This very year you are going to die! by Samuel Davies
(This message was preached at Princeton College on January 1, 1761. The author died shortly after, on February 4--at the age of 37! Thus in a way— he preached his own funeral sermon! ) "Thus says the Lord—I am about to remove you from the face of the earth. This very year you are going to die! " Jeremiah 28:16 While we are entering upon the threshold of a new year, it may be proper for us to stand, and pause, and take a serious view of the occurrences that may happen to us this year—that we may be prepared to meet them. Future contingencies are indeed unknown to us; and this ignorance is as agreeable to our present state, and as conducive to our improvement and happiness—as our knowledge of the things which it concerns us to know. But though we cannot predict to ourselves the particular events that may befall us—yet the events of life in general, in a vague indeterminate view, are not so contingent and unknowable as to leave no room for rationa...