DISCOURSE XI. 437 a more unblemished and a more honourable character behind them if they had died much sooner. The latter end of life hath sometimes sullied their brightness, and tarnished the glory they had acquired in a hopeful youth : Their growing years have fallen under such temptations, and been defiled and disgraced by such failings, as would have been entirely prevented had they been summoned away into God's hiding -place some years before. Our blessed Jesus walks among the roses and lilies in the garden of his church, and when he sees a wintry storm coming upon some tender plants of righteousness, he hides them in the earth to preserve life in them, that they may bloom with new glories when they shall be raised from that bed. The blessed God acts like a tender Father, and consults the safetyand the honour of his children, when the hand of his mercy snatches them away before that powerful temptation comes, which he foresees would have defiled and distressed, and almost destroyed them. They are not lost, but they are gone to rest a little sooner than we are. Peace be to that bed of dust where they are hidden, by the hand of their God, from unknown dangers ! Blessed be our Lord Jesus, who has the keys of the grave, and never opens it for his favourites but in the wisest season I III. " God has appointed a set time in his own counsels for all his children to continue in death :" 'Those whom he has hid - 'dett in the grave he remembers they lie there, and lie will not suffer them to abide in the dust for ever. When Job intreats of God that he may be hidden from his sorrows in the dust of death, he requests also that God would appoint a set time for his release, and remember him. His faith seems to have had a glimpse of the blessed resurrection. Our senses and our carnal passions would cry out, where is Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and the rest of the ancient worthies, who have been long sleepers in their beds of repose for many thousand years ? But faith assures us, that God numbers the days and the months of the conceal- ment under ground, lie knows where their dust lies, and where to find every scattered atom against the great restoring day. They are unseen indeed and forgotten of men, but then they are under the eye and the keeping of the blessed God : Ile watches over their sleeping dust, and while the world has forgotten and lost even their names, they are every moment under the eye of God, for they stand written in his book of life, with the name of the Lamb at the head of them. Jesus, his Son, had but three days appointed him to dwell in this hiding- place, and he rose again at the appointed hour. Other good men who were gone to their grave not long before him, arose again at the resur. rection of Christ, and made a visit to many in Jerusalem : 'Their appointed hiding -place was but for a short season ; and all the children of God shall be remembered in their proper seasons in
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