II. The vast importance of seeking after it —
Both the promises and threatenings of the Mosaic law were chiefly of a temporal nature ; the people who served God faithfully being encouraged to ex- pect peace and plenty in the land of Canaan ; whilst those who were disobedient to his laws were to be visited with war, famine, pestilence, and ultimately to be driven out of that land, as the Canaanites had been before them. But under these figures truths of far higher moment were veiled : and the present and eternal states of men were shadowed forth as indissolubly connected with their moral and religious character. Hence the contrast drawn between the sentence accorded to "the upright" and "the wicked" in the concluding verses of our text, must be under- stood as referring to their respective states,
1. In this world —
[" Godliness is profitable unto all things, having the pro- mise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come'." Certainly in this world there is an immense " difference between those who serve God, and those who serve him not™." We readily grant that the ungodly and profane may prosper in respect of outward things, and that the saints may be in a state of degradation and oppression": but there is no comparison between the real happiness of the one and of the other : the ungodly are " like the troubled sea, whose waters cast up mire and dirt":" they are agitated by many ungovernable and con- flicting passions: their tempers are a source of continual dis- quietude P: and they have no inward resources to calm the
tumult of their minds But the godly have consolations
peculiar to themselves, and abundantly sufficient to counter- balance their afflictions. They have a God to go unto ; a God, who says, " Cast thy burthen on the Lord, and he will sustain thee." The very tribulations which they endure for righteous- ness sake, are to them a ground of glorying "J; and the light of God's countenance lifted up upon them fills their souls with joy and peace, even with " a joy that is unspeakable," and " a peace that passeth all understanding."
If then we look no further than to this present life, we do not hesitate to declare, that " the fear of the Lord, that is wis- dom ; and to depart from evil, that is understanding^"]
1 1 Tim. iv. 8. m Mai. iii. 18. « Ps. Ixxiii. 3—10.
0 Isai. Ivii. 20, 21. p Rom. iii. 16, 17. 'i Rom. v. 3. ^ Job xxviii, 28.