the others shall be removed far away. Then shalt thou be all life in this Spirit of life, all activity by his power, all love by his goodness, all purity by his holiness, all joy by his blessing. Surrounded by innumerable millions of happy spirits, like thyself; grief, corruption, and sin, thou shalt see no more. Fitted for God, thou shalt enjoy God. One with Christ, thou shalt be like him. The Father, Son, and Spirit, will commune with thee through the human nature of thy Saviour, and impart all, what thou wilt be able to receive of, the vastness of glory. Thou wilt then know, whatever is to be known by the purified intellect of man, concerning the trinity in unity, the unity in trinity, the incarnation of the Messiah, and all the other acts and intentions of the covenant of truth. The veil of ignorance, which thou hast often deplored, together with sin its cause, shall entirely be done away. Every faculty shall be dilated with the love of God, and every capacity filled with his joy. O couldst thou see the high employment of the blest, couldst thou conceive but the half of their glory; this dull poor life below would appear doubly dull and disgusting, and thy soul would be crying out in a rapture, "Come, LORD JESUS; come quickly! Hasten, my beloved, and my friend! My soul panteth for thee; yea, my heart and my flesh, the meanest faculty that I have for thee, even for thee, the LIVING GOD!" When a great philosopher first preached the immortality of the soul; and from reason asserted that there must be a better world for the spirits of men than this we live on; two of his hearers went away and put an end to their mortal lives, in order (as they hoped) to enjoy it. Though their practice was wrong; yet how many, who are called Christians, will their fervor condemn! If these heathens could not endure to live upon earth from the bare notion of an immortal joy; O what hearts have we, that we should cling so close to the earth, and be ready to sacrifice almost our very souls to obtain but a small particle of it; even when life and im. mortality are, in a manner, laid open to our view by the gospel! OLD MEN, what say ye to this? Ye, who are treading quick towards the grave, and yet have lingering hearts for the world? Can ye rejoice to die; not because death brings you to the end of pain, but to the end of sin, and to the beginning of life eternal? "Gray hairs (says an ingenious physician) are church-yard flowers, which may serve to them that bear them, instead of passing-bells, to give them certain notice, whither they are suddenly going." These hang about your ears: Have they sounded thus in your ears; and ye find pleasure in the sound? O what an honorable example are you privileged to give among men, if grace be in

do

† SMITH's portrait of old age. p. 148. ad Edit.

your hearts, and glory in your eye? You may respecively say with good old Polycrap, yet without his particular trial, "I have served for so many or so many years, [he served, as he told the Roman proconsul, eighty six years] my good master Christ; and he hath ever been kind to me: And shall I forsake him now?" Yor are upon the threst hold of heaven, and may almost hear the melodies of the blest Surely the din and confusion of the world can never be entertaining to you. What is earthly clamor to those who live above it the uttering of slaves in a mine, which free men in day-light and good air, when they hear it, only commiserate or conteinn. Come then, old believer, some few steps more; and all the life of heaven is yours. Commit your gray hairs to Him, who hath said, that not one of them shall perish. And if not one of these shall perish; how much less the least of your dearer conserns, the hopes of your soul, the promise of a mansion in heaven! Cheer up, therefore, and say, with an aged believer like thyself, " Though my beart and my flesh fail, though all the strength of my nature be gone and the very grasshopper is a burden; yet God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever! I trust in the ANTIENT OF DAYS, to whom all my days are but few, as to myself they are evil; and he shall renew my youth as the eagle's and give me that immortal bloom, which shall glow brighter and brighter throughout eternity! Behold, LORD, thy servant: Be it unto me according to thy word!"Dear old friend; it shall be so; thou shalt have this cordial, and more. Wait for thy Lord; and be, that will come, shall come and will not tarry. He will replenish thee with eternal youth; and thow shalt remember thy cares and thy infirmities no more for

ever.

WATER

OF

LIFE.

L

IFE hath already been considered as an attribute of the Holy Spirit, and consequently as a proof of his divinity. He is the Spirit of life to impart life, and the water of life to nourish it when imparted. When and where this Spirit breathes, this water flows: Or, in other words, to whomsoever the Holy Ghost conveys life, He immediately so possesses the soul, as to maintain it continually, finally, eternally. It has been repeated, that God uses this emblematic language

in order to illustrate, from the natural objects around us, the necessity, the riches, and (in many respects) the manner of his grace. He hath employed the emblem of water for that end, and thereby shews us, that this fluid is not more necessary to the subsistence of the material, than his Holy Spirit is to the spiritual or intellectual world. And, hence, he is most admirably denominated (what the Godhead alone could have denominated him) the living Water, and Water of Life, or Lives.

Every body knows, that water is a simple and transparent fluid, which enters into the composition of all matter, at least all the matter of our system. There is no substance, whether animal, vegetable, or mineral, without it. The ac cretions of the hardest substances, probably even of precious stones which are as hard as any, are formed by this universal principle, and possibly derive a proportional perfection from its purity. Every being, which has a proper life, lives by it; and, whatever grows, through it receives its growth. When they decay, they return for the most part to water, -not excepting the driest substances, as to one of their original principles. We have no fluid so subtle and penetrating, excepting fire: It enters into the minutest particles and pores of matter, into the finest vessels of animals, and the smallest tubes of plants. It will pierce through substances, which detain air itself. And, wherever it enters according to the economy of providence, it promotes, sustains, and increases life; preserves all material natures in their proper classes of being; and is one of the first principles in the fabric and constitution of the world. Whether, in short, it be considered, as productive of health to animal and vegetable being, as requisite to the beauty and existence of the earth, or as the great mechanic power, by which God works in the sustentation and action of the whole universe; we may perceive a noble propriety in the sensible image for a representation of the spiritual agency, and divinity, of the HOLY GHOST.

