And Mr. Wall, in his None-but-Christ, relates as sad a passage of a poor family in Germany, who were driven unto that extremity in the famine, that at last the parents made a motion one to the other to sell one of the children for bread to sustain themselves, and the rest ; but when they came to consider which child it should be, their hearts so relented, and yearned upon every one, that they resolved rather all to die together. Yea, we read in Lam. iv. 10. " The hands of " the pitiful women have sodden their own children.''
But why speak I of these extremities ? How many parents, yea, some godly ones too, have lived to see their children dying in pro- phaneness, and some by the hand of justice, lamenting their rebellions with a rope about their necks.
Ah ! reader, little dost thou know what stings there are in the af- flictions of others ! surely you have no reason to think the Lord hath dealt more bitterly with you than any. It is a gentle stroke, a mer- ciful dispensation, if you compare it with what others have felt.
Consideration 18. I/' God be your God, you have really lost no- thing by the removal of any creature-comfort.
God is the fountain of all true comfort ; creatures, the very best and sweetest, are but cisterns to receive, and convey to us what com- fort God is pleased to communicate to them ; and if the cistern be broken, or the pipe cut off, so that no more comfort can be conveyed to us that way, he hath other ways and mediums to do it by, which we think not of; and if he please he can convey his comforts to his people without any of them : And if he do it more immediately, we shall be no losers by that ; for no comforts in the world are so de- lectable, and ravishingly sweet, as those that flow immediately from the fountain.
And it is the sensuality of our hearts that causes us to afl*ect them so inordinately, and grieve for the loss of them so immoderately, as if we had not enough in God, without these creature supple- ments.
652 A TOKEN FOR MOURKERS.
Is the fulness of the fountain yours ? and yet do you cast down yourselves, because the broken cistern is removed ; The best creatures are no better, Jer. ii. 13. Cisterns have nothing but what they re- ceive, and broken ones cannot hold what is put into thera. Why then do you mourn, as if your life were bound up in the creature ? You have as free an access to the fountain as you had before. It is the advice of an Heathen, (and let them take the comfort of it) to re- pair, by a new earthly comfort, what we have lost in the former.
" Thou hast carried forth him whom thou lovedst, (saith * Seneca) " seek one whom thou mayest love in his stead : It is better to repair " than to bemoan thy loss."
But if God never repair your loss in things of the same kind, you know he can abundantly repair it himself
Ah ! Christian, is not one kiss of his mouth, one glimpse of his countenance, one seal of his Spirit, a more sweet and substantial com- fort, than the sweetest relation in this world can afford you ? If the stream fail, repair to the fountain, there is enough still ; God is where he was, and what he was, though the creature be not.
Consideration 19. Tliough you maij want a little comfort in your life, yet surely 'it may be recompensed to you by a more easy death. The removal of your friends before you may turn to your great advantage, when your hour is come that you must follow thcra. O how have many good souls been clogged and ensnared in their dying hour, by the loves, cares, and fears they have had about those they must leave behind them in a sinful, evil world !
Your love to them might have proved a snare to you, and caused you to hang back, as loth to go hence ; for these are the things that make men loth to die. And thus it might have been with you, ex- cept God had removed them before-hand, or should give you in that day such sights of heaven, and tastes of divine love, as should master and mortify all your earthly affections to these things.
I knew a gracious person, (now in heaven) who, for many weeks in her last sickness, complained that she found it hard to part with a dear relation, and that there was nothing proved a greater clog to her soul than this : It is much more easy to think of going to our friends, who are in heaven before us, than of parting with them, and leavinjr our desirable and dear ones behind us.
And who knows what cares and distracting thoughts you may then be pestered and distracted with upon their account ? What shall be- come of these when I am gone.'* I am now to leave them, God knows to what wants, miseries, temptations, and afflictions in the midst of a deceitful, defiling, dangerous world.
I know it is our duty to leave our fatherless children, and friend- less relations with God; to trust them with him that gave them to us :
* Qriem amabas eTtidisti, gturre quern ames : Sattas est amicum reparare qnamjlere. Senec. Epist. p. 637.
A TOKEN FOR MOURNERS. Go^i
And some have been enabled clieerfully to do so when they were parting from them. * Luther could say, " Lord, thou hast given " me a wife and children, I have little to leave them ; nourish, " teach, and keep them ; O thou Father of the fatherless, and " Judge of the widow/' But every Christian hath not a Luther's faith ; some find it a hard thing to disentangle their affections at such a time : But now, if God has sent all yours before you, you have so much the less to do ; death may be easier to you than others.
Consideration 20. But rf nothing that hath been yet said will stick with ymi^ then^ lastly^ remember that you are near that state, and place which admits no sorrows, nor sad reflections, upon any such accounts as these.
Yet a little while, and you shall not miss them, you shall not need them, but you shall live as the angels of God : We now live partly by faith, partly by sense, partly upon God, and partly upon the creature; our state is mixed, therefore our comforts are so too. But when God shall be all in all, and we shall be as the angels of God in the wav and manner of our livino- ; how much will the case be altered with us then, from what it is now ?
Angels neither marry, nor are given in marriage, neither shall the children of the resurrection ; when the days of our sinning are end- ed, the days of our mourning shall be so too. No graves were opened till sin entered, and no more shall be opened when sin is excluded.
Our glorified relations shall live with us for ever ; they shall com- plain no more, die no more ; yea, this is the happiness of that state to which you are passing on, that your souls being in the nearest conjunction with God, the fountain of joy, you shall have no con- cernment out of him. You shall not be put upon these exercises of patience, nor subjected to such sorrows as you now feel, any more. It is but a little while, and the end of all these things will come. O therefore bear up, as persons that expect such a day of jubilee at hand.