A Christian furnished with this spiritual life can see Christ and glory, beyond all the things of this life ; he can look backwards, make use of all things past, see the vanity of things so admired of others ; he can taste things nature doth not relish ; he hath strength of reasons beyond all the apprehensions of reason ; he is a man of a strong working. This should stir us up above all things to get this spiritual life in us, lest, like St Paul's living dead widow, we be dead whilst we be alive, 1 Tim. v. 6. Therefore, * That is, ' deadly afraid,' — G.
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unless we will be dead creatures, labour we must for a spiritual life, for there is another death which follows the first death. We not only lose God and Christ, life and glory, eternal life, communion with saints and angels, but also we come to eternal torments with the devil and his angels. There- fore above all things go we to Christ, that we may live in his sight.
What is the reason we seek not more for this spiritual life ? Because, when the conscience is not awakened, we think there is no such thing : like Judas, walking on in the state of nature, in drunkenness, voluptuousness, covetousuess, and the like, until we perish suddenly. If the conscience be awakened, oh then it is easy to work upon such a one who sees his misery and desires the remedy. It was easy to persuade Jacob to send for corn into Egypt, when a famine was in the land of Canaan. It is easy to per- suade men hungry and thirsty to eat and drink ; easy to persuade a laden, weary man to lay down his burden and rest. So it is with us. If the conscience be awakened to have a sense of sin, and that intolerable wrath and eternal punishment due thereunto, we should and wqjald long for this spiritual life.
I beseech you, let us believe there is such a life. Look 1 Pet. i. 3. There he blesses God, ' who hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.' None can go to heaven but they who are begotten again here. The main help is the use of the means. This is that pool of Bethesda, at which if we lie the angel of the covenant will put us in to be healed. Never rest then till this life be gotten in us. When we find such an antipathy betwixt our spirits and sin as is between poison and them, then there is a beginning of the work. So wo should hate sinful persons, whose conversations hinder the progress and increase of our spiritual life. Those who venture on all occasions, no wonder they do fall in sinful courses. What is all their care and endeavour but to draw one into sin ? They care for their lusts, and never think of any more. A Christian will care most for the nourishing of his best life, know- ing that good and bad company do, the one quicken, the other dead him.
Christ is called life, the bread of life, ti'ee of life, and he gives us living water to refresh our souls, not that he is so essentially bread, or a tree, but by the efficacy of his working in us. For God is life in himself. There- fore he swears by it : * As I live, saith the Lord, I desire not the death of a sinner,' Ezek. xxxiii. 11. We consider not here of life so high, though this life must be derived from him principally. It is so natm-ally. The Son is the fountain of life, because he is God, who is radically, fundamen- tall}', and essentially life.
But before Christ be fitted to be life for us, he must be man first, as John vi. 55, ' For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.' And the reason why he so quickens is, because he is also God, being that bread which came down from heaven, of which ' whoso eateth shall live for ever.' Now this great work of our salvation being of necessity to be performed by an infinite person as God, who could not die, he therefore took upon him a mortal nature, to open a current to mercy and justice. Therefore his flesh is meat indeed ; but the flesh profiteth nothing without the Spirit which quickens ; for there must be a Spirit to seal up all this unto us. As without shedding of blood no forgiveness of sins, so without the Spirit sealing these things unto our souls, we can have no comfort of them. When we speak of spiritual Hfe, he it is that we live for ; by him, and in him, and through him we hve. Therefore, 1 Cor. xv. 45, ' the last Adam is called a quickening Spirit,' because by that Spirit he quickened himself,
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and quickens us now to live the life of grace, and shall hereafter quicken our dead bodies at the resurrection. Ho he is called ' the Snn of righteous- ness,' for light and heat, because, as the sun lightens and warms, so he is the light of the world, as John speaks, ' lighting everything which cometh into the world,' John i. 9, warming also and cherishing the mass of things, and therefore is called light and life.