sentiments of Life and the apprehensions of Death What dryness what hardness comes upon our hearts How little Life or Enlargement or Comfort have we in duty when the Spirit of God is withdrawn from us All our endeavours all our strivings with our selves do not warm our Spirits as he used to do How little delight have we in Prayer And how loth are we to pray And we know how lame and defective our Petitions and Desires are And we are at as great a loss as Job when he said chap. 23.3 4. Oh that I knew where I might find him that I might come even to his seat And v. 8. I go forward but he is not there and backward but I cannot perceive him c. Inf. 8thly and Lastly Hence you see the reason why the Servants of God do so earnestly beg this favour and are so deeply troubled when it is removed It is their life their portion their all Every thing is strangely changed all its Comeliness and Beauty and Glory vanishes when the Life is gone Life is the pleasant thing 't is sweet and comfortable but Death with its pale attendants raises an horror and aversion to it every where The Saints of God dread the removal of his favour and the hidings of his face and when it is hid a faintness and a cold amazement and fear seizes upon every part and they feel strange bitterness and anguish and tribulation which makes their joints to tremble and is to them as the very pangs of death Psal 22.14 15. I am poured out like water and all my hones are out of joint my heart is like wax it is melted in the midst of my bowels my strength is dried up like a potsherd and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws and thou hast brought me into the dust of death Psal 38.2 3 6 8 9 10. And Job 23.8 9. Psal 13.1 3 4. Psal 27.9 Hide not thy face from me put not thy servant away in anger thou hast been my help leave me not neither forsake me O God Psal 69.17 Hide not thy face from thy servant for I am in trouble hear me speedily Psal 4.6 There be many that say Who will shew us any good Lord lift thou up the light of thy countenance upon us CHAP. III. Shewing that the Favour of God is diligently to be sought and what is to be done that we may obtain it 1. SEeing in the Favour of God is Life seek it earnestly If I were to bid you to take care of your Lives or your Estates you would quickly think it a needless Request because your own safety and interest would prompt you to it but if we bid you to take care of your Souls there indeed you can hear one Sermon after another one Exhortation after another and still be as secure and careless as before VVe hear many People wishing for other things and very few that are desiring this VVe hear the Poor say Oh that I were rich The Sick Oh that I were well And the Prisoner sighing for his liberty the Trader busily concerned for his gain and the Merchant for good returns but oh how few are there that are saying Oh that I might find grace in the sight of God! Oh that I might be his and he mine Many have their eyes fixed upon the World admiring and doating on it though they daily see how vain it is and how its fashion passes away but oh how few are there whose eyes are fixed on Heaven and whose hearts are panting after the Living God! If I could teach you a way to be the Favourites of the King or of some Powerful or Great Men you would think to derive great Advantages from such a Privilege and quickly strive to get it but here is a greater than they even the King of kings whose Favour is tendred to your acceptance and your choice his Throne is accessible tho his Majesty might confound you yet his Goodness bids you welcome to his presence Seek and you shall find knock and it shall be opened unto you And methinks every Soul here should rejoice even to know that it is possible for him to have God to be his own God That how abject how sinful soever he may have been yet he may be advanced and honour'd by the Lord of glory if he do but return and when he bids us seek his face we should answer Thy face Lord will we seek Psal 27.8 and seek it presently while he may be found lest Sickness and Death and Judgment should prevent us and lest grieved with our delays he should cover himself from us by an Eternal Separation and we should seek him and not find him and because we did not hear his Calls he should shut out all our cryes And laugh when our calamity comes like an armed man Prov. 1.28 If you have no need of him to forgive your Sins to heal your Souls to protect you from danger or to bring you to Salvation then let this Work alone then be unconcerned whether you seek his favour or disesteem it whether he be your Friend or your Enemy but if you have need of God as I am sure you have then pour out your supplications to him for his Grace and say O Lord I have been dead in sin but I know that nothing is impossible to thee Thou openest the Graves and makest even the Dead to live Let my Soul feel thy Almighty power and have a share in the first Resurrection that over me the second Death may not prevail O let me be one of thy Children one of thy blessed Family one whom thou lovest and whom thou wilt love for ever thou hast pardoned many who were once as guilty as I have been O magnify the Riches of thy Grace in blotting out mine Iniquities Thou hast quickned many that were once dead Let me also be quickened by the vital influences of thy Spirit Many Prodigals hast thou received