THE ADVANCED CHRISTIAN REMINDED OF THE MERCIES OF GOD, AND EXHORTED TO THE EXERCISE OF HABITUAL LOVE TO HIM, AND JOY IN HIM.
1. A holy joy in God, our privilege as well as our duty.--2. The Christian invited to the exercise of it.--3. By the consideration of temporal mercies.--4. And of spiritual favors.--5. By the views of eternal happiness.--6. And of the mercies of God to others, the living and the dead.--7. The chapter closes with an exhortation to this heavenly exercise. And with an example of the genuine workings of this grateful joy in God.
1. I WOULD now suppose my reader to find, on an examination of his spiritual
state, that he is growing in grace. And if you desire that this growth may at
once be acknowledged and promoted, let me call your soul "to that more
affectionate exercise of love to God and joy in him," which suits, and
strengthens, and exalts the character of the advanced Christian; and which I
beseech you to regard, not only as your privilege, but as your duty too. Love
is the most sublime, generous principle, of all true and acceptable obedience;
and with love, when so wisely and happily fixed, when so certainly returned,
JOY, proportionable JOY, must naturally be connected. It may justly grieve a
man that enters into the spirit of Christianity, to see how low a life even the
generality of sincere Christians commonly live in this respect. "Rejoice then
in the Lord, ye righteous, and give thanks at the remembrance of his holiness,"
(Psa. 97:12) and of all those other perfections and glories which are included
in that majestic, that wonderful, that delightful name, THE LORD THY GOD. Spend
not your sacred moments merely in confession or in petition, though each must
have their daily share; but give a part, a considerable part, to the Celestial
and angelic work of praise. Yea, labor to carry about with you continually, a
heart overflowing with such sentiments, warmed and inflamed with such
affections.
2. Are there not continually rays enough
diffused from the great Father of light and love to enkindle it in our bosom?
Come, my Christian friend and brother, come and survey with me the goodness of
our heavenly Fattier. And oh! that he would give me such a sense of it, that I
might represent it in a suitable manner, that "while I am musing, the fire may
burn" in my own heart, (Psa. 39:3) and be communicated to yours! And oh! that
it might pass, with the lines I write, from soul to soul, awakening in the
breast of every Christian that reads them, sentiments more worthy the children
of God and the heirs of glory, who are to spend end an eternity in those sacred
exercises to which I am now endeavoring to excite you.
3. Have you not reason to adopt the words of
David, and say, `How many are thy gracious thoughts unto me, O Lord!' how great
is the sum of them! When I would count them, they are more in number than the
sand." (Psa. 139:17,18) You indeed know where to begin the survey, for the
favors of God to you began with your being. Commemorate it therefore with a
grateful heart, that the eyes which "saw your substance, being yet imperfect,"
beheld you with a friendly care "when you were made in secret," and have
watched over you ever since--and that the hand which "drew the plan of your
members, when as yet there was none of them," (Psa. 139:15,16) not only
fashioned them at first, but from that time has been concerned in "keeping all
your bones, so that none of them is broken," (Psa. 34:20) and that, indeed, it
is to this you owe it that you live. Look back upon the path you have trod,
from the day that God brought you out of the womb, and say whether you do not,
as it were, see all the road thick set with the marks and memorials of the
divine goodness. Recollect the places where you have lived, and the persons
with whom you have most intimately conversed, and call to mind the mercies you
have received in those places, and from those persons, as the instruments of
the divine care and goodness. Recollect the difficulties and dangers with which
you have been surrounded, and reflect attentively on what God hath done to
defend you from them, or to carry you through them. Think how often there has
been but a step between you and death, and how suddenly God has sometimes
interposed to set you in safety, even before you apprehended your danger. Think
of those chambers of illness in which you have been confined; and from whence,
perhaps, you once thought you should go forth no more; but said, with Hezekiah,
in the cutting off of your days, "I shall go to the gates of the grave: I am
deprived of the residue of my years." (Isa. 38:10) God has, it may be, since
that time, added many years to your life; and you know not how many are in
reserve, or how much usefulness and happiness may attend each. Survey your
circumstances in relative life; how ninny kind friends are surrounding you
daily, and studying how they may contribute to your comfort. Reflect on those
remarkable circumstances in Providence, which occasioned the knitting of some
bonds of this kind, which, next to those which join your soul to God, you
number among the happiest. And forget not in how many instances, when these
dear lives have been threatened, lives perhaps more sensibly dear than your own
God has given them back from the borders of the grave, and so added new
endearments, arising from that tender circumstance, to all your after converse
with them. Nor forget, in how gracious a manner he hath supported some others
in their last moments, and enabled them to leave behind a sweet odor of piety,
which hath embalmed their memories, revived you when ready to faint under the
sorrows of the last separation, and, on the whole, made even the recollection
of their death delightful.
