2. There are others that do not seek him diligently, and with their whole hearts. Oh, to what a sorry use do the most of us put our lives ! We are hunting after the profits of the world and the pleasures of our senses, but we do not inquire after God. Most of us have cause to blush and to be ashamed, — How little is our delight in God ? how
VeR, 6.] SERMONS UPON HEBREWS XL 169
seldom do we think or speak of him ? how cold is our affections to him? how dead and careless are our prayers that we make? — our thoughts are taken up with trifles, and God finds no room there. It" any speak of God in our company, or mention his great love to sinners, we frown upon the motion, and think it unseasonable for those meet- ings and hours that we have consecrated to mirth and carnal sports, as if our thoughts of God were like gall and wormwood to embitter the pleasure we affect. We had rather have anything than God, his gifts than liimself, yea, the worser sort of them, than his favour and grace ; aud then we offend him, we do not take such care to please him, and reconcile ourselves to him by the means he hath appointed. They that do indeed love God, and seek after God, they are with him morning, noon, and night ; nay, they do carry God along with them in all their businesses and occasions : Ps. xvi. 8, ' I have set the Lord always before me ; ' and Ps. cxxxix. 18, ' When I awake, I am still with thee.' We that seldom think or speak of God, do we seek after God? surely no.
Use 3. To exhort us to seek God, aud to seek him out till we find him.
1. To seek God. Motives —
[1.] To enjoy God, who is the centre of our rest, and the fountain of our blessedness, is the chief end for which we were made. Man was made to use the creatures, and to enjoy God. All things were made to glorify God, but some creatures to enjoy him, as men and angels. We sin against the law of our creation, and swerve from the great end of our lives and actions, if this be not all our hope and all our desire : Ps. Ixxiii. 25, ' Whom have I in heaven but thee ? and there is none on earth that I desire besides thee.' ]!:sothing but God can make us happy.
[2.] It is our business to seek him, as well as our happiness to enjoy him. Since the fall, God is lost, and out of the indulgence of his grace offereth himself to be found again, and inviteth us to communion with himself, that we may have everlasting blessedness : Amos v. 5, ' Seek ye the Lord, and ye shall live.' Now, for us to despise this grace and turn our backs upon this offer, not to regard it in our thoughts, not to pursue it with earnest endeavours, it is a slighting of God's mercy : Ps. Ixxxi, 11, ' But my people would not hearken to my voice; and Israel would none of me.' He ofiereth himself, and we make little reckoning of it.
[3. J Because we are sluggish and backward, all external providences tend to quicken us to this duty. Mercies : Acts xvii. 27, ' That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him.' God refresheth our sense and taste with his goodness— with new experi- ences every day, that set us a- work anew in seeking after him. Afflictions : Hos. v. 15, ' I will go, and return to my place, till they acknowledge their offence, and seek my face : in their affliction they will seek me early.' This is the right use of all our troubles to drive us home to God, to quicken us to look after communion with him, and to make up our former negligence with double diligence herein, to set an edge upon our affections. God knows want is a spur to a lazy soul.
[4.] All ordinances are appointed for this end and purpose, that we
170 SERMONS UPON HEBREWS XT. [SeR. XXXIV.
might seek after God and find hini : Exod. xx. 24, ' In all places where I record my name I will come unto thee, and I will bless thee ; ' Mat. xviii. 20, ' Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them ; ' there he cometh most sensibly to mani- fest himself to us ; Eev. ii. 1, ' These things saith he that holdeth the seven stars in his right hand, that walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks.' His special presence is in his church. If we find him not in the time we seek him, we shall soon after : 2 Sam. vii. 4, ' And it came to pass that night, that the word of the Lord came unto Nathan ; ' Cant. v. 5, ' I rose up to open to my beloved, and my hands dropped with myrrh, and my fingers with sweet-smelling myrrh upon the liandles of the lock ; ' some impression was left that worketh afterward.