Let me not be thrown off Many hast thou blessed many Blessings hast thou in store Therefore bless me even me also I pray thee O my God 2. Joyn Endeavours to your Prayers and use all the means of grace with conscionable diligence 2 Cor. 5.9 We labour that whether present or absent we may be accepted of him Psal 119.58 Oh do not mock him with a meer form of words but let your affections and your words be joined together be as the Hart that when it pants for the Waterbrooks runs with all the speed it can thither when your Souls are once warmed with a sense of God use all the care you can to maintain the sacred and the comfortable Flame lest by your neglect it be extinguish'd and go out again For a man to wish that he had the favour of God and not to use all his prescribed means is foolish and ineffectual as if a Traveller should sit in a lazy posture without any motion in the Road and yet wish to be at his Journeys end as if a man
the ungodly and the sinner appear Prov. 24. 17 18. Rejoyce not when thine enemy falleth and let not thine heart be glad when he stumbleth lest the Lord see it and it displease him and he turn away his wrath from him Entertain not a secret pleasure in the downfall and distress of any Man whatsoever for these inhuman affections are so displeasing to God that they may provoke him to translate the Calamity from thy Enemy unto thee and thereby damp thy sinful joy with a double sorrow first to see him delivered from his trouble and then to find thy self involved in it See Patr. Paraph. in loc Do not triumph over any in affliction lest the Cup be taken out of their hand and put into yours Do not with the Friends of Job censure them for greater sinners than any in the World because of their sorer Tryals as if you were acquainted with the secrets of the Decrees of God and could pierce with your shallow Reason into the bottom of his unfathomable Judgments Those that are under an apprehension of the Divine displeasure know that it is for sin it is that which troubles and afflicts them more than any thing besides but you ought not to conclude that they are sinners beyond the rest of Men but rather wonder at the Goodness of God that he is gracious and more favourable to any when they all deserve to dye Do not by reproachful Language add affliction to those that are afflicted Zech. 1.15 I am very fore displeased with the heathen that are at ease for I was but a little displeased and they helped forward the affliction It was the cruel insulting of wicked Men over her miseries of which the Church was sensible when she says Mic. 7.8 Rejoyce not against we O my enemy when I fall I shall arise when I set in darkness the Lord shall he a light unto me Inf. 6. How much happier is the condition of a good Man than of one that shall remain impenitent In his wickedness He is angry with the one for a moment but with the other he will be so for ever The Servants of God have never so much cause to mourn under the sense of the heinousness and aggravation of their Sins as they have cause to rejoyce in the riches and the freeness of his Grace They have never so much cause to be troubled at their own distress as to sing at the remembrance of his holiness They have cause to weep indeed because they have provok'd so good a God to wrath and to be glad that his anger is but for a moment They have cause to be concerned that they have made him to frown but cause to rejoyce that he will smile on them for ever The Righteous have a bitter Cup but as 't is here mingled with love so it prepares them for a sweeter tast of heavenly pleasure In the hand of the Lord there is a cup and the wine is red it is full of mixture and he poureth out of the same but the dregs thereof all the wicked of the earth shall wring them out and drink them Psal 75.8 God does correct his own here with measure but his punishments of the wicked will know no bounds wrath shall come upon them to the utmost and how low must they sink and what a load must they bear who have a God to punish them whose Being is Eternal and whose Power is Omnipotent On his own he frowns for a season and he does it to bring them to their Duty but on his obstinate unrelenting enemies he will frown for ever He will abhor them he will cast them out of his presence trample upon them in his fury and leave them to be the Brands of Hell and the Prey of Devils Now indeed we cannot with all the Terrors of the Lord which are terrible beyond expression perswade Men to repent tho' we tell them death and destruction is at hand tho' we shew them the threats of the Scripture the Examples of their evil predecessors that are gone to their own place they slumber on tho' we tell them of the danger and of a Pit that is opening its mouth to swallow them up tho we see wrath gathering and the Clouds ready to burst and bid them make haste to get a shelter before the Storm come tho we bid them flye for their Lives out of Sodom they still linger and delay But after death they cannot if they would he secure they will then have no pillows whereon to rest their heads no water to quench their thirst no friend to help them no God to hear their Cries they cannot then stop their ears at the roaring Wrath of God they cannot then stupifie their Consciences nor put the evil day far off Now they make a shift to stifle the checks of their own consciences they mock at the