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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
face
of 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 of
the 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