DISCOURSE VII. I17 there shall not be one cold heart there, nor so mach as one luke- warm worshipper; for we shall live under the immediate rays of God, who formed the light, and under the kindest influences of Jesus, the Sun of righteousness. We shall be made like his an- gels, who are most active spirits and his ministers, who are flames of fire; Ps. civ. 4. Nor shall any dulness or indifFerency hang upon our sanctified powers and passions : They shall be all warm and vigorous in their exercise, amidst the holy enjoy- ments of that country. In the ninth and last place, as night is the season appointed for sleep, so it becomes a constant periodical emblem of death, as it returns every evening. Sleep and midnight, as I have shewn before, are no seasons of labour or activity, nor of de- lieht in the visible things of this world : It is a dark and stupid scene, wherein we behold nothing with truth, though we are sometimes deceived and deluded by dreaming visions and vanities : Night and the slumbers of it are a- sort of shorter death and burial, interposed between the several daily scenes and transac- tions of human life. But in heaven, as there- is no sleeping, there is no dying, nor is there any thing there that looks like death. Sleep, the image or emblem of death, is for ever banished from that world. All is vital activity- there : Every power is immortal, and, every thing that dwells there is for ever alive. There can be no' death, nor the image of it, where the ever - living God dwells, and shines with his kindest beams : His presence maintains perpetual vitality in every soul, and keeps the new creature in its youth and vigour for ever. The saints shall never have reason to mourn over their withering graces, languid .virtues or dying comforts ; nor shall they ever complain of drowsy faculties or inactive powers, where God and the Lamb are for ever present in the midst of them. Shall I invite your thoughts to dwell a little upon this subject ? [Here this discourse may be divided.] Shall we make a more particular enquiry, whence it comes to pass that there is no night nor darkness in the heavenly city ? We are told a little before the words of my text, that the glory of God enlightens it, and the Lamb is the light thereof. There is no need of the sun by day, or of the moon by night; there is no need of any such change of seasons as day and night in the upper regions, nor any such alternate enlighteners of a dark world, as God has placed in our firmament, or in this visible sky. The inheritance of the saints, in light, is sufficienly irradiated by God himself, who at his first call made the light spring up out of darkness over a wide chaos of confusion, before the sun and moon appeared ; and the beams of divine light, grace and glory are communicated from God, the original fountain of it, x2
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