Threats of God and deride his Message but Sinners you shall sadly know what a dreadful and a terrible God you provoke to wrath all your Entertainments and Diversions all your Mirth and Laughter all your carnal Comforts and your jolly Company will be gone and be gone for ever And what will then remain nothing but Consternation Amazement and Woe nothing but Anguish and Tribulation Who shall speak comfortably to you who shall deliver when you are fallen into the hands of the Living God when you shall find that God that is a gracious Father to the Saints to be a severe Judge to you when he who is the Joy of their Hearts shall depart from you and he who refreshes them with the Smiles of his Face shall kill you with his Frowns What will you do when the full Wrath of God shall be poured on your guilty Souls Where will you turn when it shall scorch and burn you and set you all on Fire How will it overwhelm you when you find that all your hideous Cries all your Lamentations and your Groans are to no purpose When you are in the power of cruel Devils and meet with no pity from God none from his Angels or his Saints We think it long to be in pain for a month or two or for a year but how long will they think it to be who are to be in pain throughout all the durations of a sad Eternity We think it long when we sleep not in the night and wish for the light of day But Oil what a long night will that be and how uncomfortable that will have no morning that will not be succeeded with a a Beam of Day for ever Men do now think an hour or two in attendance upon God to be a great while they think Fast-days and Sabbaths to be long but if they come to that misery Oh how long and how tedious will they find Hell to be How insupportable it is and how unavoidable Hear therefore all you that live in sin hear and live oh do not throw your selves down that Precipice under which there is a Sea of Wrath and a
the thoughts of life are frightful because t is with anguish and horror that we live nor can we bear the thoughts of death because we dare not die Seventhly 'T is a night of weeping to deserted souls because they find no heart to pray and no life in prayer they fall upon their knees and cover the Altar of the Lord with tears but he seems not to regard them they beg and he gives them no relief they cry and he does not answer and this fills them with shame and grief Lam. 3.7 8. the thoughts of such poor people are in a continual hurry and so are very full of wandrings in the performance of their duty Grief by saddening the spirits destroys the freedom of our speech for joy is the mother of Eloquence and fluency and when they would move up towards Heaven this sorrow damps their vigor and makes them that they cannot fly and finding they are still perplex'd even after prayer and still as uncomfortable as before they are apt to throw it off and say It is vain to pray as Saul 1 Sam. 28.15 God is departed from me and answers me no more And sorrow is naturally a very dull and sluggish thing a man has no heart to go about any work when he is very sad and this faintness occasions a new trouble we are vext when we do not pray and when we would we cannot Sorrows damp our faith our love and our hope and so spoil our duties for without these they are without life and without acceptance and sometimes our grief is so violent that it finds no vent it strangles us and we are overcome I am so troubled that I cannot speak Psal 77.4 It is with us in our desertions as with a man that gets a slight hurt at first he walks up and down but not looking betimes to prevent a growing mischief the neglected wound begins to fester or to gangrene and brings him to greater pain and loss so it is with us many times in our Spiritual sadness when we are first troubled we pray and pour out our souls before the Lord but afterwards the waters of our grief drown our crys and we are so overwhelmed that if we might have all the world we cannot pray or at least we can find no enlargement no life no pleasure in our prayers and God himself seems to take no delight in them and that makes us more sad Psal 22.1 Eighthly Such have no patience wherewith to bear their evils Oh who is he that can bear the wrath of God! one thought of him as a reconciled Father would sweeten the most heavy Cross but one view of him as an enemy causes all our strength to depart and melts our very souls In bodily evils the mind lends its assistance and furnishes the natural spirits with courage but when its self is weakned and troubled what is it able to do the wounded soul is most commonly fretful and impatient the sight of Heaven inspires our breasts with vital heat and makes us quiet and submissive under every dispensation but the daily sight and fear of Hell fills us with tumult and disorder the language of deserted people for the most part is in groans and in their prayers they chatter as a Crame or a Swallow or mourn as a Dove Isa 38.14 Job 13.20 21. Ninthly They usually see no prospect of relief or deliverance and that encreases the sorrows of their doleful Night they are covered in the deep pit and see no way to fly from it Job 9.27 28. they are wounded and carry their wounds with them where they go they are continually fixing their mournful eyes upon destruction and the Grave Job 7.7 8. they have indeed now and then some intermissions but they are like the small