WAITING ON GOD. 413 his country, and found better entertainment elsewhere, "Myfriends, I had perished, if I had not perished :" had I not been undone by fire, it may be I had been ruined in eternal fire. God hath made all to work for my good. Our design in all this is to evince the reasonableness of the duty of waiting on God, which we are pressing from the Psalmist's example. Ignorance of God and ourselves is the great cause of all our disquiet. And this arises mostly, not from want of light and instruc- tion, but from want of consideration and application. The truths we have argued concerning God are obvious, are known to all; so are those concerning ourselves; but by whom are they employed or improved as they ought'? The frame of our spirits is as though we stood upon equal terms withGod, and thought, with Jonah, that we might do well to be angry with what he doeth. Did we rightly consider him, did we stand in awe of him as we ought, it had certainly been otherwise with us. Playing thus shown that Jehpvah himself is the pro- per object of the soul's waiting in the condition describ- ed, I shall only add one direction howwe may be en- abled to perform and discharge this duty aright, which we have manifested to have been so necessary, so rea- sonable, so prevalent, for obtaining relief. III. TEE WORD OF PROMISE is the soul's great support in waiting for God. So saith the Psalmist : "In his word do I hope ;" that is, the word of promise. As the word in general is the adequate rule of all our obedi- ence to God and communion with him ; so there are es- pecial parts of it suited to these especial actings of our souls towards him : thus the word of promise, or the
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