The times are really very solemn, and it behooves us to think seriously of our true state. There are, we fear, many—God only knows how many, who are not ready—many who would be taken aback and terribly surprised by death, or the coming of the Lord.
God grant that the reader may know what is to be ready in title and ready in state: that he may have a purged conscience and a truly exercised heart. Then he will be able to enter into the meaning of,
How solemn! Those who were ready went in, and those who were not ready were shut out. Those who have life in Christ, and are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, will be ready. But the mere professor—the one who has truth, in the head and on the lip, but not in the heart—who has the lamp of profession, but not the spirit of life in Christ—he will be shut out into outer darkness, in everlasting misery and gloom, the eternal monotony of hell.
O! beloved reader, put this question home to your very inmost soul,
“Are you ready?”