128 TEE HIDDEN LIFE OF A CHRISTIAN. bitterness before God ; Or who can express the surprizing delight, and secret satisfaction he felt at heart, when God com- municated to him the first lively hope of forgiveness and divine salvation ? O the unknown joys of such an hour which some christians have experienced, when a divine beam of light shone into their souls, and revealed Jesus Christ within them, as St. Paul speaks :, when they saw his all-sufficiency of righteousness and grace, to answer their infinite necessities ; and when they durst believe in him as their Saviour ! And as the beginnings of this lifeare hidden from the world, so the exercises and progress of it are a secret too. While the world is following after idols and vanity, the christian, in his retired chamber, breathes after his God and his Redeemer, and gives a loose to his warmest affections, in the pursuit of his Al- mighty Friend, and his best beloved. While the men of this world are vexing their spirits, and fretting under present disap- pointments, hedwells in a lonesomecorner, mourning for his sins and follies. And at another time, while the children of vanity grow proud in public, and boast of their large possessions, and inheritances, he rejoicesin secret, in the hope of glory, and takes divine delight in the fore-thought of his better inheritance among the saints his conversation is in heaven; Phil. iii. 20. I might run through all the exercises of the sanctified affec- tions, and the various parts of the divine worship, and of the conduct of a saint among the children of men. With what humble fear does he entertain the mention of the name of God ? With what deep self- abasement, and inward adoration ? At the presence of sin how is his anger stirred ? and his holy watchful- ness when temptations appear ? how does he labour and wrestle, fight and strive, lest he be overcome by the secret enemies of his soul ? And as his bitterness of heart is unknown to the world, so a stranger intermeddles not with his joy; Prov. xiv. 10. He feeds on the same provisionwhich his Lord Jesus did on earth, 'for it his meat andhis drink to do thewill of his Father which is inheaven This is a feast to the christian, which the world knows not of; John iv. 32, 34. II. The springs and principles of this life are hidden and unknown to the world ; and therefore the world esteems many of the actions of a truechristian very strange and unaccountable things, as we shall shew afterward, because they see not the springs of them. The word of God, or the gospel, with all the bidden trea- sures of it, is the chief instrument, or means, whereby this divine life is wrought and supported in the soul. The true christian beholds the purity of God in the precepts; he reads grace, heaven, and glory, in the promises; he sees the words of
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