nour God. The hearts of his saints are instruments of music to the Lord; he has formed their souls for his glory, and tuned their heart-strings to his own praise. Now he loves to see them kept still in tune, though he does not always play his own praises upon them; he neither wants our services nor our songs, for his own perfections are an everlasting harmony to himself, without the slender notes that we can sound. We may make this sweet remark at last, that Zion on earth shall be joined to Jerusalem above; the family below shall be joined to the upper house, for they have learnt the work of heaven, their hearts are tuned to praise; they want only such harps as angels have, to bring glory down and make a heaven on this earth. In 1 Chron. xi. 4. we are told that David took Zion from the Jebusites, and built it round about, and added it to Jerusalem. So shall Jesus, the true David, the King of saints, take this earthly Zion from the powers of this wicked world, and shall build and adorn it around with glory and strength, with perfect beauty and complete grace, and add it to the Jerusalem which is above. Look upwards, O souls who are full of praises, and are even impatient to speak the glories of your God, look to Jerusalem above, where praise is constant and never ceasing, and rejoice to think that you shall be made inhabitants of that city, and united to that glorious church! It is your chief pleasure here to be praising your God, and it is the chief pleasure of your fellow-saints on high: where happiness is perfect, praise is perfect too, and never silent. It is the chief delight of happy souls there to run over the glories of their God, and tell one another joyfully, and humbly tell their God, what a wise, what a holy, what an almighty and all-gracious God he is. Every breath of praise is a new gale of pleasure there; it is sweet breathing in air perfumed with praises, and this climate is most agreeable to your new nature and your constitution, you that are members and parts of Zion; and you shall be translated thither to your kindred souls. In heaven, the river of pleasure springs from God's right hand, because Jesus the Saviour sits there. It is a river that makes glad the city of God, and every stream, as it flows along the golden streets, murmurs sweet praises to the fountain. But heaven and the state of glory are not yet complete: the church waits above for many promises that are not yet fulfilled, and future blessings that are yet unknown. The work of grace is not finished till the great resurrection-day; and heaven itself, in all the blissful regions of it, waits for such praises as the ears of men or angels have never yet heard. While the whole church of God on earth is in a state of imperfection and trial, a state of sins and sorrows, praise waits in all the sanctuaries below, and in Zion above too. The souls in glory wait for complete salvation, and the redemption of their bodies from the grave. On the harps of angels praise sits waiting, and it waits also on the tongue of Jesus the intercessor. His prayers shall one day change all at once into praises, and lift the praises of angels and of embodied saints to higher notes than ever yet they knew. O the voices, and the songs, the joys, the raptures of that moment, of that day, of that eternity, when such a multitude of praises shall burst out at once, which have been waiting long in that Zion, and shall become an everlasting praise! When Jesus the Son of God, the Mediator, shall lead the worship; and the praises that have been growing these seventeen hundred years on his tongue shall break forth and spread themselves abroad, and all the creation shall hear, and all echo to this song, "Glory to God in the highest!" This is what we wait and hope for, and long to bear a part in those pleasures and those praises. XVIII. O that I knew where I might find him! AMONG all the various kinds and orders of God's intel lectual creation, there is not one that uses this language besides a mourning saint in this lower world. As for all other spirits, spirits, whether dwelling in flesh or not, their wishes are expressed in a very different manner; nor do they seek and long to find out an absent God. If we ascend up to heaven, and inquire there what are the wishes of those blessed spirits, we shall find that their enjoyments are so glorious, and their satisfactions rise so high in the immediate presence of God amongst them, that they have nothing of this nature left to wish for they know that their God is with them, and all their wish is, what they are assured to enjoy, That this God will be with them for ever. If we descend to the regions of hell, where God reigns in vengeance, we shall hear those unhappy spirits groaning out many a faithful wish-" O that I knew where I might avoid him, that I might get out of his sight, out of his notice and reach for ever! I feel his dreadful presence, and O that it were possible for me to be utterly absent from him, and to find a place where God