SEED-GRAIN FOR THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION. HOLY LIVING. CONSIDERATIONS OF THE GENERAL INSTRUMENTS AND MEANS SERVING TO A HOLY LIFE. It is necessary that every man should consider, that since God hath given him an excellent nature, wisdom, and choice, an understanding soul, and an immortal spirit; having made him lord over the beasts, and but a little lower than the angels; he hath also appointed for him a work and a service great enough to employ those abilities, and hath also designed him to a state of life after this, to which he can only arrive by that service and obedience. And, therefore, as every man is wholly God's own portion by the title of creation, so all our labours and care, all our powers and faculties, must be wholly employed in the service of God, even all the days of our life, that, this life being ended, we may live with Him forever. Neither is it sufficient that we think of the service of God as a work of the least necessity, or of small employment, but that it be done by us as God intended it; that it be done with great earnestness and passion, with much zeal and desire; that we refuse no labour, that we bestow upon it much time, that we use the best guides, and arrive at the end of glory by all the ways of grace, of prudence, and religion. And, indeed, if we consider how much of our lives is taken up by the needs of nature, how many years are wholly spent before we come to any use of reason, how many years more before that reason is useful to us to any great purposes, how imperfect our discourse is made by our evil education, false principles, ill company, bad examples, and want of experience, how many parts of our wisest and best years are spent in eating and sleeping, in necessary businesses and unnecessary vanities, in worldly civilities and less useful circumstances, in the learning arts and sciences, languages or trades; that little portion of hours that is left for the practices of piety and religious walking with God is so short and trifling, that, were not the goodness of God infinitely great, it might seem unreasonable or impossible for us to expect of Him eternal joys in Heaven, even after the well spending those few minutes which are left for God and God's service, after we have served ourselves and our own occasions. Jeremy Taylor. The First General Instrument of Holy Living. Care of our Time.-God hath given every man work enough to do, that there shall be no room for idleness; and yet hath so |