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It is through this divine taste of love, and joy, and glory communicated by the blessed Spirit, revealing the things of Christ to their souls, that many of the confessors and martyrs in the primitive ages and in latter times, have not only joyfully parted with all their possessions and their comforts in this life, but have followed the call of God through prisons and deaths of a most dreadful kind; through racks, and fires, and many torments for the sake of the love of Jesus: And perhaps there may be some in our day who have had so lively and strong a sensation of the love of Christ let in upon their souls, that they could not only be content to be absent from all their carnal delights for ever, but even from their intellectual and more spiritual entertainments, if they might be for ever placed in such a situation to Jesus Christ, as to feel the everlasting beams of his love let out upon them, and to rejoice in him with perpetual delight. As he is the nearest image of God the Father, they can love nothing beneath God equal to their love of him, nor delight in any thing beneath God equal to their delight in Jesus Christ: Indeed their love and their joy are so wrapped up in the great and blessed God as he appears in Christ Jesus, that they do not usually divide their affections in this matter, but love God supremely for ever, as revealing himself in his most perfect love in Christ Jesus unto their souls. How near this may approach to the glorified love of the saints in heaven, or what difference there is between the holy ones above and the saints below in this respect, may be hard to say.

SECTION VIII.

Foretastes of heaven in the transcendent love of the saints to each other.' I might here ask some advanced saints,

Have you never seen or heard of a fellow Christian growing into such a near resemblance to the blessed Jesus, in all the virtues and graces of the spirit, that you would willingly part with all the attainments and honours that you have already arrived at, which make you never so eminent in the world or the church, as to be made so near a conformist to the image of the blessed Jesus as this fellow Christian has seemed to be?

Have you never seen or read of the glories and graces of the Son of God exemplified in some of the saints in so high a degree, and at the same time been so divested of self, and so mortified to a narrow selflove, as to be satisfied with the lowest and the meanest supports of life, and the meanest station in the church of Christ here on earth, if you might but be favoured to partake of that transcendent likeness to the holy Jesus, as you would fain imitate and possess.

Have you never had a view of all the virtues and graces of the saints, derived from one eternal fountain, the blessed God, and flowing through the mediation of Jesus his Son, in so glorious a manner, that you have longed for the day when you shall be amongst them, and receive your share of this blessedness? Have you never found yourself so united to them in

one heart and one soul, that you have wished them all the same blessings that you wished to yourself, and that without the least shadow of grudging or envy, if every one of them were partaker as much as you? There is no enty among the heavenly inhabitants; nor doth St. Paul receive the less because Cephas or Apollos has a large share. Every vessel has its capacity enlarged to a proper extent by the God of nature and grace, and every vessel is completely filled, and feels itself for ever full and for ever happy: Then there cannot be found the shadow of envy amongst them....

Now, to sum up the view of these things in short; who is there that enjoys these blessed evidences of an interest in the inheritance on high, who is there that has any such foretastes of the felicity above, but must join with the whole creation in groaning for that great day, when all the children of God shall appear in the splendor of their adoption, and every thing in nature and grace among them shall attain the proper end for which it was at first designed? And whensoever any such Christian hears some of the last words in the Bible pronounced by our Lord Jesus, "Surely I come quickly," he must immediately join the universal echo of the saints with unspeakable delight, 66 even so come, O Lord Jesus."

DISCOURSE XI.

SAFETY IN THE GRAVE,

AND

JOY AT THE RESURRECTION.

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JOE. xiv. 13, 14, 15.

O that thou wouldst hide me in the grave, that thou wouldst keep me in secret until thy wrath be past, that thou wouldst appoint me a set time and remember me! If a man die shall be live again? All the days of my appointed time will I wait till my change come. Thou shalt call and I will answer thee: Thou wilt have a desire to the work of thy hands.

BEFORE we attempt to make any improvement of these words of Job for our present edification, it is necessary that we search out the true meaning of them. There are two general senses of these three verses, which are given by some of the most considerable interpreters of Scripture, and they are exceeding different from each other.

The first is this. Some suppose Job under the extremity of his anguish to long after death here, as he

does in some other parts of this book, and to desire that God would cut him off from the land of the living, and "hide him in the grave," or, at least, take him away from the present stage of action, and conceal him in some retired and solitary place, dark as the grave is, till all the days which might be designed for his pain and sorrow were finished: And that God would "appoint him a time" for his restoration to health and happiness again in this world, and raise him to the possession of it, by calling him out of that dark and solitary place of retreat; and then Job would answer him, and appear with pleasure at such a call of Providence.

Others give this sense of the words, that though the pressing and overwhelming sorrows of this good man constrained him to long for death, and he entreated of God that he might be sent to the " grave as a hiding-place," and thus be delivered from his present calamities, yet he had some divine glimpse of a resurrection or living again, and he hopes for the happiness of a future state when God should call him out of the grave. He knew that the blessed God would have a desire to restore the work of his own hands' to life again, and Job would answer the call' of his God into a resurrection with holy pleasure and joy.

Now there are four or five reasons which incline me to prefer this latter sense of the words, and to shew that the comforts and hope which Job aspires to in this place, are only to be derived from a resurrection to final happiness.

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