(6.) Let the pleasure we have found in religion, dispose us to be liberal and charitable to the poor and distressed. The pleasing sense we have of God's bounty to us, by which he has done so much to make us easy, should engage us bountifully to distribute to the necessities of saints, according to our ability; not only to keep them from perishing, but to make them easy, and that they may rejoice as well as we. Cheerfulness that enlarges the heart, should open the hand too. Paul observes it concerning the churches of Macedonia, who were ready to give for the relief of the poor saints at Jerusalem, that it was the abundance of their joy, their spiritual joy, their joy in God, that abounded unto the riches of their liberality, 2 Cor. viii. 2.

When the people of Israel are commanded to rejoice in every good thing which God had given them, (Deut. xxvi. 11, 12.) they are commanded also to give freely to the Levite, the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, that they may eat and be filled. And when upon a particular occasion they are directed to eat the fat, and drink the sweet, (Neh. viii. 10.) at the same time they are directed to send portions to them for whom nothing is prepared: and then the joy of the Lord will be their strength. By our being charitable, we should show that we are cheerful; that we cheerfully taste God's goodness in what we have, and trust his goodness for what we may hereafter want.

(7.) Let us do what we can to bring others to partake of the same pleasures in religion which we have tasted, especially those who are under our charge. It adds very much to the pleasure of an enjoyment, to communicate of it to others, especially when the nature of it is such, that we have never the less, but the more rather, for others sharing in it. What good tidings we hear, that are of common concern, we desire that others may hear them, and be glad too. He that has but found a lost sheep, calls his friends and neighbours to rejoice with him; (Luke xv. 6.) but he that has found Christ, and found comfort in him, can say, not only, Come, rejoice with me, but, Come, and partake with me; for yet there is room enough for all, though ever so numerous, enough for each, though ever so necessitous and craving.

When Samson had found honey in the carcass of the lion, (Judg. xiv. 8.) he brought some of it to his parents, that they might partake with him: thus when we have found a day in God's courts better than a thousand, we should invite others into those courts, by telling them what God has done for our souls, and how willing he is to do the same for theirs, if they, in like manner, apply themselves to him. When Andrew, with a surprising pleasure, finds the Messiah, (John i. 41, 45.) he cannot rest

Philip till he has brought his friend Nathaniel. They that are feasted with the comforts of God's house, should not covet to eat their morsel alone, but be willing to communicate of their spiritual things. (8.) Let us be willing to die, and leave this world. We have reason to be ashamed of ourselves, that we, who have not only laid up our treasures above, but fetch our pleasures thence, are as much in love with our present state, and as loth to think of quitting it, as if our riches, and pleasure, and all, were wrapt up in the things of sense and time. The delights of sense entangle us and hold us here; these are the things that make us loth to die, as one once said, viewing his fine house and gardens. And are these things sufficient to court our stay here, when God says, Arise, and depart, for this is not your rest? Mic. ii. 10.

Let us not be afraid to remove from a world of sense to a world of spirits, since we have found the pleasures of sense not worthy to be compared with spiritual pleasures. When in old age, which is one of the valleys of the shadow of death, we can no longer relish the delights of the body, but they become sapless and tasteless, (as they were to Barzillai,) yet we need not call those evil days, and years in which we have no pleasure, if we have walked and persevered in Wisdom's ways; for if so, we may then in old age look back with pleasure upon a life well spent on earth, (as Hezekiah did,) and look forward with pleasure, upon a life to be better spent in heaven.

And when we have received a sentence of death within ourselves, and see the day approaching, the pleasure we have in loving God, and believing in Christ, and in the expressions of holy joy and thankfulness, should make even a sick-bed and a deathbed easy; The saints shall be joyful in glory, and shall sing aloud upon their beds, (Ps. cxlix. 5.) those beds to which they are confined, and from which they are removing to their graves, their beds in the darkness. Our religion, if we be faithful to it, will furnish us with living comforts in dying moments, sufficient to balance the pains of death, and take off the terror of it, and to enable us to triumph over it; O death! where is thy sting? Let us then evidence our experience of the pleasures of religion, by living above the inordinate love of life, and fear of death. (9.) Lastly, Let us long for the perfection of these spiritual pleasures in the kingdom of glory. When we come thither, and not till then, they will be perfected; while we are here, as we know and love but in part, so we rejoice but in part; even our spiritual joys here have their damps and allays; we mix tears and tremblings with them: but, in heaven, there is a fulness of joy without mixture, and pleasures for evermore, without period or diminution. The servants of Christ will there enter into the joy

XXXV. 10.

And what are the pleasures in the way of Wisdom, compared with those at the end of the way? If a complacency in the divine beauty and love be so pleasant while we are in the body, and are absent from the Lord, what will it be when we have put off the body, and go to be present with the Lord? If a day in God's courts, and a few minutes spent there in his praises, be so pleasant; what will an eternity within the veil be, among them that dwell in his house above, and are still praising him? If the earnest of our inheritance be so comfortable, what will the inheritance itself be?

