happiness inexpressible. What shall we say to our lot, who are as near thee as our hearts can desire? Oh this high, high, high dignity! Oh beloved estate! far above the heaven of heavens ; nay, numberless heavens superadded to one another! And am I in thy immediate presence! even in the chambers of presence with thee, O lovely One, "who inhabitest eternity!" What honour is this? what shall I say of it? But thy ways are incomprehensible. This is the prerogative of the saints, this is it! "What shall be done unto the man whom the King delighteth to honour?" Esther vi. 11. Spake he not in good earnest, when he told us of dignities, thrones, crowns, priesthoods, and possession of all things? shall I ever enough wonder at the honour of the saints? This is the dignity of the overcomers, to wear the laurel, the badges of honour, the garlands of glory. How camest thou to all this, O silly self? hast thou been born to wear an immortal crown, to be overladen within and without with so great a weight of glory? Thou appearest indeed in the equipage of a king, decked with majesty, glory, and honour, arrayed with wonderful excellence and comeliness. Wast thou not once, O thou silly I, a base worm, defiled with the very filth of hell? How hast thou robbed the Almighty of his glory, dishonoured his excellency, wronged his holiness, trampled upon his most precious things, on his blood; done what thou couldst to precipitate thyself into eternal perdition; forced the gates of that woful prison, O undone soul, to cover thyself with utter darkness from the charming beams of the Sun of Righteousness? yet am I here, even here, surrounded with inexpressible glory! many thousands, less deserving, are in the place of utter darkness. Oh thy love! thy love! "which passeth all understanding!" Oh thy free, free grace! Oh the height, and depth, and length, and breadth of thy ways! my enjoyments are more than free. Has he not brought me over my deservings? But nothing can stand in the way of Infinite Love. Thou lovedst me, because thou lovedst me; and because thou lovedst me, I became lovely in thy sight. Not unto us, not unto us be the glory; but unto JEHOVAH, and the Lamb, be praise for ever and ever. saints and angels to deemer, astonishes What astonishing condescension, 16. The nearness of to admit bits of nothing so near their Creator and Rethee! Can this thy way be ever them eternally. enough admired? It is strange thou shouldst deign to visit creatures with either thy love or thy hatred! What is man, that thou shouldst visit him; that thou shouldst notice him, and bring him into judgment? But more wonderful! hast thou not "crowned him with glory and honour ?" Thou hast made him sit down beside thyself! he treadeth the lower world under his feet, he walketh on the high places of the creation. Oh thy bounty! oh thy condescension should I stand so near my Lord the King? Since free love will have it thus, and it is not his way to create desires and not fulfil them, strong love can take rest nowhere but in his embraces. On earth I was unsatisfied, oftentimes complaining of distance and absence; and when I found thee, "I would not let thee go,” until we entered into those glorious mansions; and how are my thoughts heightened, by beholding thee face to face! The nearer thee, the higher esteem and reverence; none can have low thoughts of thee, but they that know thee not. 17. No knowledge, no evidence, equal dence of glory. The first ray of thy infinite glory to the noon-day evi- upon me, discovers infinite varieties of wonders! Men and angels, are we not all an assembly of eternal wonders! and all the product of the noon-day vision of glory, not of ignorance? All the things of time, from the greatest to the smallest, are now seen to be wonders; howbeit that little of them was discerned, and that in a dull manner. Strange! O Beloved, thou art another manner of Christ than we spake of in the days of our mortality: thy very name was scarcely conceived. How came I hither with such little conceptions? Have I not begun to know, in the very first entry of eternity, my knowledge on earth was of no evidence, in comparison of this noon-day vision of glory? As the man looks back on his infancy as a state of ignorance, and the man awakened, on his bypast dream, so do I now, on my most refined conceptions on earth. Oh the clear conceptions of a glorified capacity! do I not behold every thing as it is in its own proper being? All shadows have fled away. What wonder, to think what we were, and what we are! Oh, the infinite power of omnipotent JEHOVAH ! what a perfecting is this! but what cannot my Lord do? 18. To be witnesses vah and the Lamb, of the glory of Jeho is an inexpressible dignity. And dost thou manifest thyself in such a manner to us? What is essential eternity to beings of yesterday? Are we fit witnesses of thy glory? O infinite JEHOVAH, are we not before thee as nothing and vanity? May not the greatness of thy glory, if thou shouldst let it forth to the full, confound, even confound us to nothing? Its infiniteness nothing can comprehend, but an infinite understanding: the furthermost of all created glory is "nothing and vanity" in thy presence, though it might seem somewhat among its like. Dart forth the full rays of your glory, all you creatures, you shall not dazzle these eyes which are fixed on a higher object. 19. What he manifests to us is a won der; and the way of his manifesting it is Shall we not wonder again and again, and for ever, at the way thou hast taken to manifest so nearly and a wonder of wonders. familiarly unto us, thy incomprehensible glory? Hast thou not assumed the nature of a creature, that thou mightest converse the more intimately and condescendingly with us? To enjoy thee any way requires an infinite condescension; the disproportion being infinite: but this, this is the most wonderful condescension possible! Oh, this is the most excellent of all possible ways! Oh the wonderful soul-alluring glory that does most sweetly dart upon us from the Man, who is God! Oh eternally blessed I, who have such a Wellbeloved, in whom is all fulness! We have done for ever with other beloveds. What wonder I am so deeply in love with thee? what wonder I swim in floods of eternal satisfaction, who enjoy thee so familiarly? Can a creature be more happy? I am full, I am full, and can desire no more ! 20. To consider the change Christ has nally delightful consideration. 66 Is this He, who was born of the undergone, is an eter- Virgin Mary, in a stable, and laid in a manger? who for the most of his days was in a poor, obscure, contemptible condition; who was a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief," Isa. liii. 3; of no corporal beauty in the eyes of the beholders, and subject to all the infirmities of feeble mortals, except sin; who was deserted of the outgoing of the sweetness and love of God; nay, did drink from brim to bottom, the bitter cup of his Father's wrath ; who was apprehended in an ignominious manner; betrayed, denied, and forsaken of his own disciples; violently haled away to judgment, reviled, mocked, and buffeted, and spit upon; accused of blasphemy, treason, madness, and whatever hellish heads could devise; then scourged, and set forth to the reproach and laughing of the wicked multitude; then condemned to the vile and shameful death of the cross, for blasphemy and treason; and that by the petition of the vast multitudes gathered together at the passover, who preferred a base robber before him! The sentence was not sooner pronounced than executed; for he was hanged betwixt two thieves, in the sight of the multitude, insulted by devils and their slaves, who beheld this matchless One nailed to the cursed tree, and bleed to death in great torment and anguish of spirit: while the sun, clothed in mourning for his Lord, contrary to the course of nature, sympathized with the eclipsed Creator, and withdrew its beams from those who had |