Wealth & Money Quote by Thomas Shepard

Shepard’s sentence moves like a sermon hammer wrapped in velvet: it begins in “rich grace and wisdom,” then snaps shut with a door. That whiplash is the point. As a Puritan clergyman, he’s working a familiar biblical fuse - the Parable of the Ten Virgins - where the unprepared are locked out of the wedding feast. In Shepard’s hands, “love toward his people” isn’t sentimental reassurance; it’s the very logic that makes exclusion feel justified. God’s love is described as wise, and wisdom here means sorting.

The phrase “for who sees not” is a preacher’s rhetorical trap. It performs consensus, suggesting only the obstinate could disagree. Shepard isn’t inviting debate; he’s staging inevitability. The “curse” isn’t merely punishment for laziness, but a moral physics: unpreparedness naturally leads to rejection, the way a candle goes out when it lacks oil. That turns spiritual anxiety into a daily discipline project. Be ready. Examine yourself. Keep the lamp lit.

Context matters. Shepard preached in New England amid a culture obsessed with signs of election and the terror of self-deception. The “foolish virgins” aren’t outsiders; they look like the insiders who assumed proximity meant safety. Subtext: church membership, piety, even religious language can be counterfeit. The door that closes is aimed at complacent believers who want grace without vigilance.

The intent is pastoral and coercive at once: to press the listener into urgent self-scrutiny, making “grace” feel precious because it can be missed. The love on offer is real, but it arrives with a deadline and a lock.