HIS GOODNESS IN PROVIDENCE AND GRACE. 25 h he has kept its parts in action; and preserved and regulated the whole. "Your life contains a thousand springs, "Strange, that a harp of thousand strings Ah! it would not have kept in tune if he had not preserved the harmony. Survey your past years. They have been years of mercy. He has watched over you by day and by night. How many days of ease have you enjoyed! How many nights of security have you passed, when, sunk in sleep and insenthsibility, you had none to secure you but God! Have you enjoyed health? He gave it. Has sickness, if it visited you, yet made but a transient visit? He ordered its departure, raised you from the bed of pain, and brightened your pallid countenance with the returning bloom of health. Have you lived many years, and never, even for a day, been destitute of needful food and decent clothing? God has supplied these wants, through all the days of those departed years. Have you, from the moment of your birth to this hour, had friends, who have been the solace of your life? God gave those friends. Perhaps you have seen twenty, thirty, or more years roll away; can you say of one day in all those years, That day God forgot me; that day I had nothing from his bounty? You know you cannot; though you doubtless can say, I forgot him for many long rebellious years. Through what changing scenes has he led you, and still been uniformly kind! and so kind, that neither ingratitude nor rebellion has ever checked the tornrent of his mercies. He blessed you in childhood; he watched lover you in youth; and if riper years have rolled over your thead, he has crowned those years with all the mercies they have brought you. Through how many dangers has he led you! From how many storms has he sheltered you! § 14. Kind in providence, has he not been kinder still in grace? How much has God done to make you happy for ever! Compare your lot with the lot of millions; your holy light with their degrading darkness; your bright hopes with their mournful despair; the brightness of your day with the gloom of their sad night. If a Christian, "contrast your pure and peaceful sabbaths, with their unhallowed festivals of cruelty and superstition; your resources in sorrow, with all their unheeded sadness; your consolations in death, with all their D 26 DEVOTEDNESS TO GOD URGED FROM dark and cheerless agonies; your assured prospects into eternity, with their cold and heart-sickening theories; and what a theme have you for gratitude! what an argument for praise !” Who hath made you to differ? Why were you not born in Dahomy, or Hindostan, or Ceylon, and trained to worship the tiger, or juggernaut, or devils? Some compute six hundred millions of pagans to exist on earth. You might have been one; but God fixed your lot where the gospel spreads a cheering day. There are perhaps one hundred millions of papists, the greater part of them as ignorant of religion as the heathens themselves. Why are you not one? Why were you not born where, instead of learning to adore God and the Lamb, you would have been taught to worship "silver saviours and saints of gold!" and, nursed up in superstition and vice, have lived the slave of sin, believing that you could purchase of antichrist a pardon for your crimes? Have you a Bible? Millions never saw its holy pages. For perhaps a thousand millions of human beings but twenty-five millions of Bibles are supposed to have been printed. Why have you that precious book? God bestowed it on you. But I address you as a partaker of still greater mercies. Turn your eyes from earth to heaven. Think of God commending his love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. Think that he who kindled up the stars of light, assumed your nature, and suffered in your stead! and oh, what miracles of love have been manifested to you! Nor did they stop here. Did not God meet with you when you knew him not? did he not enlighten your mind, that else had been for ever dark? did he not kindle in your heart desires, that else you would never have felt? did he not lead you to that Saviour, to whom else you had never gone? And when you feared rebuke, did he not forgive, receive, adopt, and save? What mercies are these! Can you not exclaim, "I was lost, but am found; I was dead, but now I hope alive; I was a prodigal, but here I am in my Father's house!" Who sought, who quickened, who gave you welcome there? God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved you. And look you not forward to a time, when you hope in a heavenly home, to join the song of the ransomed, and to praise redeeming love for ever? And there will you not have to exclaim, What miracle HIS GOODNESS IN PROVIDENCE AND GRACE. 27 of mercy brought me here? me, once so vain, so gay, so thoughtless of all real good;-me, once so dissipated, so worldly;-me, once stained with ten thousand sins ;-me, for whom the pit of destruction yawned, and whom devils expected as their prey! God, that awful venerable name! God brought me here; and never, never should I have seen this abode of peace, but for his saving love. O my friend, are these rich mercies in possession, these richer in prospect, all the gift of that much injured, yet still benevolent, Being, God, and can he expect, or can you be willing to offer, less in return than all you have and are! Is it much to devote that little to him, who gives so much? Has he given you life and health, a thousand comforts, and more than doubled all in giving Christ, and will you not devote to him yourself and your all? Will he give you heaven, and is it much to devote to him a span of time on earth! O rather, pray, Merciful God! little, far too little, is the most I ever can devote to thee; and let me not make that little less, by offering a heart but half set on thee, and life but half devoted to thee! O rather, whatever other professors of thy gospel do, enable me to offer to thee all I have, and all I am, an unworthy and insignificant, yet a living, and, through Jesus Christ, an