1. The considerations that are like to keep the spirit aweful.
[1.] Consider his wonderful purity and holiness. There is no attribute that drives a creature to astonishment and self-abhorrency so much as God's holiness. We dread him for his wrath, power, and justice ; but all these are rooted in his holiness : 1 Sam. vi. 20, ' Who is able to stand before this holy Lord God ? ' This is that which makes the guilty tremble, and the purest creatures are abashed at the presence of God. It is said of the cherubim : Isa. vi. 2, 3, ' they covered their faces, and ' Cried one to another, and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.' This awed the angels — God's holiness, his immaculate and unspotted glory, and they covered their faces as if they were ashamed of those seeds of folly that are in the angelical nature, the changeableness of their nature. Though the angels do not fear the strokes of God's justice, yet they tremble at the purity of his presence. And the children of God dread him for his holiness ; so the prophet cries out: Isa. vi. 5, ' Wo is me ! for I am undone ; because I am a man of polluted lips, and mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.' This is that attribute in which the creatures are most defective, and in which God doth most excel ; and therefore it renders God most awful, and affects the creature with shame. Joshua xxiv. 19, ' You cannot serve the Lord, for he is an holy God.' It is his holiness awakens his justice, which makes him take notice of our failings.
VeR. 6.] SERMONS UPON HEBREWS XI. 149
[2.] Keflect upon the majesty of God and tlie gloiy of his attendants. Whenever we come to worship him, we worship him in the presence of angels and archangels. The children of God find by experience that not only the presence of God, but the presence of angels is a very moving con- sideration. We are more apt to conceive of finite essences than of that wliich is infinite, as coming nearest and bordering more upon our own manner of being, and because we can more securely and without danger I'orm a representation of them. Therefore consider you are standing be- fore God and all his holy angels : Ps. cxxxviii. 1, ' Before the gods will I sing praise unto thee.' The Septuagint reads it — ' Before the angels.' The angels are present in the assemblies of the saints, which was deci- phered by the pictures of the chernl)im which were in the temple ; and upon this account, the apostle urgeth reverence in the worship of God, that the women shoidd cover their heads, ' because of the angels,' 1 Cor. xi. 10. They are conscious to all those impurities and indecencies in worship that we are guilty of ; and therefore to greaten our reverence of God, it is good to consider that we worship him in the presence of his holy angels. The saints in the old testament trembled at the appearance of an angel. If we should come before an earthly prince sitting on his throne, environed with his nobles, how should we be afraid ! Consider, thou standest before God, who is encompassed with cheru- bim, seraphim, thrones, dominions, angels, archangels : Dan. vii, 10, ' Thousand thousands ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him.'
[3.] Compare the divine glory and our own vileness : Gen. xviii. 27, ' I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord, who am but dust and ashes.' We should think of the frailty of our constitution, and the impurity of our hearts : Eccles. v. 2, •' Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to utter anything before God : for God is in heaven, and thou upon earth.' There is not so great a distance between heaven and earth asbeween God and you. The prophet useth an expression, Isa. xl. 15, ' All nations before thee are but as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance.' If you should put a great weight in one scale, and nothing but dust in the other, this is a small resemblance of the disproportion between God and us. I confess our expressions are many times humble, but the tongue prescribes to the heart, rather than the heart to the tongue ; and so they are but a vanity of speech, which the Lord abhors, vain compliments, that do not arise from a deep and inward sense of God's excellences.
2. The considerations that are likely to keep the heart cheerful. There is not only fear required, but such a fear as is consistent with a holy ingenuity and confidence, that is becoming the sweetness of religion. Worship is not the task of slaves, but the duty of children ; and God would have you come with an ingenuous liberty and freedom into his presence. To this end —
[1.] Consider the sweet representations that are made of God's mercy in scripture. Luther said. It is the intent of the whole scrij^ture to represent God to be merciful to .sinners. This is the attribute he most delights in. See how^ God jnoclaimed his name, Exod. xxxiv. 6, 7, ' The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiv-