Part 150

I congratulate you from my inmost soul. O that your hearts may be in tune this day to “magnify the LORD,” and your spirits prepared to “rejoice in GOD your Saviour.” Like the Virgin _Mary_, you are highly favoured, and from henceforth all the generations of GOD’s people shall call you blessed. You can call CHRIST, Lord, by the Holy Ghost, and thereby have an internal, as well as external evidence of the divinity, both of his person, and of his holy word. You can now prove that despised book, emphatically called The Scriptures, doth contain the perfect and acceptable will of GOD. You have found the second _Adam_ to be a quickening spirit; He hath raised you from death to life. And being thus taught, and born of GOD, however unlearned in other respects, you can say, “Is not this the CHRIST?” O ineffable blessing! inconceivable privilege! GOD’s spirit witnesseth with your spirits, that you are the children of GOD. When you think of this, are you not ready to cry out with the beloved disciple, “What manner of love is this, that we should be called the children of GOD!” I believe that holy man was in an extasy when he wrote these words; and tho’ he has been in heaven so long, yet his extatic surprize is but now beginning, and will be but as beginning through the ages of eternity. Thus shall it be with all you likewise, whom the high and lofty One, that inhabiteth eternity, hath made his living temples. For He hath sealed you to the day of redemption, and hath given you the earnest of your future inheritance. His eyes and heart shall therefore be upon you continually: and in spite of all opposition from men or devils, the top-stone of this ♦spiritual building shall be brought forth, and you shall shout Grace, grace unto it: your bodies shall be fashioned like unto the Redeemer’s glorious body, and your souls, in which (O infinite condescension!) He now delights to dwell, shall be filled with all the fulness of GOD. You shall then go no more out; you shall then no more need the light of the sun or the light of the moon, for the LORD himself will be your temple, and the Lamb in the midst thereof shall be your glory. Dearly beloved in the LORD, what say you to these things? Do not your hearts burn within you whilst thinking of these deep, but glorious truths of GOD. Whilst I am musing, and speaking of them, methinks a fire kindles even in this cold, icy heart of mine: O what shall we render unto the LORD for all these mercies! Surely He hath done great things for us: How great is his goodness, and his bounty! O the heighth, the depth, the length, and the breadth of the love of GOD! Surely it passeth knowledge. O for humility! and a soul-abasing, GOD-exalting sense of these things! When the blessed virgin went into the hill country, to pay a visit to her cousin _Elizabeth_, amazed at such a favour, she cried out, “Whence is it that the mother of my LORD vouchsafes to come to me?” And when the great Jehovah filled the temple with his glory, out of the abundance of his heart, king _Solomon_ burst forth into this pathetic exclamation, “But will GOD in very deed dwell with men on the earth?” With how much greater astonishment ought we to say, And will the LORD himself in very deed come to us? Will the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, dwell in, and make our earthly hearts his living temples? My brethren, whence is this? From any fitness in us foreseen? No, I know you disclaim such an unbecoming thought. Was it then from the improvement of our own free-will? No, I am persuaded you will not thus debase the riches of GOD’s free grace. Are you not all ready to say, Not unto us, not unto us, but unto thy free, thy unmerited, thy sovereign, distinguishing love and mercy, O LORD, be all the glory. It is this, and this alone, hath made the difference between us and others. We have nothing but what is freely given us from above: if we love GOD, it is because GOD first loved us. Let us look then unto the rock from whence we have been hewn, and the hole of the pit from whence we have been digged. And if there be any consolation in CHRIST, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the spirit, if any bowels and mercies, let us study and strive to walk as becometh those who are made the temples of the living GOD, or, as the apostle elsewhere expresseth himself, “a holy temple unto the LORD.” What manner of persons ought such to be in all holy conversation and godliness? How holily and how purely should we live! As our apostle argues in another place, “For what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? What communion hath light with darkness? Or what concord hath CHRIST with Belial?” Shall those who are temples of the living GOD, suffer themselves to be dens of thieves and cages of unclean birds? Shall vain unchaste thoughts be suffered to dwell within them? much less shall any thing that is impure be conceived or acted by them? Shall we provoke the LORD to jealousy? GOD forbid! We all know with what distinguished ardor our blessed Redeemer purged an earthly temple; a zeal for his father’s house even eat him up: with what a holy vehemence did he overturn the tables of the money-changers, and scourge the buyers and sellers out before him! Why? They made his father’s house a house of merchandise: they had turned the house of prayer into a den of thieves.