This is what damns men. By Ezekiel
Hopkins. What will it profit a man if
he gains the whole world and loses his soul? Or what shall
a man give in exchange for his soul? Matthew chapter 16, verse
26. What senseless folly it is to
purchase a vain and fleeting world with the loss of your precious
eternal soul! Oh, think what great losers they
must be who lose their souls to gain this poor fleeting world! They must at last lose the world,
too, together with their souls. This is what damns men. They
prefer the pleasures, honors, profits, and pitiful nothings
of the world before their precious and immortal souls, which are
worth more than ten thousand worlds. Think how dreadful and
tormenting the reflections of worldlings in hell will be, to
consider that they must lie and burn there to eternity for their
inordinate love to that world, of which they have nothing left
to them besides the bitter remembrance. What will it then avail them,
that they have lived in ease and delights while here on earth,
when all their mirth shall be turned into groans and howlings? What will the remembrance of
all their worldly trinkets and treasures then avail them, but
to increase their torment? For what hope do the godless
have when God cuts them off and takes away their life? Job chapter
27 verse 8.