they have found all the satisfaction in them that they once expected? and they will all be constrained to acknowledge, that vanity and vexation of spirit is the sum of all created good. In a little time our sweetest enjoyments cloy, and cease to afford us any material gratification : in a season of deep afflic- tion they lose all their power, and are not unfrequently turned into sources of the greatest sorrow. But whom did the pardon- ing love of Christ ever fail to comfort ? Who ever ceased to derive consolation from it under the heaviest afflictions ? Who ever found it a source or an occasion of sorrow to his soul, except indeed that he sorrowed because he did not value it more, and improve it better? Other joys embitter the thought of death, and vanish the moment that the soul takes its flight from the body: but the knowledge of our acceptance with God makes the thought of death delightful; and the joy arising from it is perfected in the very instant of our departure hence. Lastly,
It is that, without which no other ground of joy can exist. We will suppose that you possess health, and riches, and wisdom, and honour, and every gratification that your heart can wish, and that too in the highest degree that it can be enjoyed ; what is it all, whilst you have no prospect beyond the grave? If you were sensible of your state, you would be like a person sitting down to a banquet, with a sword suspended over his head by a single hair ; you would not know one moment's peace. Who would envy a man, that after a few hours was to be burnt alive ? Whatever he might possess, he would be regarded by all as a pitiable object : and such is that man who, after a few more days, must be cast into the lake of fire and brimstone : whatever of wealth or honour he may have attained, he is a wretched creature, and if he be at all sensible of his state, he would gladly exchange conditions with the meanest and most afflicted saint on earth.
What comparison then will earthly joys bear with this ? Even that of casting out devils, and finding them subject to one's power, would be nothing, when it is considered that the person so honoured may soon be cast out himself, and bidden to " depart accursed into everlasting fireq."]
Learn then,
1. To seek this great blessing above all things —
[Some may be ready to say, ' If God has not, of his own sovereign grace, inscribed my name in his book from all eternity, how shall I get it done now?' To this I answer, The secret decrees of God are no ground of action to you : you are to act precisely as if all depended on your own personal exertion : nay,
<] Matt. vii. 22, 23.