Excerpt from The Works of Thomas Shepard, First Pastor of the First Church, Cambridge, Mass, Vol. 2: With a Memoir of His Life and CharacterThat to make sure of life eternal is the one necessary busi ness that we sons of death have to do in this world, and without which all our time here is worse than lost, every enlightened mind will easily acknowledge, this present life being, by the rule of it, appointed but to this end, to be preparation time, spent in a continual care to make ready, that we might have a good meeting with Him who shall be seen in this air one day. And whether - we look up to heaven, or down to hell, whether we re ¿ect upon our own immortal souls, or turn our eyes toward the greatness and goodness of that God in Christ with whom we have to do, whether we pace over the time between this and judgment. Day, or send our thoughts to view the eternity that is to follow after, - all things put a necessity, a solemnity, a glory upon this work.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.