WAITING ON GOD. 373 he know what it is to live by faith. This ruins and dis- appoints many a soul in its attempts for forgiveness. The prophet, speaking of this matter, tells us that " he that believeth shall not (and will not) make haste." isa. 23 : 16. Which words the apostle twice making use of, in both places renders them, " Whosoever believeth on him shall net be ashamed," or confounded. Rom. 9:33; 10 : 11. And that because this haste turns men off from believing, and so disappoints their hopes and leaves them to shame and confusion. Men, with a sense of the guilt of sin, having some discovery made to them of the rest and peace which they may obtain by for- giveness, are ready to catch greedily at it, and "make false, unsound, undue applications of it to themselves. They cannot bear the yoke that the Lord hath put upon them, but grow impatient under it, and cry with Rachel, " Give me children, or I die." Any way, they would obtain it. Now, as the first duty of such a soul is to ap- ply itself to waiting; so the first entrance into waiting consists in this silence and quietness of heart and spirit. This is the soul's endeavor to keep itself humble, satis, fled with the sovereign pleasure of God, and refusing all ways and means of rest and peace but what it is guided and directed to by the word and Spirit. As true waiting on God is opposed to haste, so it is to tumultuous lhoughls a.'u1 disquiet. The soul is silent, "I was dumb, I opened not my mouth, because thou didst it." Psalm 39 : 9. He redoubles the expression, by which he describes his endeavor to quiet his soul in the will of God. In the condition represented the soul is apt to have many tumultuous thoughts, or a multi-. tilde of perplexing thoughts, cf no use or advantage to
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