, because his most holy faith is contradicted by an unholy life. Baptism, wherein he gave his name to Christ, engages him to obey Christ as his Lord; but though he was baptized into the name of Christ, yet he obeys Him not. His profession is sacred, but his practice is sinful. The one is pure, the other impure. Now could any but dumb idols, stocks and stones, live without sense and shame of this contradiction? He is condemned in conscience, and condemned by profession.
There is no true comfort outside of the ways of holiness. All earthly contentments are dead, bitter and inconstant. No course gives such solid foundation for comfort as an holy course. A worldly course does not, for the worldling is filled and fed from day to day with vexing cares, and tormenting thoughts, and in a time of common calamity and affliction, he is cast down. His face waxes pale; his mind is confused and his heart trembles. His cares and fears devour all his joy—whereas the godly man is anxious for nothing and rejoices in tribulation. He takes a providential and moderate care, but not an unbelieving and excessive thoughtfulness. He walks by faith, not by sense; he trusts in God in the midst of need, and finds faith and trust a universal remedy for trouble.
No way is so full of pleasantness as the ways of holiness. "Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace" (Prov. 3:17). The paths of sin are void of peace, but great peace have they, who keep God's law (Gal. 6:16). What peace, what joy like that of a good conscience, in a time of affliction! When old age creeps up on a man, death approaches, and eternity is before him. Oh, then a world for a good conscience! The sinner's mirth and merriment is downright madness. "I said of laughter, It is mad—and of mirth, What does it?" (Eccles. 2:2). Christianity will not deprive you of your joy, it will only rectify, moderate, and sanctify the same. I grant, some of God's people are of sad, dark, uncomfortable spirits, but yet I affirm that godliness is not the proper cause of their sadness. And suppose it were, were it not better for a man to suffer qualms, and fits of melancholic sadness all his life, than to suffer hell torments even for one hour? I leave the wicked, when sober and settled in their wits, to judge and determine.
The mercies of God engage and bind us unto holiness. Every mercy is a silent sermon, preaching to us the doctrine of holiness. Every blessing is a suitor, wooing us to live holily. "That we being delivered out of the hands of our enemies might serve Him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before Him, all the days of our life" (Luke 1:74-75).
God, by His blessings, would allure and invite us unto holiness. Has not God caused our lot to fall in a pleasant land? Whereas we might have been born in Meshech, or in the tents of Kedar, in a barren land, a land of spiritual drought. Has He not kept us back from presumptuous, scandalous sins? And, at least from that unrepentable sin against the Holy Spirit? Has He not kept us safe from deadly dangers? Might not fire have suddenly broken out and laid our houses in ashes? Might not the devil, in the night time, have murdered us and our children in bed? Who was it that bound the devil to his good behavior, that he did not roar and tear both us and them in pieces? Was it not God? God's outward providential mercies are innumerable.
Is it not pure mercy, that you have a dwelling house, though but a lowly cottage? You might have been a vagabond, and run up and down begging your bread. Is it not pure mercy, that you have a spread table? Have you an healthful state of body, when others your betters are crying out from day to day sick, sick? And are not children, which are an heritage from the Lord, multiplied unto you, and are continued with you, while others are fast burying their dead? Is it not pure mercy, that you have sufficient riches, and a soft bed, when Christ Himself lived in poverty, and had nowhere to lay His weary head? Have you not liberty and plenty of ordinances, burning and shining lights, while others have not the gospel preached to them, but live and die in gross darkness?
Therefore when you are tempted to sin, say as Joseph did, "How can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?" (Gen. 39:9). Shall I thus requite the Lord for the innumerable mercies bestowed upon me? Has He surrounded me with blessings and loaded me with His benefits? Has He crowned me with loving-kindness, and many rich blessings here; and has He promised to crown me with eternal blessedness hereafter? And shall I be so unkind and disingenuous as to wrong that God, who has been so kind to me, and is continually doing me good? Shall I not hear Him calling on me to be holy, who has so often heard me crying to Him for help? Has He denied nothing to me, and shall I not deny my lusts for His sake? Is He my friend and benefactor, and shall I do service to His enemy? Has He honored me, and shall I dishonor Him? Does He promise me blessedness, and is a wicked life the way to come to it? Have I tasted and seen that the Lord is good, and shall I continue to do what is evil? Do showers of precious mercies distill on my head, and shall they all miscarry? Shall I displease and dishonor that high and awesome Majesty, whose free grace is the well-head and fountain of all these mercies? Or shall I not rather express my thankfulness in such a manner, as may become the mercies of God? Oh, the mercies of God are a mighty motive to prevent sin and promote holiness.
Therefore, dwell much in your thoughts upon the mercies and love-tokens of God. I read of one, that said, he had but one book, and that book had but two leaves, a white leaf, and a red leaf. Yet he could never read beyond these two leaves, though he lived many years, and read diligently, so much matter was contained in them. For in the red leaf (he said) were laid down all God's fearful judgments poured out upon sinners who were disobedient and would not be reformed; and in who the white leaf were laid down, all the mercies and favors of God given to mankind, either in general or particular. This book remains to this day, and happy is the man who is most careful to exercise therein day and night.
All a man's spiritual relations call for holiness. Our relation to duties calls for it. What is our praising God without an holy heart, but blessing of an idol? What good will our prayers do, if we lift not up pure hands without wrath and doubting? What are sacraments and ordinances, but abominations to the eye of God, when profaned by the sins of men? Prayers, praises, sacraments, and ordinances, are holy things, and what have swine and dogs do with such? Our relation to the saints calls for holiness. The saints are called a holy nation, and what are we but withered branches in the vine, masks of saints, and hypocritical counterfeits in the church, without holiness? Are not the saints above closely allied to the Church of God on earth? Are we not akin to the spirits of just men made perfect? Have we not the same father? The same Redeemer? The same Sanctifier and Savior? Who is our Head? Is it not the holy child Jesus? The holy, and just, and righteous One, who is white and ruddy (Cant. v. 10). He is white for sanctity, purity, and innocency; and ruddy in His sufferings, bloody stripes, gallings, woundings, and crucifixion. Now, must we not be conformed to our Head? Must the Head be of gold, and yet the thighs of brass, and feet of clay?
The duties we engage in are holy; the Christians we converse with are holy. Christ our Head is holy; and yet will we be unholy? Holiness will make you blessings to the places where you live. Wicked men are the firebrands of a nation, but good men are as props and pillars to it. Paul, indeed, was called a "pestilent fellow, and a mover of sedition throughout the world" (Acts 24:5), as if he was no less to be avoided than a man coming out of a pest-house, with running plague-sores. But this was only a malicious slander. The turning of the world upside down, seditions, uproars, tumults, wars, and plagues are the fruits of unholiness, the effects of iniquity. Whereas godliness is gainful, and a whole family and nation has sometimes fared better for a single godly servant's sake. Witness Laban's family, for the sake of upright and plain-hearted Jacob. Witness also the house of Pharaoh, and the land of Egypt, for Joseph's sake. Witness the many souls in the ship, that had all perished, but for Paul's sake. Witness the Israelites that had been destroyed, while they wandered and wavered in the wilderness, but for Moses sake.
Therefore be holy, that you also may be props and pillars to the nation, and your names may be fragrant, and dear, and precious to others. Holiness is an excellent help to prolong our days. "That you might fear the Lord your God, to keep all His statutes and His commandments, which I command you.. .that your days may be prolonged" (Deut. 6:2). Religion teaches temperance. A sober care of the body, and a religious and virtuous course of life, does naturally tend to the prolonging of our days, and has very frequently the blessing of health and long life attending upon it.