You that are yet in the flower of your days, full of health and strength, and, with all the vigour of your spirits, do pursue some one thing, some another, consider, I pray, what are all your beloveds to this Beloved? What have you gotten by them? Let us see the peace, quietness, assurance of everlasting blessedness that they have given you? Their paths are crooked paths, whoe’er goes in them shall not know peace. Behold here a fit object for your choicest affections,—one in whom you may find rest to your souls,—one in whom there is nothing will grieve and trouble you to eternity. Behold, he stands at the door of your souls, and knocks: reject him not, lest you seek him and find him not! Pray study him a little; you love him not, because you know him not. Why doth one of you spend his time in idleness and folly, and wasting of precious time, —perhaps debauchedly? Why doth another associate and assemble himself with them that scoff at religion and the things of God? Merely because you know not our dear Lord Jesus. Oh, when he shall reveal himself to you, and tell you he is Jesus whom you have slighted and refused, how will it break your hearts, and make you mourn like a dove, that you have neglected him! and if you never come to know him, it had been better you had never been. Whilst it is called To-day, then, harden not your hearts.
- John Owen -
from Of Communion With God, volume 2 of Works, page 53
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