Watts - BX5200 .W3 1813 v.7

.- DISCOURSE X. 215 aids of the divine Spirit, a soul on earth may get near to heaven. And with what religious and unknown pleasure at such a seasón doth it shrink its own being as it were into an atom, and lie in the dust and adore ! 4. as The all - sufficiency of the great God to form and to supply every creature with all that it can want or desire" is ano- ther perfection of the divine nature, which is better known in hea- ven than it ever was here on earth, and affords another scene of astonishment and sacred delight : And there may be some ad- vances towards this pleasure found among saints below, some first fruits of this heavenly-felicity Mid joy in the all- sufficiency of God. " My whole self, body and mind, is from God and from him alone. All my limbs and powers of flesh and spirit were derived from him, and borrowed their first existence from their original pattern in his fruitful mind. All that I have of life or comfort, of breath or being, with all my blessings round about me, is owing to his boundless and eternal fulness ; and all my long reaching hopes and endless expectations that stretch far into f s- tutity, and an eternal world, are growing out of this same all - sufficient fulness. " But what do I think or speak of so little a trifle as I am ? Stretch thy thoughts, O my soul, through the lengths, and breadths, and depths of his creation, O what an inconceivable fulness of being, glory and excellency is found in God the univer- sal parent and spring of all ! What an inexhaustible ocean of being and life, of perfection and blessedness must our God be, who supplies all the infinite armies of his creatures in all his known and unknown dominions with life and motion, with breath and activity, with food and support, with satisfaction and delight ! Who maintains the vitals powers and faculties of all the spirits which he bath made in all the visible and invisible worlds, in all Ids territories of light, and peace, and joy, and in all the regions of darkness, punishment and misery ? In him all things live, and move, and have their being, Acts xvii. 28. He withdraws his breath and they die, Psalm civ. 29. He bath writ down all their names in his own mind, he gives them all their natures, and without him there is nothing, there can be nothing; all nature without him would have been a perpetual blank, and uni, versal emptiness, an everlasting void, and with one turn of his will he could sink and dissolve all nature into its original nothing. u Confess, O my soul, thy own nothingness in his presence, and with astonishing pleasure andworship adore his fulness : He isthy everlasting all. Be thy dependence ever fixed upon him ; thou canst not, thou shalt not live a moment without him, with- out this habitual dependence, and a frequent delightful acknow- ledgment of it. Such a devout frame as this is heaven,._ and

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