212 THE WORLD TO 'COME. and greatness of God in such a light as fixes their thoughts in glorious wonder and the humblest adoration, and exalts them to the highest.pleasure and praise. lIave 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 so swallowed up in this sight, that all the sorrows and the ;joys of this life, all the businesses and necessities 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 splen- dours òf 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 adora- tion ? And you have been transported into a feeling acknowledg- ment.of your own nothingness in the presence of God. Such a sight the prophet Isaiah seems to have enjoyed ; Is. xl. 12, Id, 17. Behold the nations before him are as the drop of the bucket, and as the small dust of the balance, he taleeth up 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 trans- cendent majesty, it is overwhelmed with blessed wonder and sur- prising delight, even while it adores in most profound lowliness and self-abasement. 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, cast down their crowns at the foot of hirn that made them, and exalt God in his supremacy over all." 2. " In heaven there are such blessed and extensivesurveys of the infinite knowledge of God, and'his amazing wisdom dis- covered in his works, as makes even all their own heavenly im- provements in knowledge and understanding 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, as he beholds them in the imperfection of their understand- ing. Now have you never 'been carried away in your meditations of the all-comprehensive knowledge of God to such a degree, as to lose and abandon all your former pride and appearances of knowledge and wisdom in all the 'native and acquired riches of it, and count them all as nothing in his sight ? Have you never looked upward to the midnight skies, and with amazement sent your thoughts upward to hirn who calls all the stars by their Barnes, and brings them forth in all their sparkling glories, who marshals them in their nightly ranks and orders, and then stood overwhelmed with sacredastonishmeatat'the wisdom which made
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