2. They that begin their happiness here make it their study to know Christ : John xvii. 3, ' This is life eternal, to know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent;' there is the foundation and the beginning of it. Study Christ in his natures, person, offices ; this is fit work for saints. Saith Moses, Exod. xxxiii. 18, ' Show me thy glory. '^
[1.] It is an increasing light, but to the wicked it is a growing darkness ; aKoro^ i^corepov, ' outer darkness,' Mat. xxv. 30 ; there they are held in chains of darkness. You love darkness better than light, and you shall have darkness enough one day. Now there is a thick curtain and veil drawn between you and Christ, and hereafter there will be a deep gulf; but our work in heaven is to behold Christ's glory. Can a man look for it, and not follow on to know the Lord ? None shall have a sight of Christ hereafter that do not know him now.
[2.] It must be such a light as carries proportion with the light of glory, that is, an affective, transforming light.
(1.) An affective light. Many may study to warm the brain, but not the heart : Kom. ii. 20, ' Which hast, /jb6p(f)7]v Tfj<i ryv(oaea><i, the form of knowledge, and of the truth in the law.' They may discourse more exactly than a good christian, have a map and model of truth in the brain ; they dig in the mines of knowledge that christians may have the gold. Do you see him with any affection ? Do you strive, above all things, to see his face ? Ps. xxvii. 4, * One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple.' It is David's unicum, Moses' ravishment, when he saw God's back parts : Exod. xxxiv. 9, ' If now I have found grace in thy sight, 0 Lord, let my Lord, I pray thee, go amongst us.' That is one effect of the sight of God ; a man would not be without his company : ' I pray thee go amongst us ;' as Absalom said, 2 Sam. xiv. 32, ' Come hither, that I may send thee to the king, to say. Where- fore am I come from Geshur ? It had been good for me to have been there still : now therefore let me see the king's face ; and if there be any iniquity in me, let him kill me ; ' as if he should say. Let him kill me rather than deny me the king's face. Prize this above all the world : Ps. iv. 6, 7, ' Lord, lift thou up the light of thy countenance upon us. Thou hast put gladness in my heart, more than in the time that their corn and their wine increased ;' Ps. Ixxx. 3, ' Cause thy face to shine, and we shall be saved.'
(2.) It is transforming : 2 Cor. iii. 18, * We all with open face, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the
108 SERMONS UPON JOHN XVII. [SeR. XLII.
same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.' Light and grace do always go together. It is such a looking upon Christ as Laban's sheep looked upon the peeled rods in the gutter ; it maketh us more like Christ. Sight worketh upon the imagination in brute beasts ; shall not the eye of faith be more strong to change than natural imagination ? A bare empty contemplation will do you no good ; those that find themselves to be the old man still, let them have never so much knowledge, it is no sign of grace, nor of an interest in glory.
Use 3. Let the foresight of this glorious estate wean thee from all inordinate affections to human and earthly glory. There is ' the lust of the eyes,' 1 John ii. 16. By the eyes we fire our hearts. Doth a stately glorious house allure thee ? What is this to heaven, the palace of God, and the mansion of blessed spirits ? Do glorious garments and apparel bewitch thee ? What is this to our robes of righteous- ness, and those garments of salvation wherewith the saints shall be clothed in the day of the manifestation of the sons of God ? Doth the face of earthly majesty astonish thee ? What will it be to behold the Lord Jesus in all his majesty and glory ? As the sun puts out the candle, so thould the forethought of these excellences extinguish in us carnal desire, and dissolve the enchantment that would otherwise bewitch our souls, and make us impatient under the cross. Beware of the vanity of the eye, if it be consecrated to behold Christ's glory.
Fifthly, The next thing is the reason of all this, the Father's eternal love to Christ, and in Christ to us : ' For thou hast loved me before the foundation of the world,' that is, from all eternity, as the phrase is often used in this sense in scripture. But how was Christ loved from all eternity ? I answer — Partly as the eternal Son of God : Prov. viii. 21-30, before the mountains were settled, before the hills were brought forth ; partly as mediator, designed from all eternity, and so ' loved before the foundation of the world,' as he was ' slain before the foundation of the world,' Kev. xiii. 8. Christ was our mediator from all eternity ; not only before we were born, but before ever he came in the flesh. To the eyes of God all things are present, nothing is past, nothing is to come. But why is this made a reason ? I answer — It is a reason : —