158 fiHâ HF1315130 tIPE OP 'A CHRISTIAN". DEANf.'IX. upon. The suns of ambition follow after grandeur and power; the animals of pleasure pursue all the luxuries of sense ; the miser hunts after money, and is ever dig- ging for gold. It is visible enough what these wise men live upon. But the christia.n; who lives in the power and glory of the divine life, seeks after none of these; any farther than as duty leads him, and the supports and conveniencies of life are needful, in the present state of his habitation in the flesh. The sinner wonders what it is the saint aims at, while he neglects the tempting idols that himself adores, and despises the gilded vanities of a court, and abhors the guilty scenes of a voluptuous life. Christ and his children are, and will be, signs and wen- ders to the age they live in ; Is. viii. 18. compared with Heb. ii. 13: The men of this world wonder what a christian can have to say to God in so many retiring hours as lie an. points for that end; what strange business he can ern ploy himself in'; how he can lay out so much time in affairs, which the carnal mind has no notion of. On the other hand, the saint, when he is in a lively frame; thinks that all the intervals of his civil life; and all the vacant seasons that he can find between the necessary duties ofhis worldly station, are all little enough to transact affairs of such awful importance as he has to do with God, and little enough to enjoy those secret plea- sures which the stranger is unacquainted with. The children of God pray to their heavenly' Father in secret, and they feel unknown refreshment and delight in it; and they are well assured, that-their Father who seeth in secret will hereafter reward them openly, Mat. vi. 6. It is no wonder, that the profane world reproaches true christians' as dull, lifeless creatures, animals that have neither soul nor spirit in them, because they do not see them run to the same excess in things of the lowerlife. Alas ! theyknow net that the life of a chris- tian is..on high; they see it not, for it is hidden; and therefore they wonder we: are not busily engaged in the same practices and pursuits as they are; 1 Pet. iv. 4. They think it-strange that we run not to the same ex- cesses of riot. The world sees nothing ofour inward Ia- bour and strife against f'esh and serf, our sacred contest for the.prize.of glory; they know nothing of oúr earnest
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