Share in the same uncertainties, Like a fair prospect still we make Farther fine castles court the eye, The plains with hills, those hills with clouds, When death alas, perhaps too nigh, Will stop us in our full career, How fond and vain are our imaginations, when w have seen others called away on a sudden from th A a early scenes of life, to promise ourselves a long continuance here! We have the same feeble bodies, the same tabernacles of clay that others have, and we are liable to many of the same accidents or casualties: The same killing diseases are at work in our natures, and why should we imagine, or presume, that others should go so much before us? And if we enquire of ourselves as to character or merit, or moral circumstances of any kind, and compare ourselves with those that are gone before, what foundation have we to promise ourselves a longer continuance here? Have we not the same sins or greater to provoke God? Are we more useful in the world than they, and do more service for his name? May not God summon us off the stage of life on a sudden, as well as others? What are we better than they? Are we not as much under the sovereign disposal of the great God as any of our acquaintance who have been seized in the flower and prime of life, and called away in an unexpected hour? And what power have we to resist the seizure, or what promise to hope that God will delay longer? Let us then no more deceive ourselves with vain imaginations, but each of us awake and bestir ourselves as though we were the next persons to be called away from this assembly, and to appear next before the Lord. Motive 4. When we are awake, we are not only fitter for the coming of our Lord to call us away by death, and fitter for his appearance to the great judgment, but we are better prepared also to attend him in every call to present duty, and more ready we are fit to live also, and to do better service for God in whichsoever of his worlds he shall please to appoint our station. My business, O Father, and my joy, is to do thy will among the sons of mortality, or among the spirits of the blest on high. The Motive 5. 'Let us remember we have slept too lóng already in days past, and it is but a little while that we are called to watch. We have worn away too much of our life in sloth and drowsiness. 'night is far spent' with many of us, "the day is at hand; it is now high time to awake out of sleep, for now is our salvation nearer than when we first believed." Rom. xiii. 11, 12. Another hour or two, and the night will be at an end with us,' Jesus the morning star is just appearing; what? Can we not watch one hour? O happy souls, that keep themselves awake to God in the midst of this dreaming world! Happy indeed, when our Lord shall call us out of these dusky regions, and we shall answer his call with holy joy, and spring upward to the inheritance of the saints in light! Then all the seasons of darkness, and slumbering, will be finished for ever; united blaze of grace and glory: No fainting ture, no languors or weariness are found in vital climate; every citizen is for ever aw busy under the beams of that glorious day; love, and joy, are the springs of their eternal and there is no night there.' When he shall come to be glorified in his saints, and admired in all them that believe. 2 HOW mean and contemptible soever our Lord Jesus Christ might appear heretofore on earth, yet there is a day coming when he shall make a glorious figure in the sight of men and angels. How little soever the saints may be esteemed in our day, and look poor and despicable in an ungodly world, yet there is an hour approaching when they shall be glorious beyond all imagination, and Christ himself shall be glorified in them. In that day shall the Lord our Saviour be the object of adoration and wonder, not only among those of the sons of men that have believed on him, but before all the intellectual creation, and that upon the account of his grace manifested in believers. The natural enquiry that arises here is this, 'What particular instances of the grace of Christ in his saints, shall be the matter of our admiration, and his glory in that day?' |