Preached by Jonathan Edwards, Fall 1722
For what is a man profited, if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul, or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? Matthew 16:26
Thus we have endeavored to show that the salvation of the soul is more worth [than] the whole world, and I suppose it is by this time so plain that it is impossible for a man to doubt of it.
Use.
Inf. I.3 Our miserable and lost estate by nature. Is the soul so precious, and is the salvation of the soul more worth than all the world, and the loss of the soul more than the loss of all the world? Then how dreadful is our lost condition by nature, for our souls naturally are all lost souls, naturally in a lost estate and condition, bound over unto the eternal wrath of God, and to suffer his indignation forever. We are all "by nature children of wrath" (Ephesians 2:3); we are naturally condemned to everlasting misery; we are naturally unbelieving, and "he that believeth not is condemned already" (John 3:18). What a dreadful thing is it to be a condemned person. A person that is condemned to a bodily death is looked [upon] as a miserable creature: how much more miserable are those which are condemned to spiritual and eternal death, but so we are all by nature.
Inf. II. The great folly of the greatest part of the world. [They] neglect their souls and do nothing, pursue violently after the pleasure and vain profits of the world. They are laboring for those vanities of vanities as if they were the most precious things imaginable, and neglect that which is really so; they spend themselves for the world as if they were to live in the same forever and ever, whereas it will fade and vanish like [a] phantom in a few moments, and they must be parted from it forever, and see it no more at all. Thus foolish and sottish are the greatest part of the world: they take care for the world but take no care for themselves; they love the world but hate their own souls.
Well, is it so?
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