BERM. X.]-' THE HIDDEN LIFE OF A CHRISTIAN. 1ST He knows my diligence and my holy labour to please hirn: He knows the wrestlings and the conflicts that I go through hourly, to maintain my close walking with my God : He knows that I live, though it is but a feeble life; and the charges of the World against me are false and malicious." It is with a relish of holypleasure that the Christian sometimes,' in secret, appeals to our Lord Jesus, Christ, as Peter did, and says, " Lord thou who know- est all things, knowest that I love thee," John xxi. 1 7. IUd Consolation. It is a matter of unspeakablecorn- fort to a christian, that the most terrible things to a sin= ner, are become the greatest blessings to a saint: And these are death and judgment. What can bemore dread= ful to those who know net" God than those two words are ; for they put an eternal end to all their present plea- sures, and to all their hopes. But what greater happi ness can a saint wish or hope for, than death and judg- ment will put him in possession of? Theone carries his soul upward where his life is, that is, to God and Christ in heaven; the other brings his life down to earth, where his body is, for Christ shall then come to raise his dust from the grave. I confess, I finished my former discourse on this text, with a meditation on death and judgment; how the gloom which hung around the saint in this life, is all dis- pelled at that blessed hour; and he who was unknown and despised among men, stands forth with honour amongst admiring angels: His bidden manner of life is for ever at an end. But in this discourse the secret and glorious springs of his life, vt. God and Christ, will naturally leadus to the same delightful meditations of futurity, as the hidden manner of it has done; and there is so rich a variety of new and transporting scenes and ideas attending that subject, that I have rio need to tire youwith unpleasing repetition, though I resume the glo- rious theme. Let my consolations proceed then, and let the saints rejoice. At the moment "of death, the soul may say, " Farewel; for ever, sins; and sorrows, and perplexities; farewell temptations of the alluring, and the affrighting kind neither the vanities, nor the terrors of this world, shall reach me any more; for I shall from this rnorpent for
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