acceptable sacrifice! § 15. As one motive more for devotedness to God, remember that they who live most to God, live most to their own true welfare; and they who live to themselves, live to ruin. On this subject a pious writer observes, "The fact is, no man will have been found too cunning for God. Men, all men, will be for ever and ever what they were through life. Not a grain of the seed sown in time, but what will bear in time and through eternity its own fruit. The tree which thou plantest, O immortal, of its fruit shalt thou partake for ever. By the merits of Christ believers will attain to life eternal, but the history of that life eternal will bear the motto, Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he reap.' One star differeth from another star in glory, so also is the resurrection of the dead.' And thus a life of selfishness invariably ends in disappointment in some shape or other. There is an inseparable, an eternal, connexion between actions and their fruit, and no wit or cunning of men can dissolve it. • He that soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly, and he that soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully.' He that soweth to 28 SELFISHNESS LEADS TO RUIN. the flesh, shall of the flesh reap corruption, but he that soweth to the Spirit, shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.' "But he who has lived to himself, shall arise to shame and everlasting contempt.' I set before thee a heavenly life, a glorious career of Christian benevolence; and my grace should have been perfected in thy weakness. But thou preferredst a partial view of thy own interests, and thou livedst to thyself. Absorbed in secular engagements, thou raisedst a noble mansion; thou elevatedst thy family to the highest dignities, and the name of thy house has survived the ravages of centuries. But see, the world is on fire! Behold, a new earth and a new heaven! What share hast thou in this new creation? Is there one soul on these thrones which thou hast instrumentally raised thither? Is there one scene to the beauties of which thou hast contributed? None. All thy labours, all thy projects, have perished in the great conflagration, and thou art left alone, since all earthly connexions are dissolved, for ever to reflect on the inexpressible folly and turpitude of a life which has been consumed on a base and fruitless effort to make self the object of adoration and service, while the Deity and all the creatures have been made to serve with thy sins.' Go, infatuated wretch, eternity is before thee. a god for a moment, a miserable reptile for ever. Hadst thou lived to me, I had made thee a son and an heir of God. Thou hast lived to thyself; thyself in ruins shall be to thee the only object of contemplation amidst the solitudes and unavailing anguish of eternity! § 16. While the goodness, and love, and compassion of God thus claim for him your supreme regard, the contemplation of his excellences should fill your soul with pure delight. If you are indeed a follower of the Lamb, then this God is thy God for ever and ever; he will be thy guide even unto death.h Look at the creation, and you may exclaim, " My Father made it all." Look at the sun; it is darkness to his glory. Look at the world; it is the creature of a moment in his sight. He, before whom angels veil their faces; he, at whose frown the pillars of heaven tremble, he is thy God. He who inhabiteth eternity is thy God, and is for thee preparing a mansion in his own abode. O think more of God, and less of the world; more of his favour, and less of earthly GOD IS LOVE TO THE BELIEVER. 29 cares or troubles. What is the world to one who has to do with God? What are its pleasures or its pains to one who hopes ere long to be with God? What all the cares that agitate its followers, to one that knows he has but a moment here and eternity there? What is the world, what is thy country, what all thy friends to thee, compared with God? This world is not thy world. This country is not thy country. These friends, unless they too are the children of God, are not thy lasting friends; but heaven is thy country, and God is thy Friend and thy Father for ever. And who is he that is thus engaged as thy friend? The God who is love. Love is his brightest glory. For scores of ages has he been showering down innumerable blessings on this ungrateful world; for he is love. The meanest insect is not beneath his care. A sparrow does not die without him, and the fowls of the heaven are fed, because GOD IS LOVE. But in eternity the sun of his love sheds its brightest beams without one darkening cloud. Joy is diffused through all the immense regions of heaven, because GOD IS LOVE. Eternal day smiles on its peaceful mansions, for God is there, and GOD IS LOVE. Myriads of happy spirits exult there in unsullied holiness, unmingled happiness, and never-fading glory, for God is their friend, and GOD IS LOVE. He pours the tide of joy through their abodes, he lights up their eternal day, all they are, and all they have, all that heaven can furnish and eternal life bestow, all is the gift of God, for GOD IS LOVE. And is this God, thy God! then rejoice. The friend of angels is thy Friend and Father; and GOD IS LOVE TO THEE. What are all thy friends, and all their love compared with his? His love that reaches through earth and heaven! His love that supplies a sparrow's wants, and crowns with glory every angel's head! His love that extends through time, and stretches to eternity! His love to thee, more boundless than that to the angels that bow at his feet! For, for thee, a rebel and a worm, he gave his Son. O wonder and adore! This God, thy God! O bow at his feet! Abhor thyself for having ever offended him, and triumph in his love. Father of heaven, art thou my Father, and shall I not delight in thee? Giver of eternal life, art thou my life, and shall I not live to thee? God of angels, art thou my God, and a kinder God to me than even to them, and shall I not love thee, and yield |