The greatest happiness to which we can attain in this world is the peace of God. Ask those who have attained the height of their ambition, whether in the pursuit of wealth, or power, or fame, if it be not so? ask them in their sane mind and serious hours, and they will confess that all else is vanity.
Fond man, that looks on earth for happiness,
And here long seeks what here is never found!3
This His own peace, which is his last and crowning gift, our Heavenly Father reserves for us in declining life, when we have earned our discharge from its business and its cares; and He prepares us for it by the course of nature which he has appointed.
O all the good we hope, and all we see,
That Thee we know and love, comes from Thy love and Thee.3
Hear reader the eloquent language of Adam Littleton when speaking of one who has received this gift:—it occurs in a funeral sermon, and the preacher's heart went with his words. After describing the state of a justified Christian, he rises into the following strain: “And now what has this happy person to do in this world any longer, having his debts paid and his sins pardoned, his God reconciled, his conscience quieted and assured, his accusers silenced, his enemies vanquished, the law satisfied, and himself justified, and his Saviour glorified, and a crown of Immortality, and a robe of righteousness prepared for him? What has he to do here more, than to get him up to the top of Pisgah and take a view of his heavenly Canaan; to stand upon the Confines of Eternity, and in the contemplation of those joys and glories, despise and slight the vanities and troubles of this sinful and miserable world; and to breathe after his better life, and be preparing himself for his change; when he shall be called off to weigh anchor, and hoist sail for another world, where he is to make discoveries of unutterable felicities, and inconceivable pleasures?
“Oh what a happy and blest condition is it to live, or to die in the midst of such gracious deliverances and glorious assurances; with this fastening consideration to boot, that ‘neither life nor death, nor things present, nor things to come, nor any creature is able to separate him from the love of God, which is in Jesus Christ his Lord!’”
3 PHINEAS FLETCHER.
CHAPTER CXXXIV.
A TRANSITION, AN ANECDOTE, AN APOSTROPHE, AND A PUN, PUNNET, OR PUNDIGRION.