fomething immenfely more exalted and happy; and it is only preparatory to that which fhall be moft perfect and everlasting. This friendship is exceeding imperfect in this ftate, has many interruptions and hindrances, and is attended with numerous inconveniences, which often occasion great pain and diftrefs, which is peculiar to the friends of Chrift, and is many times very keen, and even overwhelming. Their remaining degrees of unfriendliness and oppofition of heart to Chrift, their blindness, stupidity, ingratitude; their great degree of alienation from Chrift, their unfruitfulness, and the ill returns they make to him, and their want of a sense of his love and favour, are a most heavy burden to them, under which they often go mourning all the day long. For these things their fouls are bowed down, and greatly difquieted within them. And their love to Christ, and concern for his intereft in the world, is often the occafion of great concern and trouble, while they live in fuch a wicked world as this, in the midst of a crooked and perverfe generation, where there are fo many enemies to Chrift, and his caufe is in fo many ways oppofed and run down. These things often cause them to hang their harps on the willows, in this.ftrange land, and to fit down and weep when they remember Zion, and the intereft of their Friend and Redeemer; and rivers of water run down their eyes, because men keep not his law, but difhonour him. And the higher their love and friendship to Chrift rifes, the more affecting and painful will these things be to them; like the dear friends of Chrift, the holy women who followed him weeping, when he went to the crofs, furrounded by an infulting crowd of cruel enemies. Their love to Chrift, their dearest friend, filled their hearts with the keeneft twinges of the moft cutting pain, which, as a dreadful fword, pierced their fouls through and through.

But it is wifely and kindly ordered that this friendfhip fhould begin in fuch a ftate as this, and in thefe circumstances; and this will all turn to its great advantage in the iffue, and prepare the way for a higher enjoy

ment

ment than if they had never taken place. Chrift, their great friend and patron, fuperintends, and is in this way difciplining them, and in the best manner training them up for the near enjoyment of him in the moft perfect ftate of friendship and happiness. They are espoused to him, though they are in an enemy's country; and he is preparing them for the happy nuptials, when they fhall be brought into his prefence, and kind embraces, never to part again. And all their pain and forrow in this world, which they have fuffered on his account, and all they have done and fuffered for him, fhall in the end ferve to increase their enjoyment and happiness, and be richly rewarded by him.

He

He has defired and prayed that they all may be where he is, that they may behold his glory, and enjoy him to the beft advantage, and in the highest degree; and he will never reft till he has brought them to this. will bring them to fhare in his own honours and happinefs, as fully as their enlarged capacities will admit. He will feat them at his own right hand; yea, they shall fit down with him on his throne, and reign jointly with him, as the queen fhares in the dignity and honours of the prince her husband. They fhall drink with him of the river of his pleasures, and enjoy all that he has, even the whole of his boundless riches and moft extenfive kingdom. He will bring forth all his hidden treafures for them, and open his heart to them in the fulleft manner and without any referve. He will make them perfectly like himself, and put his own beauty and glory upon them, and bring them to a high and perfect relish for his beauty, and put them, in all refpects, and every way, under the beft advantage to love and enjoy him forever. This fhall perfect this friendship, which will be increafing in unknown, inconceivable heights forever and ever.

Thus they fhall be fatisfied, perfectly fatisfied, and inconceivably happy, when they fhall awake in his likenefs, and ftand complete before him, the beloved of their fouls, in whofe prefence is fulness of joy, and at

whofe

Then

it

whose right hand are pleasures forever more. will be faid concerning every one of the true friends of Chrift, "These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore are they before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple: and He that fitteth on the throne fhall dwell among them. They fhall hunger no more, neither thirst any more, neither fhall the fun light on them, nor any heat. For the Lamb, which is in the midst of the throne, fhall feed them, and fhall lead them unto living fountains of waters: and God fhall wipe away all tears from their eyes." Then fhall Christ appear, in all his fulness and glory, as the head of his church, and, in the highest and most emphatical fenfe, fay, "I am come into my garden, my fifter, my fpoufe. Eat, O friends, drink, yea, drink abundantly." Then the angels will tune their notes higher than ever, and say, with a voice like the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings, "Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to Him, the glorious friend and bridegroom of the redeemed; for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready."

The friends of Chrift now little think what they are coming to, and what will be the iffue of these exercises they now have. They have already feen and enjoyed what others never have; for Chrift in his fuperlative glory and excellence has been manifefted unto them: but they fhall fee greater things than thefe. And the words which Chrift fpoke to one of his difciples when he was on earth, are applicable to all of them: "What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shall know hereafter." "Beloved, now we are the fons of God, the friends of Chrift; and it doth not yet appear what we fhall be but we know that, when he fhall appear, we fhall be like him; for we fhall fee him as he is."

Q

SERMON

Sermon VII.

On Chriftian Friendship.

Cant. v. 16. This is my beloved, and this is my friend.

APPLICATION.

HIS fubject as it has been confidered affords great evidence of the truth and divinity of Christianity, and of all the great and leading doctrines; and at the fame time fhows how the Chriftian, though not learned,

great natural capacity, is affured that it is a revela tion from the only true God, and will give eternal life and happiness to all who cordially embrace it.

If the gofpel is formed and fuited to give those who embrace it the highest and most refined and noble enjoy. ment, which is the beginning of moft complete and endless happiness; if, fo far as it has its proper and genuine influence on the hearts and lives of men, it fpreads happiness through fociety, and forms all to a happy union, by which they promote, enjoy and rejoice in the welfare of each other; and brings them into a friendship, which is in the nature of it perfect, having nothing undesirable, and nothing wanting to render it the most excellent, noble and durable love and friendship that can be imagined; then it must be divine, a revelation from heaven, the production of Infinite Wisdom and Goodness. But that all this is true, has been made abudantly evident, by the very imperfect representation in the preceding difcourfes. And it is fufficiently fupported by the fcripture itself, by impartial reason, and by abundant experience.

This scheme of friendship and happiness for man never would have been thought of by any one of the human race, had it not been revealed from heaven. Hence it

is made certain that no other scheme of religion, but that revealed in the Bible, is true, or can make men happy by embracing it; and that all other methods to obtain happiness, of which there are many devifed by the wit and learning of the moft fagacious among men, are mere delufions, and never will or can obtain it. For when the world by their wifdom knew not God, or the way to true happiness, it pleased God, by the foolishness of preaching, to fave, and make completely and eternally happy, all them who believe.

But the unbeliever will fay, "I do not pretend to under. ftand the fcriptures; but I am certain that my reafon and experience dictate that there is no happiness in attending to the Bible, but very much the contrary. And the fpread of Chriftianity in the world has been far from making mankind more happy than they were without it. It has been the occafion of unfpeakable calamity. And even profeffing Chriftians, instead of being united by it in love and friendship, have been the greatest enemies to each other, and destroyed one another in the moft cruel manner."

Anfwer. That fuch have received no happiness by the attention they have paid to the Bible, is not an ar gument of the leaft weight that it is not to be found there. Men may come to the Bible with a strong and prevailing difpofition and taste of mind or heart which does not relish that in which true happiness confifts; but is highly disgusted and displeased with it. With this vitiated taste they relifh and feek after happiness, where it cannot be found, being wholly blind to these fpiritual, noble objects and truths, in the knowledge and enjoyment of which there is the highest happiness. And fuch a wrong tafte and difpofition tends to bias their understanding and reafon, fo as to render it partial, and incline to fpeculative error. It is therefore to impartial reafon that we appeal.

This blindness, which confifts in a wrong tafte and difpofition of mind, the fcripture fpeaks of as common to all men in their natural ftate; and when it fo com

monly