Let us here exclaim, Blessed are the people whose God is Jehovah, for we shall soon be made pillars in the house of our God, from whence we shall no more go out. We shall see God face to face, the light of His countenance shall never more be eclipsed, but will Eternally shine upon us. Praise, praise without ceasing and without end, be to the ever blessed and Holy Trinity, who hath prepared such felicity for us, and who hath prepared us for it. Let us join together in one glad voice in praising the Lamb that was slain, and let every tongue, and let every angel of every order, join us in one song of praise.

CHAPTER XXII.

The Love of Christ to His People in Death; the reverse to the UngodlyThe Saints Depicted, and their Deaths Precious-Their Assurance of their Eternal State, and Living Witnesses to the Love and Faithfulness of God.

In further prosecuting this subject, consider for a moment the love of Christ to His people, being from Everlasting to Everlasting, never to terminate. In their last stage of life, when they go through the dark valley and shadow of death, His "Everlasting arms are underneath them," "His rod and His staff" are their support, and when their last expiring breath ceases, then it may be said, in the language of Scripture, "precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints."

In relation to the world at large, we are taught by an

authority not to be questioned, that the "whole world lieth in wickedness." Hence the very reverse of the proposition must be accepted in respect to all such. And that trembling Scripture is in confirmation, "As I live, saith the Lord, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked." And who shall calculate the horrors of that state when men have died as they have lived, and as they were born, in the unawakened, unregenerate, unrenewed nature of the Adam-fall transgression? Yea, when in the full ripeness of original sin, inherent in the very essence and elixir of their being, which they brought with them into the world, they go out of it again with the accumulation of actual guilt; falling as grapes of gall from the vine of Sodom and the fields of Gomorrah; rotten in bitterness, and defiling even the earth that covers them; the mind sickens as it contemplates the prospect. It cannot be supposed for persons of this complexion that these lines are intended. It is the death of the Lord's SAINTS, which is said to be precious in His sight; and to them the consolations to be found in death can only be applicable; and who they are, the Word of God very clearly ascertains. They are described therein as "called to be saints ;" and the "faithful in Christ Jesus;" by which is intimated that, in the original state of nature in which they were born, they were, as all men are, sinners and children of wrath even as others; but, being called by Sovereign grace to the knowledge of the Lord, they "who were sometimes darkness are now light in the Lord; they who were sometimes afar of, and sinners to God by wicked works, are made nigh by the blood of the cross.' "* And it

* Ephes. ii. 13.

is in reference to this recovered state of the Church, the Apostle speaks when he said, " And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of our Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God."* Hence being "delivered from the power of darkness, and translated into the kingdom of God's dear Son, they are made meet partakers of the inheritance with the saints in light." To all of this description and character, these lines are most affectionately addressed. Numberless providences, both in nature and grace, await the reader and writer of these lines. The death of either or both is in the unerring appointment of the Lord, and may quickly take place: let us be in watchfulness, like the prophet on his watch-tower, that come whensoever the Lord may, at "midnight or cock-crowing in the morning," we may not be "ashamed before Him at His coming." For if our lives are now "hid with Christ in God," our deaths will then be precious in His sight; "and when Christ, who is our life, shall appear, we shall appear with Him in glory." It is the most delightful consideration to every child of God in the Spiritual Church of Christ, that the Lord, in whose sight the death of his saints is precious, is Jehovah in His Trinity of Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Both the death and life, indeed, of every individual member of Christ's mystical body, cannot but be precious in the sight of God the Father, precious in the sight of God the Son, precious in the sight of God the Holy Ghost; and it is impossible for it to be otherwise. For, as each glorious Person, in the Unity of the Divine Essence, hath taken an equal part in + Col. iii. 3, 4.

* 1 Cor. vi. 11.

† Col. i. 12, 13.

all Covenant engagements concerning the Church, which is His body before all worlds, so doth each continue an equal attention to the Church during the whole of her time-state here, and will the same in all her Eternal state hereafter, when there shall be no worlds. And, I beseech the reader to pause over this view, and ponder well the love, the grace, the tenderness-what shall I call it—the Infinite and indescribable condescension of the Holy Three in One, which bear record in heaven, thus to reveal and make known what, without special manifestations, never could have been known to the spiritual apprehension of His chosen, the gracious tokens of the love of each, and of the whole conjunction of the Godhead As if the Lord intended thereby—and which indeed is evidently the design-that besides the general knowledge given in Holy Scripture of the Divine Majesty existing in a Trinity of Persons, His redeemed ones might have somewhat more near and endearing to lean upon, in their personal apprehension of, and communion with, day by day, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. And what I very earnestly and affectionately beg of every child of God in the spiritual Church of Christ, in whose own heart a saving work of grace hath been wrought, that he will remember and, if possible, never lose sight of, what the Scriptures of God have taught concerning the united operations of God in His Trinity of Persons in this accomplishment. And I must and will contend, as one that contendeth on Scriptural ground for a plain matter of fact, that in every instance of conversion from a state of nature to grace, however unconscious at times the highly favoured objects of that love may in themselves be of it,

nevertheless they carry about with them in their own bosom living testimonies from day to day of the love of God the Father, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the communion of the Holy Ghost. Men, who know nothing of these Divine operations in their own souls, may, and will, call in question those glorious truths of our most holy faith; and, from a total ignorance of any work of grace wrought in themselves, will give no evidence to the work of grace wrought in others. But this is not the case with the Lord's people; they are themselves the witnesses for His truth. And it is an infinitely important consideration with me, I confess, to keep always in view, and to be always living upon the sure conviction of it, that as the gracious acts of each and of all are such as none but God can perform, each and all thereby undeniably prove His Eternal power and Godhead in the Unity of the Divine Essence. And, consequently, it must also follow, that as those blessings bestowed upon the Church from each glorious Person in the Godhead are all equally Sovereign and Almighty: so are they all equally entitled to the same acts of adoration, love, and praise, to each and to all in the same Unity of the Divine Essence. If the reader happily, through Divine teaching, knows these precious things, he will not need my advice. For my own part, I desire to do by them as Moses commanded Israel to do by the Lord's statutes and judgments, namely, "to bind them as a sign upon mine hand, and as frontlets between my eyes." And I say of them, they shall lie down with me, and rise up with me; yea, I will esteem them more than my necessary food. For very sure I am, that in