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(2.) Be diligent to pass through your work, and let it not too long hang upon your hands; your appointed season may come before you bring it to the close; yea, search out work for God. You that are intrusted in power, trifle not away your season. Is there no oppressed person that with diligence you might relieve?-is there no poor distressed widow or orphan whose righteous requests you might expedite and despatch?-are there no stout offenders against God and man that might be chastised?-are there no slack and slow counties and cities in the execution of justice, that might be quickened by your example?-no places destitute of the gospel that might be furnished and supplied by your industry and wisdom? Can you not find out something of this or the like nature to be despatched with vigour and diligence? nay, do not innumerable particulars in each kind lie upon your hands? and is not your non-performance of them such a sacrifice as wherewith God is not well pleased? Your time is limited and appointed; you know not how soon you may be overtaken with it; and would it not be desirable unto you, that you had done these things? will it be bitterness in the end, that you so laid out your endeavours?

Use 2. All men have but their seasons in any work; only God abideth in it for ever: in every undertaking let your eye still be on him, with whom is the fulness and the residue of the Spirit. Jeremiah's great bewailing of Josiah's death was doubtless made upon the account of his discerning that none would come after him to carry on the work which he had begun, but the wickedness of that people was to come to its height; else God can raise up yet more Josiahs. Let him be eyed as the principal and only abiding agent in any great undertaking.

In the residue of the observations I shall be very brief. The next is,—— Observation II. God oftentimes suffers not the choicest of his servants to see the accomplishment of those glorious things wherein themselves have been most eminently engaged.

The case of Moses is most eminently known. He had a large share in suffering the persecutions which were allotted to the people:forty years' banishment he endured in the wilderness, under the reproach of Christ;-forty years more spent in wrestling with innumerable difficulties, dangerous perils, mutinies, wars, and contentions. At the close, when he comes to look upon the land,—when the end of all that dispensation was to be wound up, and the rest and reward of all his toil and labour to be had, which formerly he had undergone for twice forty years,-"Go thou thy ways," saith the Lord; "thou shalt rest;"-take thy dismission; thou shalt not enter into the good land; lie down here in the wilderness in peace.

John Baptist goes and preaches the drawing nigh of the kingdom

of God, but lived only to point out Christ with his finger; cries, "Behold the Lamb of God; I must decrease," and is cut off. David makes the great preparation for the temple; but he shall not see so much as the foundation laid. Men must take their appointed lot. God will send by the hand of him whom he will send. Daniel must rest until the end be. It is said of some, they began to deliver Israel. The case of Zerubbabel was very rare, who saw the foundation and also the top-stone of the temple laid; and yet the work of Jerusalem was not half finished in his days, as you may see, Zech. i. And this because,

1. God oftentimes receives secret provocations from the choicest of his servants, which move him to take them short of their desires. Those of his own whom he employs in great works, have great and close communion with him. God usually exercises their spirits in near acts of fellowship with himself: they receive much from him, and are constrained to unburden themselves frequently upon him. Now, when men are brought into an intimacy with God, and have received great engagements from him, the Lord takes notice of every working and acting of their souls in an especial manner, and is oftentimes grieved and provoked with that in them which others can take no notice of. Let a man read the story of that action of Moses upon which the Lord told him directly he should not see the finishing of the work he had in hand, nor enter into Canaan, Numb. xx. 7, 8, 11. It will be a hard matter to find out wherein the failing was. smote the rock with the rod, with some words of impatience, when he should only have spoken to it,—and this with some secret unbelief as to the thing he had in hand. God deals with others visibly, according to their outward actions; but in his own he takes notice of all their unbelief, fears, withdrawings, as proceeding from a frame in no measure answering those gracious discoveries of himself which he hath made unto them; and on this account it is that some are taken off in the midst of their work.

