2. To manifest that he hath better things in store for his saints than the best and utmost of what they can desire or aim at here below. He had a heaven for Moses, and therefore might in love and mercy deny him Canaan. He employeth some eminently, their work is great, their end glorious, at the very last step almost of their journey, he takes off one and another, lets them not see the things aimed at : this may be thought hard measure, strict severity, exact justice, yea, as Job complains, 'taking advantages against them;' see but what he calls them to, in calling them off from their greatest glories and excellences on the earth and all this will appear to be love, tenderness, and favour in the highest. Whilst you are labouring for a handful of first- fruits, he gives you the full harvest ; whilst you are labour- in»- for the figure here below, he gives you the substance above. Should you see the greatest work, wherein any of you were ever engaged, brought to perfection, yet all were but a few drops compared with that fulness which he hath prepared for you. The Lord then doth it to witness to the children cf men, that the things which are seen, the best of them, are not to be compared with the things that are not seen ; yea, the least of them, inasmuch as he takes them whom he will honour, from the very door of the one, to bear
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them into the other. The meanest enjoyment in heaven is to be preferred 1)efore the richest on earth, even then when the kingdom of Christ shall come in most beauty and glory.
Use 1. You that are engaged in the work of God, seek for a reward of your service in the service itself. Few of you may live to see that beauty and glory which perhaps you aim at as the end of all your great undertakings for God, whereinto you have been engaged. God will proceed his own pace, and calls on us to go along with him, and in the mean time, until the determinate end come, to wait in faith, and not make haste. Those whose minds are so fixed on, and swallowed up with some end (though good) which they have proposed to themselves, do seldom see good days, and serene in their own souls; they have bitterness, wrath, and trouble all their days ; are still pressing to the end pro- posed, and commonly are dismissed from their station before it be attained. There is a sweetness, there is wages to be found in the work of God itself: men who have learned to hold communion with God in every work he calls them out unto, though they never see the main harvest they aim at in general, yet such will rest satisfied, and submit to the Lord's limitation of their time : they bear their own sheaves in their bosoms. Seeing: God oftentimes dismisses his choicest servants, before they see, or taste of the main fruits of their endeavours ; I see not upon what account consolation can be had in following the Lord in difficult dispensations, but only in that reward which every duty bringeth along with it, by communion with God in its performance. Make then this your aim, that in sincerity of heart, you do the work of God in your generation : find his presence with you, his Spirit guiding you, his love accepting you, in the Lord Christ, and whenever you receive your dismission, it will be rest and peace, in the mean time, you will not make haste.
Use 2. See a bottom and ground of consolation, when such eminent instruments as this departed worthy, are called off from their station when ready to enter upon the harvest of all their labours, watchings, toilings, and expense of blood. God hath better things for them in store, abiding things, that they shall not enjoy for a day or two, which is the best of what they could hope for here, had they lived to
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see all their desires accomplished ; but such as in the ful- ness whereof, they may lie down in peace to eternity. Why do we complain ? for our own loss ? is not the residue and fulness of the Spirit with him, who gave him his dis- mission ? for his loss, he lived not to see Ireland in peace, but enjoys the glory of that eternal kingdom that was prepared for him before the foundation of the world, which is the con- dition held out in the third observation.
Observation III. The condition of a dismissed saint is a condition of rest, * Go thy way until the end be ; for thou shalt rest.'
The apostle gives it in as the issue of a discourse from a passage in the Psalms, 'There remaineth therefore a rest unto the people of God;' Heb. iv. 9. it remains, and is re- served for them, this the Lord hath solemnly proclaimed from heaven ; Rev. xiv. 13. * Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord, from henceforth, yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours, and their works do follow them :' they go into a blessed condition of rest ; there is not any notion under which the state of a dismissed saint is so fre- quently described as this ' of rest,' which indeed is the proper end and tendency of all things ; their happiness is their rest ; their rest is all the happiness they can be partakers of: * Fecisti nos ad te, Domine, et inquietum est cor nostrum, donee veniat ad te.'