DISCOURSE III. 169 public assemblies and ordinances, or he is withdrawn from our souls, if we take not delight therein ; for where God dwells among his saints, pleasure will dwell too. It is the presenceof God makes heaven, where pleasures are grown up to their full perfection. Let us ask our souls, whether we are not decaying christians ? Did we not use to come up to the house of God with joy, and worship together with delight? And that perhaps in times of difficulty too, as well as in days of greater liberty ? What a blessed frame of spirit was David in ? Psal. xlii. 4. And surely we have felt the same sacred pleasure too, when he went up, as it were in multitudes to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise. Is it thus with us at present? Or have we lost the sense and savour of those days? Where is that holy desire, that impatientlonging and thirstingafter God, which once appeared among us ? Our dwelling in the house of the Lord, has perhaps made the good things of his house familiar, commonand contemptible. O let us strive and labour, and pray for recover- ing grace. Decays will grow upon us, and separate us farther from God, and from the delightful sense of his favour, unless we are watchful, and repent and renewour first-love.
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