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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;" but see what he calls them to, in calling them off from their greatest glories and excellencies 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 labouring 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 of 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 them into the other. The meanest enjoyment in heaven is to be preferred before 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 whereunto you have been engaged. God will proceed at his own pace, and calls on us to go along with him; and in the meantime, 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 proposed, 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 meantime, 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 see all their desires accomplished,--but such as in the fulness 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 dismission ?-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 condition 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 for the people of God," Heb. iv. 9;-it remains and is reserved 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 frequently 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, donec veniat ad te."

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Now, "rest" holds out two things unto us :—A freedom from what is opposite thereunto, wherein those that are at rest have been exercised, in reference whereunto they are said to be at rest; and something which suits them and satisfies their nature in the condition wherein they are; and, therefore, they are at rest: which they could not be were it not so with them; for nothing can rest but in the full fruition and enjoyment of that which satiates the whole nature of it in all its extent and capacity. We must briefly inquire,-1. What it is that the saints are at rest from; and, 2. What it is that they are at rest in. Which I shall do very speedily.

1. The many particulars which they are at rest from may be referred unto two general heads :-(1.) Sin; (2.) Labour and travail.

(1.) Sin. This, on all considerations whatever, is the main disquietness of the soul. Temptations to it, actings in it, troubles for it,—they are the very Egypt of the soul, its house and place of bondage and vexation; either the power of it indwelling, or the guilt of it pressing, are here still disquieting the soul. For the first, how doth Paul complain, lament, yea, cry out concerning it, Rom. vii. 24, "O wretched man that I am!" and what a sad, restless, and tumultuating condition upon this account doth he describe in the verses foregoing! The best, the wisest, the holiest of the saints on this account are in a restless condition. Suppose a man a conqueror in every battle, in every combat that he is engaged in; yet whilst he hath any ' [August. Confes., lib. i. c. 1.]

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fghting, though he be never foiled, he hath not peace. Though the saints should have success in every engagement against sin, yet because it will still be rebelling, still be fighting, it will disturb their peace. So also doth the guilt of it;-our Saviour testifieth, that a sense of it will make a man to be " weary and heavy laden," Matt. xi. 28. This oftentimes makes the inhabitants of Zion say they are sick; for though an end be made of sin, as to the guilt of it, in the blood of Christ, yet, by reason of our darkness, folly, and unbelief, and the hiding of the countenance of God, the conscience is oftentimes pressed with it, no less than if it lay indeed under the whole weight and burden of it.

I shall not instance in more particulars concerning this cause of want of rest and disquietness;—the perplexity of temptations, buffetings and winnowings of Satan, allurements and affrightments of the world, darkness and sorrows of unbelief, and the like, do all set in against us upon this account.

This, in general, is the first thing that the dismissed saints are at rest from: They sin no more, they wound the Lord Jesus no more, they trouble their own souls no more, they grieve the Spirit no more, they dishonour the gospel no more,-they are troubled no more with Satan's temptations without, no more with their own corruption within; but lie down in a constant enjoyment of one everlasting victory over sin, with all its attendants: saith the Spirit, "They rest from their labours," Rev. xiv.,-those labours which make them faint and weary, their contending with sin to the uttermost. They are no more cold in communion; they have not one thought that wanders off from God to eternity. They lose him no more, but always ne down in his bosom, without the least possibility of disturbance. Even the very remembrance of sin is sweet unto them, when they see God infinitely exalted and admired in the pardon thereof. They are free from trouble, and that both as to doing and suffering. Few of the saints but are called out, in one kind or another, to both these. Every one is either doing for God or suffering for God;-some both do and suffer great things for him. In either of them there is pain, weariness, travail, labour, trouble, sorrow, and anxiety of spirit; neither is there any eminent doing or working for God but is carried on with much suffering to the outward man.

What a life of labour and trouble did our deceased friend lead for many years in the flesh! how were his days consumed in travail! God calling him to his foot, and exercising him to understand the sweetness of that promise, that they that die in him shall have rest. Many spend their days deliciously, with so much contentment to the flesh that it is impossible they should have any foretaste and sweet relish of their rest that is to come.

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