4. But it is more than time that I lead on your
thoughts to the many spiritual mercies which God has bestowed upon you. Look
back, as it were, to "the rock from whence you were hewn, and to the hole of
the pit from whence you were digged." (Isa. 1:1) Reflect seriously on the state
wherein divine grace found you: under how much guilt, under how much pollution!
in what danger, in what ruin! Think what was, and O think with yet deeper
reflection. what would have been the case! The eye of God, which penetrates
into eternity, saw what your mind, amused with the trifles of the present time
and sensual gratification, was utterly ignorant and regardless of: it saw you
on the borders of eternity, and pitied you; saw that you would in a little time
have been such a helpless, wretched creature as the sinner that is just now
dead, and has, to his infinite surprise and everlasting terror, met his
unexpected doom; and would, like him, stand thunderstruck in astonishment and
despair. This God saw, and he pitied you; and being merciful to you, he
provided, in the counsel of his eternal love and grace, a Redeemer for you, and
purchased you to himself, through the blood of his Son: a price which, if you
will pause upon it, and think seriously what it was, must surely affect you to
such a degree as to make you to fall down before God in wonder and shame, to
think it should ever have been given for you. To accomplish these blessed
purposes, he sent his grace into your heart; so that, though "you were once
darkness, you are now light in the Lord." (Eph. 5:8) He made that happy change
which you now feel in your soul, and "by his Holy Spirit, which is given to
you," he shed abroad that principle of love (Rom. 5:5) which is enkindled by
this review, and now flames with greater ardor than before. Thus far he hath
supported you in your Christian course, and "having obtained help from him," it
is that you continue even to this day. (Acts 26:22) He hath not only blessed
you, but "made you a blessing;" (Gen. 12:2.) and though you have not been so
useful as that holy generosity of heart which he has excited would have engaged
you to desire, yet some good you have done in the station in which he has fixed
you. Some of your brethren of mankind have been relieved; perhaps, too, some
thoughtless creature reclaimed to virtue and happiness by his blessing on your
endeavors. Some in the way to heaven are praising God for you; and some,
perhaps, already there, are longing for your arrival, that they may thank you,
in nobler and more expressive forms, for benefits, the importance of which they
now sufficiently understand, though while here, they could never conceive
it.
5. Christian, look around on the numberless
blessings, of one kind and of another, with which you are already encompassed;
and advance your prospect still farther, to what faith yet discovers within the
veil. Think of those now unknown transports with which thou shalt drop every
burden in the grave; and thine immortal spirit shall mount, light and joyful,
holy and happy to God, its original, its support, and its hope; to God, the
source of being, of holiness, and of pleasure; to Jesus, through whom all these
blessings are derived to thee, and who will appoint thee a throne near to his
own, to be for ever a spectator and partaker of his glory. Think of the rapture
with which thou shalt attend his triumph in the resurrection-day, and receive
this poor, moldering, corruptible body, transformed into his glorious image;
and then think, "These hopes are not mine alone, but the hopes of thousands and
millions. Multitudes, whom I number among the dearest of my friends upon the
earth, are rejoicing with me in these apprehensions and views; and God gives me
sometimes to see the smiles on their cheeks, the sweet, humble hope that
sparkles in their eyes and shines through the tears of tender gratitude, and to
hear that little of their inward complacency and joy which language can
express. Yea, and multitudes more, who were once equally dear to me with these,
though I have laid them in the grave, and wept over the dust, are living to
God, living in the possession of inconceivable delights, and drinking large
draughts of the water of life, which flows in perpetual streams at his right
hand."
6. O Christian! thou art still intimately united
and allied to them. Death cannot break a friendship thus cemented, and it ought
not to render thee insensible of the happiness of those friends for whose
memory thou retainest so just an honor. They live to God as his servants; they
"serve him and see his face,"(Rev. 22: 3,4) and they make but a small part of
that glorious assembly. Millions, equally worthy of thine esteem and affection
with themselves, inhabit those blissful regions; and wilt thou not rejoice in
their joy? And wilt thou not adore that everlasting spring of holiness and
happiness from whence each of their streams is derived? Yea, I will add, while
the blessed angels are so kindly regarding us, while they are ministering to
thee, O Christian! and bearing thee in their arms, "as an heir of salvation,"
(Heb. 1:14) wilt thou not rejoice in their felicity too? And wilt thou not
adore that God who gives them all the superior glory of their more exalted
nature, and gives them a heaven, which fills them with blessedness even while
they seem to withdraw from it, that they may attend on thee?
7. This, and infinitely more than this the
blessed God is, and was, and shall ever be. The felicities of the blessed
spirits that surround his throne, and thy felicities, O Christian! are
immortal. These heavenly luminaries shall glow with an undecaying flame, and
thou shalt shine and burn among them when the sun and the stars are gone out.
Still shall the unchanging Father of lights pour forth his beams upon them; and
the lustre they reflect from him, and their happiness in him, shall be
everlasting, shall be ever growing. Bow down, O thou child of God, thou heir of
glory; bow down, and let all that is within thee unite in one act of grateful
love; and let all that is around thee, all that is before thee in the prospects
of an unbounded eternity, concur to elevate and transport thy soul, that thou
mayest, as far as possible, begin the work and blessedness of heaven, in
falling down before the God of it, in opening thine heart to his gracious
influences, and in breathing out before him that incense of praise which these
warm beams of his presence and love have so great a tendency to produce, and to
ennoble with a fragrancy resembling that of his paradise above.
The grateful Soul rejoicing in the Blessings of Providence and Grace, and pouring out itself before God in vigorous and affectionate Exercises of Love and Praise.