An Alarm to Unconverted Sinners

How long have I travelled in birth with you? how frequently have I made suit to you? how often would I have gathered you? how instant have I been with you? This is that I have prayed for, and studied for, for many years, that I might bring you to God: O that I might but do it! Will you yet be entreated? O what a happy man might you make me, if you would but hearken to me, and suffer me to carry you over to Jesus Christ?

How long have I travelled in birth with you? how frequently have I made suit to you? how often would I have gathered you? how instant have I been with you? This is that I have prayed for, and studied for, for many years, that I might bring you to God: O that I might but do it! Will you yet be intreated? O what a happy man might you make me, if you would but hearken to me, and suffer me to carry you over to Jesus Christ?

But, Lord, how insufficient am I for this work! I have been many a year wooing for thee, but the damsel would not go with me. Lord, what a task hast thou set me to! Alas wherewith shall I pierce the scales of Leviathan, or make the heart to feel that is firm as a stone, hard as a piece of the nether millstone! Shall I go and lay my mouth to the grave, and look when the dead will obey me and come forth? shall I make an oration to the rocks? or declaim to the mountains, and think to move them with arguments? shall I give the blind to see? From the beginning of the world was it not heard, that a Man opened the eyes of the blind. But thou, O Lord, canst pierce the scales, and prick the heart of the sinner. I can but shoot at rovers, and draw the bow at a venture; do thou direct the arrow between the joints of the harness, and kill the sin, and save the soul of the sinner, that casts his eye into these labours.

But, Lord, how insufficient am I for this work! I have been many a year wooing for thee, but the damsel would not go with me. Lord, what a task hast thou set me to! Alas wherewith shall I pierce the scales of Leviathan, or make the heart to feel that is firm as a stone, hard as a piece of the nether milstone! Shall I go and lay my mouth to the grave, and look when the dead will obey me and come forth? shall I make an oration to the rocks? or declaim to the mountains, and think to move them with arguments? shall I give the blind to see? From the beginning of the world was it not heard, that a Man opened the eyes of the blind. But thou, O Lord, canst pierce the scales, and prick the heart of the sinner. I can but shoot at rovers, and draw the bow at a venture; do thou direct the arrow between the joints of the harness, and kill the sin, and save the soul of the sinner, that casts his eye into these labours.