The necessity and use of this admirable fluid in all things, impressed some antient philosophers with a notion, that it was the first principle of universal life, and that therefore (as they had not then conceived the idea of a universal mind) it must be God, or the source of the Gods.*

T

*Cicero, in his first book de natura Deorum, says, that Thales the Milesian was the first who asserted, that "God was that mind, who formed all things out of water;" but he presently adds, that Anaxagoras was the first who affirmed, that the design and frame of all things was planned and formed by the power and reason of an infinite mind. The honor, however, is generally attributed to the latter, who was surnamed Nes, or mind, upon the doctrine.

At the creation of the world, the SPIRIT of God moved, or brooded upon the face of the waters, ingenerating life with this fluid into all the material substances as they were created, and diffusing the fluid itself through all the members of this terrestrial frame, for the support of the life bestowed. In this first great instance he acted by water for the sustenance of all things, declaring upon fact, that, without his express energy, it had no power of its own to support the natural being of things, and declaring also in the emblem of that fact, that the spiritual life of men is by his infusion, and that it can by no means subsist without him.

To explain and enforce this important truth, there are many rites and declarations, concerning the use of water, both in the Old and New Testaments. These all refer to the agency of the Spirit of God, and, at the same time, shew, for the most part, that this agency and its blessings, result only through the great Redeemer.

It was not by chance that the people of Israel, after their dega ture from Egypt, were led to Repbidim, where there was no water for them to drink. Exodus xvii. God himsoit led them thither, to teach believers among them, and believers also among us, a lesson of his grace, as well as of his power. Moses, upon their complaint of thirst, was to go on before the people, and with the rod of authority, which God had given him, was commanded to smite a great rock which formed a part of the mountain in Horeb. It was very improbable to human reason, that a dry impenetrable substance, as a rock is, should afford the fluid of water at all, and much less a sufficient quantity for the lasting refreshment of so many hundred thousand people: But Moses was too wise to reason upon God's revelation: He obeyed it in faith. Bebold (says the Lord) I will stand before thee there UPON the rock. In this and in the xx chapter of Numbers, where the fact is repeated with other particulars; we find, that the water came out abundantly, and supplied the whole congregation.-We are not left to guess at the instruction meant by this wonderful transaction: The Scripture is full upon the subject. The rock (says the apostle) was CHRIST: And Christ, to the eye of reason, when he appeared in the flesh, was just as unlikely to afford all the benefits of salvation, as the rock in Horeb was, at the stroke of a stick, to send forth water. So thought the Jews when they saw him; and so think all unbelieving Gentiles: While both of them, without meaning it, only ful

+ The antient heathens had many obscure traditions both concerning the cosmogony and the state of man before and about the times of the flood. Thus, according to Dr. Thomas Gale, quod Moses; per SPIRITUM, qui aquas, fovebat, expressit, Egyptii per Zan der signabant. Not. in Jambi, Sect. viii. c. iii.

fit thereby the Scriptures concerning him. He was a man of sorrows, and, to human view, barren even of comfort for himself. Yet it pleased the Lord to smite him; and, at his smiting, forthwith issued out the water of life everlasting. John iv. 14. He gives this living water. If any man thirst (says he,) let him come unto me and drink. He that believeth on me, as the Scripture bath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. But this spake he of the SPIRIT. which, they, that believe on bim, should receive; for the HOLY GHOSTS was not yet given, because that JESUS was not yet glorified. John vii. 37, &c. God was in Christ; and this he emblematically declared, when he said to Moses, Behold, take notice, I will stand before thee there UPON the rock. The rock was. nothing in itself to this purpose, and could have yielded nothing without God: Nor could, Christ have redeemed us by his buman nature alone; for he could not have merited but oy the divine. When this human nature was smitten for the transgressions of bis people; then came forth, even with sensible demonstration, the SPIRIT of God from this Jesus. It was however the same Spirit, which, in all past ages, had, proceeded from him, and even then had spiritually accomplished his own office to believers in those types, which proclaimed the work and sufferings of the Redeemer, till he should appear in the world.. The Spirit, operated in virtue, of that eternal covenant, by which Jesus was also considered as a Lamb already slain from the foundation of the world. -The whole congregation of Israel was replenished from the water out of the rock; and so is the whole church of God by the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus: And this, by the way, affords the reason why he is called so often the Spirit of Christ, as well as the Spirit of God.

It was the same lesson, which was taught by the standing rite, recorded in Lev. xiv. 4. If a man had been healed of the leprosy, the mode of cleansing was, that the priest should go forth to him out of the camp, and command two clean living birds to be taken for the person, with cedar-wood, and scarlét (or scarlet-wool or silk) and hyssop. One of the birds was to be killed in an earthen vessel, over running water (Heb., living water or water of lives ;) and the other bird was to be dipped, with the cedar, the scarlet, and the hyssop, in the blood of the bird, which was killed over this running water. The man was then to be sprinkled seven times with the blood; in consequence of which he was pronounced clean, and the living bird was let loose into the open field. So the redeemed of the Lord have Christ for their high priest, who came to them in their pollution, and when cast out of the

See Vol. I. p. 103, &c..