One thing that makes me earnest is the remembrance of eternity. Your time is short, but your eternity, O, how long!
There was once a lady who often used to go to the dance and to the opera, and to keep her servant sitting up at night to let her go in, and attend her to bed. The poor girl, the servant, often went to sleep, so her mistress recommended her to 'get a book and read, and she got some religious books, and it pleased God to bless the reading of them to her.
Her mistress laughed at her very much about this, and when she came home one morning, somewhere about two or three o'clock, she came up to the girl and said to her, "Mary, what are you reading? A religious book?" she added, as she looked over her shoulder—"Why it will make you as miserable as possible," and she began to laugh. But while she looked at the book her eyes fell upon the word, "Eternity.”
She went up to her room, and when the maid was gone, she gave vent to her feelings in a flood of tears, and it was not many days before that lady had learned to give up the frivolities of time for the true, substantial pleasures of eternity. I wish that some of you would get that word, "Eternity, Eternity, Eternity," into your minds. Even if you had it printed on your very eyeballs it would not hurt you.
Eternity! Eternity! Eternity! A mountain without a summit; a sea without a shore; a depth without a bottom. Eternity! An endless plain of woe, or a boundless field of delight. If you have believed in Jesus it shall be bliss everlasting; if you have rejected Christ, it shall be woe for eternity. Eternity! Eternity! Eternity! If there were nothing else to make the preacher earnest and to make him thoughtful, surely this ought to be enough.