232 EXCELLENCY OF THE CHRISTIAN DISPENSATION. You will urge the necessity of attending to your worldly callings, which, you will say, cannot be carried on unless you give them the greater part of your time and attention. Be it so. Remember, we do not advise you to spend more of your time in religion than in your ordinary concerns. This would extinguish all human industry. But if you be sincere in your profession of religion you will regulate your pursuits by it, and engage no farther in any of them than is consistent with the spirit of it. In the midst of all your other concerns you will still make religion the centre of your hopes and the consummation of your wishes. An ordinary mechanic devotes more of his time to the labour of his hands than to any other concern; but it is not his laborious employment that interests his heart; it is his desire of procuring subsistence and of warding off the inconveniences of poverty and want. Finally, brethren, let each of us examine ourselves whether we be in the faith or not; let us not shrink from the severest test to which conscience and the word of God can put us. If we be, indeed, found sincere, after thus searching our hearts, our faith will grow more firm and our consolations more steady; or if it appear that we have been hitherto deceiving and deceived, (awful idea!) we shall at least have an opportunity of once more lifting up our eyes for mercy, and of reading our danger in our sin, not in our punishment. But we hope better things of you, brethren, and things which accompany salvation. We hope that you have fled from the wrath to come, and have laid hold on eternal life; and we rejoice in the prospect of meeting you in a much larger assembly at the great day, when you shall have washed your robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Then, brought out of much tribulation, and redeemed from every nation, and tongue, and people, his elect shall be gathered, he shall give up the kingdom to his God, and God shall be all in all. Alas! the voice of individual praise is weak and feeble; but how will our hearts swell with adoration and delight, when, while we are praising him, he shall receive from millions of beings and millions of worlds the same incense! ON THE WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT: THE CIRCULAR LETTER FROM THE MINISTERS AND MESSENGERS OF THE SEVERAL BAPTIST CHURCHES OF THE Northamptonshire Association. [WRITTEN IN 1809.] their eyes," standing before the throne of God and the Lamb in white robes and palms in their hands, crying with a loud voice, Salvation to God that sitteth upon the throne and to the Lamb, for ever and ever! What delight will it afford to renew the sweet counsel we have taken together, to recount the toils of combat and the labour of the way, and to approach, not the house, but the throne of God in company, in order to join in the symphonies of heavenly voices, and lose ourselves amid the splendours and fruitions of the beatific vision! To that state all the pious on earth are tending; and if there is a law from whose operation none are exempt, which irresistibly conveys their bodies to darkness and to dust, there is another not less certain or less powerful which conducts their spirits to the abodes of bliss, to the bosom of their Father and their God. The wheels of nature are not made to roll backward; every thing presses on towards eternity; from the birth of time an impetuous current has set in, which bears all the sons of men towards that interminable ocean. Meanwhile heaven is attracting to itself whatever is congenial to its nature, is enriching itself by the spoils of earth, and collecting within its capacious bosom whatever is pure, permanent, and divine, leaving nothing for the last fire to consume but the objects and the slaves of concupiscence; while every thing which grace has prepared and beautified shall be gathered and selected from the ruins of the world to adorn that eternal city which hath no need of the sun neither of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God doth enlighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof. Let us obey the voice that calls us thither; let us seek the things that are above, and no longer cleave to a world which must shortly perish, and which we must shortly quit, while we neglect to prepare for that in which we are invited to dwell for ever. Let us follow in the track of those holy men who together with your beloved and faithful pastor have taught us by their voice and encouraged us by their example, that, laying aside every weight and the sin that most easily besets us, we may run with patience the race that is set before us. While every thing within us and around us reminds us of the approach of death, and concurs to teach us that this is not our rest, let us hasten our preparations for another world, and earnestly implore that grace which alone can put an end to that fatal war which our desires have too long waged with our destiny. When these move in the same direction, and that which the will of heaven renders unavoidable shall become our choice, all things will be ours; life will be divested of its vanity, and death of its terrors. Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought we to be in all holy conversation and godliness, looking for and hasting to the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens, being on fire, shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat? Nevertheless, we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth in which dwelleth righteousness. |