I5$ ttHÉ HIÌIDEA LIFE OF A cHEISTIAICj Theblessed God shall dwell among them, and lay out :441 them the riches of his own all-sufficiency, riches of wisdom; grace, and power, all-suprising, and all-infinite. Divine power shall then reveal all the glory that has been laid up for them, of old, in the purposes of God, or in the promises of the bookof life. But it was fit it should be hidden there, while the time of their prohation lasted ; it was fit they should live by faith, and under some degrees of darkness, while the ages of sin and temp- tation were rolling away It was divinely proper that eternal life should not breakgel', nor the splendours of the thirdheaven be made too conspicuous, till the six thousand years of mortality and death had finished their revolutions round the lower skies, andhad answered the schemeof divinecounsel and judgment, on aworld where sin had entered. But lifeand heaven must not be hid forever, The almighty word, in that day, shall bid the ancient decree bring forth, and the promise unfold itself in public light, What new worlds of unseen felicity ! what scenes of delight, and celestial blessings$ never yet revealed to the race of Adam ! When the rivers of pleasure, that liad run under ground from the earth's foundations shall break up in immortal fountains, Mercy and truth shall lavish out uponmen with anunsparing hand all those treasures of life which were hid in God, and hi the gospel for them. TheAll-wise shall pleasehimself inmaking so noble creatures, out of so mean materials, dust and ashes. Glorified saints are master-pieces of divine skill; and the blessed original, or first exemplar of them, the man Jesus, is the perfec. tion of the contrivance of God here he has abounded in all 'wisdom and prudence. Then the inhabitants of upper worlds shall see an illustrious and holy creation, rising out of the ruins of this wretched globe, involved all in guilt, and weltering in penal fire, When this sceneopens, what sounding acclamations shall echo fromworld to world, arid new universal honours be paid to Divine wisdom ! The morning-stars shall sing together again, and those holy armies shout for joy. The grace of God descending to earth, in days pasts liad in some measure prepared his children for glory : But in that day he shall enlargetheir cape-. cities, both of sense and of mind, to an inconceivable extent, and shall fill the powers of their glorified nature with,the fruits of his love, new and old, And what if the limits of our capacity shall be for ever stretching themselves on all sides, and for ever drinking in larger measures of glory; What an astonishing state of ever growing pleasure ! What an eternal advance of our heaven ! The god. head is an infinite ocean of life and blessedness, and finite vessels may be for ever swelling, and for ever filling in that sea of all-
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=