doing we pursue our own felicity. That our interests and God's glory are thus made to blend and become one, tends to render our regard for God and our desires of happiness identical and united-forming one great and eternal impulse towards God-the "blessed God." Thus "we dwell in God and God in us." The glory of God is the christian's heaven. When therefore we are called to follow the glory of God, let us not feel as if we were about to surrender happiness to tread a desert, there to be dazzled and withered—to have our enjoyment consumed by the scorching beams of this glorious light; but as if in'vited to a fruitful field-the garden of the Lord, where the beams of the Father of lights fall mildly and genially, diffusing joy through our own frame, and spreading fertility, beauty, and sweetness around us.

It is an awakening as well as a joyous consideration, that as God has blended his own glory and our bliss, we must combine them in our pursuit. We shall never find them separated. If we will not seek God's glory, we may as well give over our pursuit of happiness. Misery is then natural and inevitable. Our affections and purposes being thus separated from their proper object, we are cut off from God. The avenues by which he pours his own blessedness into the mind, are closed. We already become wretches, forlorn, outcast and hopeless. We fall under the frown of that "wrath which is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness as well as unrighteousness of men." * Revolted and alienated, we are at last driven far away from the divine pre

* Rom. i, 18.

sence, and find a joyless abode in the regions of ruin and despair. Thus exiled from "the excellent glory," "all the traces of moral and social worth having disappeared, evil forms the sum of our character, and agony the total of our sensation. We become fit companions to that race of ancient offenders, "who kept not their first estate, and are reserved in chains of darkness to the judgment of the great day." Having started from the track and circle of obedience, we shall have wandered on to "outer darkness," there to remain, as the everlasting monuments of the consequences of forsaking and opposing God, and, in the vast distance, visible to the worlds of holy and happy beings we had left, only by the wild and fearful glare of "devouring flames" and " everlasting burnings."

On the other hand, how sure and how exalted the bliss of doing all to the glory of God! When the mind reposes in this as its all-satisfying end, how delightful is the rest it finds from the disquietude, the conflict and the turmoil of selfish, sinful and earthly motives and desires! What endless sources of uneasiness, fear and disappointment are for ever dried up! What a bitter and hopeless contest with God is then ended! How blissful to be one with God in will, in disposition, and in design! How peaceful thus to " 'walk with God," and thus to be "fellowworkers together with him!" How joyous will it make our devotion, how cheerful our obedience, how pleasant our lowliest walks of adversity, how sweet our severest toils of duty, and how rich and sumptuous our hopes! In heaven too the blessedness of the christian will still be found in the glory of God.

It is "to his eternal glory" that we 66 are called." It is "in hope of the glory of God that we rejoice." This is "the glory which has to be revealed" to the rejoicing church. This is "the exceeding and eternal weight of glory" which believers will have to sustain. This "the crown of glory which the Lord will give unto them in that day." This will be the source, the aliment, the life, the essence, and the everlasting security of their bliss.

"God and the

Lamb shall be the everlasting light" in which they shall dwell.

186

CHAP. VIII.

PRE-REQUISITES FOR DOING ALL THINGS TO THE GLORY OF GOD.

It is not unlikely that whilst we have been passing over the extensive ground occupied by our subject, some may have felt as if in a strange land. There is nothing with which they feel conversant or familiar. They need no argument to convince them that here they are aliens, with no sympathy for the objects, no taste for the pursuits, no acquaintance with the habits, no aptitude for the converse, no unison with the sentiments and feelings of those who inhabit this hallowed region. Perhaps no thought has been more present to their mind as we have gone along than this: "I know nothing of this aim to glorify God, and of these feelings in reference to it. Certainly I never designed thus, and never felt thus; much less is it the prevailing state of my mind. It is a manner of thinking and living, indeed, quite removed from all my customary modes of thought and intention." But whilst this is the conclusion, the effect will be various, Some minds will seek a

refuge from such unsatisfactory and discomposing reflections in scepticism. Destitute themselves of this aim, they suspect and willingly persuade themselves that others are equally strangers to it-that it is a hard and impracticable condition of existence to which no one has attained or can attain. Too cour teous to accuse of hypocrisy those who profess to be thus actuated, they nevertheless think them imposed upon by some high and refined sentimentalism, or lost in some undefinable and dreamy mysticism. Never realizing this aim in their own experience, they cannot be persuaded that it is the controlling motive in the minds of others. That self should be so subject and so subordinate, appears next to impossible a sort of contravention of the laws of nature-a mental miracle-a thing so wonderful and strange, that if it has any existence, it cannot be matter of requirement-certainly not of perpetual and universal obligation. It may do, they think, for a seraph, but cannot be meant for man, unless indeed he be a prophet or an apostle. And this scep ticism derives strength from one of the ordinary habits of the human mind. which is a tendency to impute to others the motives which govern ourselves a habit friendly to the candour and charity of the good, and favourable to the suspicion and malice of the bad. The motives which are prevalent, and controlling, and determining in our own minds, we are oftentimes apt to take for granted must have weight with others; whilst we find it difficult to picture to ourselves the submission of other minds to reasons which appear to our view ill-adapted, or feeble, or unreal.