Part 59

§ 15. If is the will of God, that this rest should yet remain for his people and not be enjoyed till they come to another world.—Who should dispose of the creatures, but he that made them? You may as well ask, why have we not spring and harvest without winter? or, why is the earth below, and the heavens above, as, why we have not rest on earth? All things must come to their perfection by degrees. The strongest man must first be a child. The greatest scholar must first begin in his alphabet. The tallest oak was once an acorn. This life is our infancy; and would we be perfect in the womb, or born at full stature? If our rest was here, most of God's providences must be useless. Should God lose the glory of his church's miraculous deliverances, and the fall of his enemies, that men may have their happiness here? If we were all happy, innocent, and perfect, what use was there for the glorious works of our sanctification, justification, and future salvation?—If we wanted nothing, we should not depend on God so closely, nor call upon him so earnestly. How little should he hear from us, if we had what we would have? God would never have had such songs of praise from Moses at the Red Sea and in the wilderness from Deborah and Hannah, from David and Hezekiah, if they had been the choosers of their own condition. Have not thy own highest praises to God, Reader, been occasioned by thy dangers or miseries? The greatest glory and praise God has through the world, is for redemption, reconciliation, and salvation by Christ; and was not man's misery the occasion of that?—And where God loses the opportunity of exercising his mercies, man must needs lose the happiness of enjoying them. Where God loses his praise, man will certainly lose his comforts. O the sweet comforts the saints have had in return to their prayers! How should we know what a tender-hearted Father we have, if we had not, as the prodigal, been denied the husks of earthly pleasure and profit? We should never have felt Christ's tender heart, if we had not felt ourselves _weary and heavy laden, hungry and thirsty, poor and contrite_. It is a delight to a soldier, or traveller, to look back on his escapes when they are over: and for a saint in heaven to look back on his sins and sorrows upon earth, his fears and tears, his enemies and dangers, his wants and calamities, must make his joy more joyful. Therefore the blessed, in praising the Lamb, mention his _redeeming them out of every nation, and kindred and tongue_; and so, out of their misery, and wants, and sins, _and making them kings and priests to God_. But if they had had nothing but content and rest on earth, what room would there have been for these rejoicings hereafter?