[2.] Experience : Pom. viii. 23, ' We that have the first-fruits of the Spirit, groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.' A Christian here is unsatisfied, and longeth for a better and purer state of bliss and immortality, light, life, peace, joy. One drachm of grace is more precious than all the world, but yet it setteth them a-longing for more. The first-fruits showeth us what the harvest will be, and a taste what the feast will prove. Here we get a little knowledge of God, a sight of him in the ordinances, a twilight discovery of Christ, a look through the lattice, Cant. ii. 9, a little glance of his face, when neither doth he let the believers in to him, nor doth he come out to them. This glance maketh them long for more, so that in effect they send up the same message to Christ which his mother and brethren did because of the press, ' Thy mother and thy brethren stand without desiring to see thee.7 Tell him thou standest here without, but desirest to see him. So for the communion we have with Christ, it is but a taste : 1 Peter ii. 3, ' If so be ye have tasted the Lord is gracious ;' but that taste is very ravishing and delightful. Here we get a little from him in an ordi- nance, but that little is as much as we can hold ; but there he is all in all. Here our holiness is not perfect, the seed of God remaineth
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in us ; but there it groweth up to perfection, as every spark of fire tendeth to the element of fire.
[3.] Our pressures and the miseries of the present life : 2 Cor. v. 4, ' Being burdened, we groan.' We are pressed under a heavy weight, burdened both with sin and misery, and both set us a-groaning and a-longing, as men in a tempest would fain be set ashore as soon as they can.
(1.) Sin, to a waking conscience and a tender gracious heart, is one of the greatest burdens than can be felt : Rom. vii. 24, ' 0 wretched man that I am ! who shall deliver me from this body of death ? ' If any had cause to complain of afflictions, Paul much more ; he was whipped, imprisoned, stoned, in perils by land and sea ; but afflictions did not sit so close to him as sins : the body of death was his greatest burden, and therefore did he long for deliverance. If others go away silently under their load, the children of Clod cannot. As light and love increaseth, so sin groweth a greater burden to us. They cannot get rid of this cursed inmate, and therefore are longing for their final estate, when sin shall gasp its last : they long for the parting day, when by putting off the flesh, they shall put off sin, and dwell with God.
(2.) Miseries : the children of God have not divested themselves of the feelings of nature, are not grown senseless, as stocks and stones. The apostle telleth us, Rom. viii. 20-22, that the whole creation groaneth, because it is under misery and vanity. It is a groaning world, and God's children bear a part of the concert : they groan and desire earnestly their full deliverance. ' Few and evil are the days of the years of my pilgrimage,' said holy Jacob, Gen. xlvii. 9. Our clays are evil, therefore it is well they are but few ; that in this shipwreck of man's felicity, we can see banks and shores and a landing-place where we may be safe ; here is our travail, but there is our repose. We would sleep too much here, and take up our rest, if sometimes we did not meet with thorns in our bed.
3. The end and use of this longing and desiring.
[1.] It is an earnest desire, it maketh us industrious, and stirreth up and keepeth up our endeavours after another world : Phil. iii. 20, 21, ' But our conversation is in heaven, from whence we look for a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able to subdue all things unto himself.' Where there is a lively expectation, there men drive on a trade for another country. Desire is the vigorous bent of the soul, and so beareth us out under all the difficulties of obedience. If we do not desire, we will not labour, nor seek it in the first place ; and if our desires be weak and feeble, they are controlled by every lust, abated upon every difficulty : whatever gets your hearts, that will command your endeavours ; for as a man's desire is, so is he.
[2.] To make us constant, notwithstanding troubles, reproaches, persecutions : Mat. xi. 12, ' The violent take it by force.' They will have no nay ; they must have it, whatever it cost ; though ' sore troubles and persecutions, yet if Ave may get heaven and glory at last, it is enough. But where a thing is coldly and carelessly desired, everything puts us out of the humour.