DISC. xi.] AND JOY AT TIME RESURRECTION. s'Si he represents his desires with more decency and submis- sion. Every desire to die is not to be construed sinful and criminal. Nature may ask of God, a relief from its agonies and a period to its sorrows, nor does grace ut- terly forbid it, if there be also a humble submission and resignation to the will of God, such as we find exempli- fied by our blessedSaviour, " Father, if it be thy will, let this cup passfrom nie ; yet not as Iwill, but as thou wilt ;" Mat. xxvi. 39, 4 :>. On this second observation k desire to make these three reflections : Reflection I. " Though a good man knows that death was originally appointed as a curse for sin, yet his faith can trust God to turn that curse into a blessing: He can humbly ask his Maker to release him from the painful bonds of life, to hasten the slow approaches of death, and to hide him in the grave from some overwhelming sorrows. This is the glory of God in his covenant of grace with the children of men, that he " turns curses into blessings ;" Deut. xxiii. 5. And the grave which was designed as a prison fop sinners, is become a place of shelter to the saints, where they are hidden and se- cured from rising sorrows and calamities. It is God's known hiding-place for his own children from the envy and the rage of men, from all the known. and unknown agonies of nature, the diseases of the flesh, and the dis- tresses of human life, which perhaps might be overbearing and intolerable. " Why, O my fearful soul, why shouldst thou be . afraid of dying ? Why shouldst thou be frighted at the dark shadows of the grave, when thou art weary with the toils and crosses of the day ? Hast thou not often desired the shadow of the evening, and longed for the bed of natural sleep, where thy fatigues and thy sorrows may be forgotten for a season ? And is not the grave it- self a sweet sleeping-place for the saints, wherein they lie down and forget their distresses and feel noneof the miseries of human life, and especially since it is softened and sanctified by the Son of God lying down there Why shouldst thou be afraid to lay thy head in the dust ; It is but entering into God's hiding- place, into his chant- hers of rest and repose : It is but committing thy flesh, the meaner part of thy composition, to his care in the dark for a shor,t season : He will hide, thee tilere, and
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