Now whenever there is grace, it will be aiming at, and pressing towards, its own perfection; it is a well of water springing up to eternal life; (John iv. 14.) this therefore we should be longing for. Our love to God in this world is love in motion, in heaven

come, which remains for the people of God? Here we have the pleasure of looking towards God; O when shall we come and appear before him? Our Lord Jesus, when at his last passover, which he earnestly desired to eat with his disciples, he had tasted of the fruit of the vine, speaks as one that longed to drink it new in the kingdom of his Father, Matt. xxvi. 29. It is very pleasant to serve Christ here, but to depart and be with Christ, is far better. Now are we the sons of God, (1 John iii. 2.) and it is very pleasant to think of it; but it doth not yet appear what we shall be: something there is in reserve, which we are kept in expectation of. We are not yet at home, but should long to be there, and keep up holy desires of that glory to be revealed, that we may be quickened, as long as we are here, to press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling.

and station, and in due season; (not on days of fasting, and humiliation, when it is proper for ornaments to be laid aside, Exod. xxxiii. 4, 5.) but it | forbids the inordinate love and excessive use (that is, the abuse) of them. There may be the plaiting of the hair, and the wearing of gold, and there must be the putting on of apparel; (that shame, which came into the world with sin, has made it necessary ;) but we must not make these things our adorning; that is, we must not set our hearts upon them, nor value ourselves by them, nor think the better of ourselves for them, nor pride ourselves in them, as if they added any real excellency to us, nor say to them as Saul did to Samuel, Honour me now before this people, out of a vain ambition to make a fair show in the flesh. We must spend no more care, or thoughts, or time, or words, or cost, about them, and lay no more stress or weight upon them, than they deserve, and that is but a very little. It is but glory hung upon us, as the expression is, (Isa. xxii. 24.) and has no glory, if compared with the glory that excelleth it even in the creatures that are so far below us for Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed or beautified like one of those lilies, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven. We must not seek first these things, nor seek them most, as if we had bodies for no other end than to wear out our clothes, and had nothing else to do with them than to make them fine. It was the folly, and | proved the ruin, of that rich man in the parable, that he made his purple, and his fine linen, (with the other ornaments and delights of the body,) his good things, the things in which he placed his happiness, and in which he had his consolation, (Luke xvi. 19, 25.) that is, in the language of this scripture, he made them his adorning and so, being unclothed of these, he was found naked. Let not the wearing of gold, and the putting on of apparel, be koopos-the world; so it may be rendered: it is mundus mulie- | bris—a woman's world. Let not these things be all the world with us, as they are with many, who reckon that to be out of the fashion (whatever it be) is to be out of the world. Christians are called out of the world, and delivered from it, and should evidence a victory obtained by faith over it, as in other instances, so in this. It is a prescribed rule of our holy religion, (whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear,) that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety, 1 Tim. ii. 9. But whereas there are some, on the one hand, that exclaim against vanity in apparel as the crying sin of this age, above any other, as if it were a new thing under the sun, and the former days were, in this respect, better than these ; and some, on the other hand, condemn it as a piece of fanaticism to witness (as there is occasion) against this

vanity; both may receive a sufficient answer, if they will but read that excellent Homily of the Church of England, entitled, "An Homily against Excess of Apparel," (No. 18.) by which it will appear, that even in those early days of the reformation, it was a vanity that prevailed much in our land, and which the rulers of the church thought themselves obliged to reprove. But we will hasten to the text.

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2. He endeavours to bring them in love with the better ornaments, those of the mind, the graces of the blessed Spirit, here called ó кρνπтòs äv¤ρwπоsthe hidden man of the heart. Grotius observes, that though he writes to women, yet he uses a word of the masculine gender, because the ornament he recommends, is such as both men and women must be adorned with." Grace, as a living principle of regular holy thoughts, words, and actions, is sometimes called the new man, (Eph. iv. 24.) sometimes the inward man, (Rom. vii. 22. and 2 Cor. iv. 16.) and so here, the hidden man of the heart. It is called a man, because it is made up of many parts and members, and its operations are vital and rational; and it restores those to the dignity of men, who, by sin, had made themselves like the beasts that perish. 'It is called the man of the heart, because out of the heart are the issues of life; there lie the springs of the words and actions, and therefore into that the salt of grace is cast, and so all the waters are healed. He is the Christian indeed, that is one inwardly, and that circumcision, that baptism, which is of the heart, Rom. ii. 29. It is called the hidden man of the heart, because the work of grace is a secret thing, and does not make a pompous show in the eye of the world; it is a mystery of godliness; a life that is hid with Christ in God, to whom secret things belong; therefore the saints are called his hidden ones, (Ps. lxxxiii. 3.) for the world knows them not, much less does it yet appear what they shall be. The king's daughter that is espoused to Christ, is all glorious within, Ps. xlv. 13. The working of grace in the soul is often represented as a regeneration, or being begotten again; and perhaps when this good work is called the hidden man of the heart, there may be some allusion to the forming of the bones in the womb of her that is with child, which Solomon speaks of as unaccountable, as is also the way of the Spirit, Eccl. xi. 5. compare John iii. 8. And lastly, it consists in that which is not corruptible; it is not depraved or vitiated by the corruption that is in the world through lust, and is in the soul a well of living water, springing up unto eternal life, John iv. 14.

In the text he specifies one particular grace, one member of this hidden man in the heart, which we must every one of us adorn ourselves with, and g 2 Kings ii. 21.

f Prov. iv. 33. h Col. iji. 3.

i Ps. cxxxix. 14–16.