The saints everlasting rest

I cannot here enjoy my parents, or my beloved friends without some delight; what will it then be to ⟨p. 391⟩live in the perpetual love of GOD! For brethren here to live together in unity how good and pleasant a thing is it! To see a family live in love; husbands, wives, parents, children, s•••ants, doing all in love to one another! O then, what a blessed society will be the family of heaven and those peaceable inhabitants of the new Jerusalem! Where is no division, nor disaffection, nor strangeness, nor deceitful friendship; never an angry thought or look, never an unkind expression, but all one in Christ, who is one with the Father, and live in the love of love himself.

Awake then, O my drowsy soul, and look above this world of sorrow! Hast thou borne the yoke of afflictions from thy youth, and so long felt the smarting rod, and yet canst no better understand its meaning? Is not every stroke to drive thee hence? and is not the voice like that to Elijah, what dost thou here, up and away. Dost thou forget that sure prediction of the LORD, In the world ye shall have trouble, but in me ye shall have peace. The first thou hast found true by long experience; and of the latter thou hast had a small foretaste; but the perfect peace is yet before, which till it be enjoyed cannot be clearly understood.

Ah, my LORD, I feel thy meaning; it is written in my flesh; it is engraven in my bones: my heart thou aimest at: thy rod doth drive, thy silken cord of love doth draw; and all to bring it to thyself: can such a heart be worth thy having? Make it so, Lord, and then it is thine: take it to thyself, and then take me. I can but reach it toward thee, and not unto thee: I am too low; and it is too dull: this clod hath life to stir, but not to rise: as the feeble child to the tender mother, it looketh up to thee, and stretcheth out the hands, and fain would have thee take it up. Indeed. LORD, my soul is in a strait, and what to choose I know not, but thou knowest