set, and what can make np the want of this sun ? As all candle-lij^ht, star-light, and torch-light, cannot make up the want of the light of the sun ; so when the Sun of righteousness hides his face, it is not all creature-comforts that can make up the want of his countenance. i David sometimes could say tliat ' God was his portion, and his salva- tion, and his strong tower,' Ps. Ixi. 3, and what not; and yet presently cries out, ' Why art thou cast down, 0 my soul ? and why art thou disquieted within me?' Ps. xlii. 5. In one place he saith, 'I shall never he moved,' Ps. xxx. 6; and yet presently it follows, 'Thou hiddest thy face from me, and I was troubled,' ver. 7. And this is the state of a believer in this world. But in heaven there shall no clouds arise between the Lord and a believing heart. God will not one day smile, and another day frown ; one day take a soul in his arms, and another day lay that soul at his feet. This is his dealing with his people here. But in heaven there is nothing but lasses and embraces, nothing but a perpetual enjoyment of God. When once God takes the soul unto himself, it shall never be night with it any more — never dark with that soul more, &c. ; all tears shall then be wiped away. That is a sweet word in the 1 Tlies. iv. 17, 18, ' And so shall we be ever with the Lord ; wherefore comfort one another with these words.' There are, saith Musculus, angels and archangels in heaven. Ay, but they do not make heaven ; Christ is the most sj)arkling diamond in the ring of glory. It is heaven and happiness enough to see Christ, and to be for ever with Christ. Now, oh what a glorious change is this ! Methinks these tilings should make us long for our dying- day, and account this life but a lingering death.
5. Consider this : Death is a change that jjuis an end to all external and interned chancjes. What is the whole life of a man, but a life of changes ? ^ Death is a change that puts an end to all external changes. Here you change 3'our joy for sorrow, your health for sickness, your strength for weakness, your honour for dishonour, your plenty for poverty, your beauty for deformity, your friends for foes, your silver for brass, and your gold for copper. Now the comforts of a man are smiling, the next hour they are dying, &c. All temporals are as transitory as a hasty, headlong torrent, a ship, a bird, an arrow, a post, that passeth by. Man himself — the king of these outward comforts — what is he, but a mere nothing ? — the dream of a dream, a shadow, a bubl)le, a flash, a blast. Now death puts an end to all external changes: there shall be no more sickness, no more com- plaints, no more wants, &c.
And then it puts an end to all internal changes. Now the Lord smiles upon the soul, and anon he frowns upon the soul. Now God gives assistance to conquer sin, anon the man is carried captive by his sin ; now he is strengthened against the temptation,
^ By death saints come to a fixed and invariable eternity. Nescio quid erit, ijuid isia vita non erit, &c., [Aujiustiue,] — i. e., Wliat will that life be, or rather, wliat will not that life be, since all good either is not at all, or is in such a life, — light which place cannot comprehend, noises and music which time cannot vanish away, odours which arc never dissipated, a feast wliich is never consumed, a blessing which eternity bestoweth, but eternity shall never sec at an end.
* There is nothing excellent that is not perpetual, saith Gregory Nazianzen. Philo- Bophers could say, that he was never a happy man that might afterwards become miser- able. Eternity is that Ujium perpctuum hodie.
ECCLES. VII. 1.] IS HIS BEST DAY. 399
anon he falls before the temptation, &c. Job carried it out bravely in the midst of storms, and speaks like an angel ; but when Job was wet to the skin, and the arrows of the Almighty stuck in him, and his day was turned into niglit, and his rejoicing into mourning, &c., then a man would have thought him a devil incarnate by his cursing. But death puts an end to internal changes, as well as external changes. Now the soul shall be tempted no more, sin no more, be foiled no more. Now ye may judge by this that a Christian's dying -day is his best day. Death is another Moses: it delivers believers out of bondage, and from making brick in Egypt. It is a day or year of jubilee to a gracious spirit — the year wherein he goes out free from all those cruel taskmasters which it had long groaned under. The heathen gods held death to be man's summum bonum, his chief est good ; there- fore, when one of them had built and dedicated the temple at Delphos, he asked of Apollo for his recompense the thing that was best for man : the oracle told him that he should go home, and within three days he should have it — within which time he died. Thus the very heathens themselves have consented to this truth, that a man's dying-day is his best day.
6. Death is a change that brings the soul to an unchangeable rest. It is the bringing of the soul to bed — to a state of eternal rest.i That is the last demonstration of the point, that a believer's dying-day is his best day. Now while we are here the soul is in a-toss. The best man in the world — that is highest and clearest in his enjoyments of God — is too often like to Noah's dove that found no rest : either he wants some external mercy or internal mercy, and will do so till the soul be swallowed up in the everlasting enjoyments of God ; but death brings a man to an unchangeable rest. In Rev. xiv. 13, 'I heard a voice from heaven saying to me, Write, From henceforth blessed are the dead that died in the Lord.' Why ? ' For they rest from their labours,' &c. Oh, saith he, write it down as a thing of worth and weight, ' Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord ; for they rest from their labours,' &c. Death brings the soul to unchangeable rest. In Isa, Ivii. 1,2,' The righteous perish, and no man layeth it to heart, &c. He shall enter into peace : they shall rest in their beds, each one walking in his uprightness.' Oh, death is a change that brings a soul to unchangeable rest ; it brings a soul a-bed. This was that that made Paul long ' to be dissolved, and to be Avith Christ ;' and the Corinthians to groan for deliverance.^ It was a notable saying of blessed Cooper, ' Many a day have I sought death with tears ; not out of impatience or distrust,' saith he, ' but because I am weary of sin, and fearful to fall into it.' You know how the martyrs hugged the stake, and welcomed every messenger of death that came to them, and clapped their hands in the midst of the flames. Death is a believer's coronation-day, it is his marriage-day. It is a rest from sin, a rest from sorrow, a rest from afflictions and temptations, &c. Death to a
^ Death is a rest from the trouble of our particular callings ; it is a rest from afBic- tions, a rest from persecutions, a rest from temptation, a rest from desertion, a rest from Bin, and a rest from sorrow, Gen. viii. 8.