532 TNE FIRST FRUITS 0E TIIE SPIRIT ; OR [DISC. It ration, and exalts them to. the highest pleasure and praise. Have you never fallen into such a devout and fixed contemplation of the majesty of God, as to be even astonished at his glory and greatness, and to have your souls só swallowed up in this sight, that all the "sorrows and the joys of this life, all the businesses and necessi- ties of it have been forgotten for a season, all things below and beneath God, have seemed as nothing in your eyes ? All the grandeurs and splendours of ,mortality have been buried in darkness and oblivion, and creatures have, as it :were, vanished from the thoughts, and been lost, as the stars die and vanish at the rising sun, and are no more seen ? Have you never seen the faceof God in his sublime grandeur, excellence, and majesty, so as to shrink into the dust before him, and lie low at his foot with humblest adoration ? And you have been transport- ed into a feeling acknowledgrrient of your own nothing- ness in the presence of God. Such a sight the prophet Isaiah seems to have enjoyed : Is. xl. 15, 17. " Be- hold, the nations before him are as the drop of the bucket, and as the small dust of the balance, he taketh tip the isles as a very little thing. All nations before him are as nothing, they are counted to him less than nothing and vanity." " When the lips are not only directed to speak this sublime language, but the soul, as it were, beholds God in these heights of transcendent majesty, it 'is over- whelmed with blessed wonder and surprising delight even while it adores in most profound lowlinéss and self-ábasemeryt. This is the emblem of the worship of the heavenly world; see Rev. iv: 10, where the elders, saints and prophets, martyrs, angels, and dominions, and principalities ofthe highest degree cast down their crowns at the foot of him that made them, and exalt God in his supremacy over all." . " In heaven there are such blessed and extensive surveys of the infinite knowledge of God, and his amaz- ing wisdom discovered' in his works, as makes even all their own heavenly improvements in knowledge and un- derstanding, to appear, as mere ignorance, darkness, and folly before him. In such an hour as this is, the holy angels may charge 'themselves 'with folly in his sight, a's 'hebeholds them in the imperfection of their understand- ing. Now have you never been. carried away in your
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