as God, as the angel of the Lord before them." The godly soul that is in his right senses, under the powerful apprehensions of the loveliness of God, and the beauty of holiness, cannot be content to live by any lower instance than that of David, whose soul even broke for the longing that it had unto the Lord; or that of the spouse, who was even "sick of love." You have read of the mother of Sisera, looking out at the window, waiting for his coming, and crying through the lattice, "Why is his chariot so long in coming; why tarry the wheels of his chariot ?" But this is not to be compared to the earnest expectation of the creature, the new creature, waiting for the manifestation of God; which the Apostle elegantly expresseth, and yet seems to labour for words, as if he could not sufficiently express it neither, Rom. viii. 23. You have read of the Israelites marching up towards the promised land, and murmuring that they were held so long in the wilderness: but the true Israelitish soul makes more haste with less discontent, marches as under the conduct of the Angel of God's presence, and longs to arrive at its rest; but, alas! it is held in the wilderness too; and therefore cannot be fully quiet in itself, but sends forth spies to view the land, the scouts of faith and hope, like Caleb and Joshua, those men of another spirit; and these go and walk through the holy land, and return home to the soul, and come back, not as Noah's dove, with an olive leaf in her mouth, but with some clusters in their hands, they bring the soul a taste of the good things of the kingdom, of the glories of her eternal state; yea, the soul itself marches up to possess the land, goes out, with the

spouse in the Canticles, to meet the Lord, to seek him whom her soul loveth. Religion is a sacred fire, kept burning in the temple of the soul continually, which being once kindled from heaven, never goes out, but burns up heaven-wards, as the nature of fire is. This fire is kept alive in the soul to all eternity, though sometimes, through the ashes of earthly cares and concerns cast into it, or the sun of earthly prosperity shining upon it, it may sometimes burn more dimly, and seem almost as if it were quite smothered; this fire is for sacrifice too, though sacrifice be not always offered upon it; the same fire of faith and love, which offered up the morning sacrifice, is kept alive all the day long, and is ready to kindle the evening sacrifice too, when the appointed time of it shall come. In this chariot of fire it is, that the soul is continually carried out towards God, and accomplisheth a kind of glorification daily; and when it finds itself firmly seated, and swiftly carried herein, it no longer envies the translation of Elias. The spirit of sanctification is in the soul, as a burning fire shut up in the bones, which makes the soul weary with forbearing, and so powerful in longings, that it cannot stay: as the spirit of prophecy is described, Jer. xx. it is more true of the Spirit of God than of the spirit of Elihu, the spirit within constraineth, and even presseth, the soul, so that it is ready to swoon and faint away for very vehemence of longing. See the amorous spouse falling into one of these fainting fits, and crying out mainly for some cordial from heaven to keep up her sinking spirits, "Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples; for I am sick of love."

Oh

beautiful and blessed sight, a soul working towards God, gasping, and longing, and labouring, after its proper happiness and perfection! Well, the sinking soul is relieved; Christ Jesus reacheth forth his left hand to her head, and his right hand embraceth her; and now she recovers, her hanging hands lift up themselves, and the beauties of her fading complexion are restored; now she sits down "under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit is sweet unto her taste." See here the fairest sight on this side heaven; a soul resting, and glorying, and spreading itself in the arms of God, growing up in him, growing great in him, growing full in his fulness, and perfectly ravished with his pure love! O my soul, be not content to live by any lower instance? "Did not our hearts burn within us," said the two disciples one to the other," whilst he talked with us ?" But the soul in which the sacred fire of love is powerfully kindled, doth not only burn towards God, whilst he is more familiarly present with it, and, as it were, blows upon it; but if he seem to withdraw from it, it burns after him still: "My Beloved had withdrawn himself, and was gone; I sought him; I called him." And if the fire begin to languish, and seem as if it would go out, the holy soul is startled presently, and labours, as the Apostle speaks, to revive it, and blow it up again; calls upon itself to awake, to arise and pursue, to mend its pace, and to speed its heavy and sluggish motions. divine active principle in the soul maintains a continual striving, a holy struggling, and stretching forth of the soul towards God, a bold and ardent contention after the supreme good; religion hath the

This

strength of the Divinity in it, its motions towards its object are quick and potent. That elegant description which the prophet makes of the wicked heart, with some change, may be brought to express this excellent temper of the godly soul; it is like the working sea which cannot rest; and although its waters do not cast up mire and dirt, yet, in a holy impatience, they rise and swell, and cast up a froth and foam towards heaven. In a word, that I may comprise many things in few expressions, no man so ambitious as the humble, none so covetous as the heavenly-minded, none so voluptuous as the self-denying. Religion gives a largeness and wideness to the soul, which sin, and self, and the world, had straitened and confined; but his ambition is only to be great in God, his covetousness is only to be filled with all the fulness of God, and his voluptuousness is only to drink of the rivers of his pure pleasures: he desires to taste the God whom he sees, and to be satisfied with the God whom he tastes. Oh now, how are all the faculties of the soul awakened to attendance upon the Lord of life! It hearkens for the sound of his feet coming, the noise of his hands knocking at the door; it stands upon its watch-tower, waiting for his appearing, waiting more earnestly than they that watch for the morning, and rejoices to meet him at his coming; and having met him, runs into his arms, kisses him, holds him, and will not let him go, but brings him into the house, and entertains him in the guestchamber; the soul complains that itself is not large enough, that there is not room enough to entertain so glorious a guest, no, not though it have given

him all the room that it hath; it entertains him with the widest arms, and the sweetest smiles; and if he depart and withdraw, fetches him again with the deepest groans, Return, return, O Prince of peace, and make me an everlasting habitation of righteousness unto thyself!

It will not be amiss here briefly to touch upon the reason of the godly soul's so ardent pantings after God. And here I might show first, negatively, that it springs not from any carnal ambition of being better and higher than others, not from any carnal hope of impunity and safety, nor merely from the bitter sense of pressing and tormenting afflictions in this life. But I shall rather insist upon it affirmatively. These earnest breathings after God spring from the feeling apprehensions of self-indigency and insufficiency, and the powerful sense of divine goodness and fulness; they are begotten of the divine bounty and self-sufficiency, manifesting itself to the spirits of men, and conceived and brought forth by a deep sense of self-poverty. One might almost apply the Apostle's words to this purpose, "We receive the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in him." I shall not discourse upon these two heads disjunctly, but frame them into one notion, and so you may take it thus; these holy longings of the godly soul after God, do arise from the sense of its distance from God. To be so far distant from God, who is life and love itself, and the proper and full happiness of the soul, is grievous to the soul that is rightly affected towards him and hence it is that the soul cannot be at rest, but still longs to be more intimately joined to him,