BY RELIGIOUS AFFECTIONS. 263 ment do I here live ! What poor feeble thoughts have I of God ! What cold affections towards him ! How little have I of that life, that love, that joy, in which they continually live ! How soon doth that little depart, and leave me in thicker darkness. Now and then a spark falls upon my heart, and while I gaze upon it, it dies, or rather my cold heart quenches it. But they have their light in his light, and drink continually at the spring of joys. Here we are vexing each other with quarrels, when they are of one heart and voice, and daily sound forth the hallelujahs of heaven with perfect harmony. O what a feast hath my faith beheld, and what a famine it yet in my spirit ! O blessed souls ! I may not, I dale not, envy your happiness ; I rather re- joice in my brethren's prosperity, and am glad to think of the day when 1 shall be admitted into your fellow- ship. I wish not to displace you, but to be so happy as to be with you. Why must I stay, and weep, and wait? My Lord is gone ; he hath left this earth, and is enter- ed into his glory ; my brethren are gone; my friends are there ; my house, my hope, my all, is there. When I am so far distant from my God, wonder not what aileth me if I now complain ; an ignorant Micah will do so for his idol, and shall not my soul do so for the living God ? Had I no hope of enjoyment, I would go hide myself in the deserts, and lie and howl in some ob- scure wilderness, and spend my days in fruitless wishes; but since it is the land of my promised rest, and the state I must myself be advanced to, and my soul draws near and is almost at it, I will love and long; I will look and desire, I will be breathing, ' How long Lord ! how long wilt thou suffer this soul to pant and groan, and not open to him who waits, and longs to be with thee !" Thus, Christian Reader, let thy thoughts aspire, till thy soul longs, as David, O that one would give me to drink of the wells ofsalvation I And till thou canst say as he did, I have longed fir thy salvation, O Lord.(o) And as the mother and brethren of Christ, when they could not come at him because of the multitude, sent (o) Psalm cxix. 174.
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