The saints everlasting rest

What tender pieces are these dusty bodies? What brittle glasses do we bear about us? And how many thousand dangers are they hurried through? And how hardly cured if once cracked? O the multitude of slender veins, of tender membranes, nerves, fibres, muscles, arteries; and all subject to obstructions, tensions, contractions, resolutions, ruptures, or one thing or other to cause their grief! Every one is a fit subject for pain, and fit to communicate that pain to the whole: but sin, and flesh, and dust, and pain, will all be left behind together.

O the blessed tranquility of that region, where there is nothing but sweet continued peace! No succession of joy there, because no intermission. Our lives will be but one joy, as our time will be changed into one eternity. O healthful place, where none are sick! O fortunate land, where all are kings! O place most holy, where all are priests! How free a state, where none are servants, save to their supreme monarch! Our face shall no more be pale or sad; our groans and sighs will be done away, and GOD shall wipe away all tears from our eyes. No more parting of friends, nor voice of lamentation heard in our dwellings; no more breaches nor disproportion in our friendship; nor any trouble accompanying our relations: no more care of masters for servants, or parents for children, or magistrates over subjects, or ministers over people. O what room can there be for any evil, where the whole is perfectly filled with GOD? Then shall the ransomed of the LORD return and come to Zion with songs, and everlasting joy upon their heads. They shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away, Isaiah xxxv. 10. Hold out then a little longer, O my soul; bear with the infirmities of thine earthly tabernacle; endure that share of sorrows, that the love of thy Father shall impose; submit to his indignation also, because thou hast sinned ⟨p. 69⟩against him; it will be thus but a little while; the sound of thy Redeemer's feet is even at the door; and thine own deliverance nearer than many others. And thou who haft often cried in the language of the divine poet, Sorrow was all my soul; I scarce believed, Till grief did tell me roundly, that I lived. shall then feel, that GOD and joy is all thy soul; the fruition of whom, with thy freedom from all these sorrows, will more sweetly, and more feelingly make thee know, and to his eternal praise acknowledge, that thou livest. And thus we shall rest from all afflictions.