BERM. IX., THÉ HIDDEN LIFE OF A CHRISTIAN. lG7 sound of a trumpet, into public light and glory; the same persons, indeed, that once inhabited mortality, but in far different equipage and array. The christian, on earth, is like the rough diamond among the common pebbles of the shore ; in the resur rection-day the diamond is cut and polished, and set in a tablet of gold. All that inward worth and lustre of holiness and grace, which are now hidden, shall be then visible and public before the eyes, of the whole creation. Then the saints shall be known by their shining, in the day when the Lord makes up his jewels, Mal. iii. 17. When the spirits of the just made perfect in all the beauties of holiness, shall return to their former man- sions; and become men again ; when their bodies are raised from the dust, in the likeness of the body of our blessed Lord, how shall all the saints shine in the king- dom of their Father, though in the kingdoms of this world they were obscure and undistinguished ! They shall appear, in that day, as the meridian sun breaking from a long,and dark eclipse; and the sun is too bright a being to be unknown; 'Mat. xiii. 43. What is there in a poor saint here, that discovers what he shall be hereafter? Howmean his appearance now ! how magnificent in that day ! What was there in Laza- rus on the dunghill, when the dogs licked his sores, that could lead us to. any thought what he should be in the bosom of Abraham ? What is there in the martyrs and confessors, described in Heb. xi. those holy men, with their sheep-skins, and their goat-skins upon them, wan- dering in deserts, and hidden in dens and caves of the earth ? What was there in these poor and miserable spectacles that looks like a saint in glory ? or that could give us any intimation what they shall be in the great rising day? Now are we the sons of God, but it does not ,yet ap- pear what we shall be; 1 John iii. 2. We can shew no pattern of it here below. Shall we go to the palaces of eastern princes, and borrow their crowns and sparkling attire, to shew how the saints are drest in heaven? Shall We take their marble pillars, their roofs of cedar, their costly furniture of purple and gold, to describe the man- sions of immortality? Shall we attend the chariot of some Roman general, with all the ensigns of victory, m4
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