is not!" If we take the wings of the morning, and fly to the utmost parts of the eastern or the western world, we shall find the language of those ignorant Heathens, "O that I knew where I might find food, and plenty, and all sensual delights!" But they send not a wish after the great God, though he has been so many ages absent from them and their fathers. He is unknown to them, and they have no desires working in them after an unknown God. If we tarry at home and survey the bulk of mankind around us, the voice of their wishes sounds much the same as that of the Heathen world-" O that I knew where I might find trade and merchandize, riches and honours, corn, wine, and oil, the necessaries or the superfluous luxuries of life!" But God is not in all their thoughts. If they frequent the temples, and attend the seasons of worship, they are well enough satisfied with outward forms without the sight of God in them. There is no natural man that, with a sincere longing of soul, cries out, "Q that I knew where to find him!?? As for the children of God that live in the light of their Father's countenance, they walk with him daily and hourly, they behold him near them by the eye of faith, and they feel the sweet influences of his gracious presence; their highest ambition and their dearest wishes are," Oh that he might abide for ever with me, and keep me for ever near to himself!" The words of this scripture therefore can only be the language of a saint on earth in distress and darkness; when God, who was wont to visit him with divine communications, and to meet him in his addresses to the throne of grace, has withdrawn himself for a season, and left the soul to grapple with many difficulties alone, This was the case of that holy man, whose sorrows and complaints have furnished out almost a whole book of scripture, and supplied the saints in all succeeding ages with the forms and speeches of pious mourning. It is the voice of a sacred impatience that Job here utters, "O that I knew where I might find him!" and by a plain paraphrase we may learn both the meaning and the reason of such language, and be taught by his example to lament after an absent God. Let us suppose the saint therefore pouring out his soul in such sort of expressions as these, in which I shall not entirely confine myself to the darkness of the patriarchal dispensation under which Job lived, but indulge the language of the New Testament, and personate a mourning Christian. "Time was when I had a God near me, and upon every new distress and difficulty I made him my present refuge; I was wont to call upon him in an hour of darkness, and he shone upon my path with divine light. He has often taught `me to read my duty in his providences, or in his word, or by some secret hints of his own Spirit, even while I have been kneeling at the throne of grace: but now I find not my usual signs and tokens, my guide and my counsellor is withdrawn. "O that I knew where I might find him !" "He was once my kind assistant in every duty, and my support under every burden: I have found the grace of my Lord sufficient for me in my sharpest conflicts, his strength has appeared in my weakness. When my spiritual enemies have beset me round, he has scattered them before me, or subdued them under me; and being held up by his everlasting arms, I have stood my ground, and borne up my head under the weight of heavy sorrows: but now I am attacked on all sides, my soul wrestles hard with sins and temptations, and I find no assistance, no victory: I sink under my present sorrows; for my God, my strength, and my comforter, is absent, and afar off. "O that I knew where I might find him!" 66 My God was wont to deal with me as a compassionate friend; when Satan accused, he has justified. He has shown me the all-sufficient sacrifice of his Son, and that spotless righteousness of his which has answered all the demands of his own holy law, and cancelled all the charges of guilt that the devil or my own conscience could bring against me. He has taught me by faith to put my soul under the sprinklings of this sacred blood, and to wrap around me the robe of this divine righteousness; he himself has arrayed me in garments of salvation: but now the army of my sins rises up before me, and overwhelms my spirit with many terrors; Satan, the accuser, urges on the charge, and my Saviour and his righteousness are, as it were, hidden from me. "O that I knew where I might find him!" "Many a censure have I borne from men, and had my reputation assaulted, and my good name blackened with many a scandal. But when man reproached me, God has undertook my cause, and made my righteousness shine as the light, and my innocence as the noon-day; I could then pour out my soul before him, tell him all my sorrows in flowing language, and feel sweet relief: but now, alas! troubles and reproaches are multiplied upon me, and he does not seem to take my part; my spirit is bound and shut up, and I am cut off from that free converse, that humble |