breathings and refreshments of a person that is newly taken off the Rack to be carried to the Rack again The Tears of these poor deserted people are not like the Tears of Mary in the Garden for as soon as she began to weep she beheld the Lord He quickly came to her help and changed her Sorrows into Consolations and his sweet Voice did in a moment run through all the powers of her soul and made her heart to leap with Joy and scattered light upon it But in this case he suffers his Servants to be tost for a long and doleful night ere he be pleased to speak and to calm the storms so that they are as persons straitly besieged and have no relief at hand as persons athirst and have no Water hungry and have no Bread Psal 113.4 I looked on my right hand and beheld but there was no man that would know me refuge failed me Tenthly This Night of weeping is the more sorrowful because it is the time of Satan's Cruelty When our Spirits are broken with long and painful afflictions then this Cowardly Spirit sets upon us he knows that he can easily perplex us when we are already thrown upon the Ground When the Sun sets then the Beasts of the Field creep abroad When God is departed then the Devil comes He comes and torments us with innumerable fears comes and Triumphs over us insults and says Where is now your God What think you now of Sin What is now become of all your Hearing your Reading and your many Prayers You thought to have escaped my Power and now I have you within my reach now remember that at such or such a time you sinned and therefore God has forsaken you you weep and your Tears are just for you are miserable and are like to be with me for ever He makes use of our sore Afflictions to represent God to us as Tyrannical and as one that will certainly destroy us and it is our grief and our misery that we have so little in our desertions to answer to him When we really believe that God is departed from us What can we say How does this Roaring Lion most cruelly molest us when our Glory and our Strength is gone though at other seasons we can oppose his malice and confidently say The Lord that hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee He is indeed a knowing and a subtile Spirit he knows our weakness sees our trouble and urges even the very Scriptures and Providences of God upon us to our disadvantage and that with a marvellous importunity and diligence He shoots at us with fiery Darts that are extreamly painful and comes to shoot them when we are under a sense of God's displeasure which is like thrusting of a Red Iron into a Wound that is already very sore It pleases the Devil to hear us groan and to see us sad and when we are already pressed down with our Evils he will be sure to throw upon us more weight our Groans are his Musick and when we wallow in Ashes drown our selves in Tears and spread our Hands for help and roar till our Throat is dry he gluts his cruel heart with looking on our woes it is the pleasantest sight
how great an height have I fallen How fair was I once for Heaven and for Salvation and now am like to come short of it I was once flourishing in the Courts of the Lord and now all my Fruit is blasted and withered away his dew laid all night upon my branches but now I am like the Mountains of Gilboa no Rain falls upon me Had I never heard of Heaven I could not have been so miserable as I now am Had I never known God the loss of him had not been so terrible as now it is like to be Job 29.2 3. Oh! that I were as in months past as in the days when God preserved me When his Candle shined upon my head and when by his light I walked through darkness These are some of the sorrows that deserted Souls often meet withal and indeed but a small part of what they feel in this dark and stormy night Before I proceed any further I will answer two Objections for I foresee that against what I have said some may object CHAP. V. Answering some Objections and of the further doleful state of a deserted Soul and whence it is that God is pleased to suffer a very Tempestuous and Stormy Night to come upon his Servants in this World Obj. 1. YOV make a great deal of noise and pother about desertions and God's forsaking of the soul and it is nothing in the world but Fancy or Imagination and the whimsies and the fumes of Melancholly Answ It is no new thing for us to hear such Language from Atheistical and Prophane People from men that are covered with ignorance and sloth With ignorance because they know not the ways of God and his dispensations and sloth because they will not search into the Methods of his Government To grant them for once that it is Imagination it is not the less tormenting because it is so for a Man that strongly imagines himself to be miscrable is truly miserable if a man think himself unhappy he is so whilest that thought remains But then they would do well could they but once obtain of themselves leave to consider a little they would find reason to suspect their own foolish Objections Who was a Man as appears by what we read of him more distressed with the sense of God's Anger than David yet he was of a Musical and a pleasant Temper of a Ruddy and a Sanguine Constitution Do they think that such a great Prince as Job was was led meerly by humour and by fancy when he complains so much of the Arrows of the Almighty Or that Heman Asaph and many others were men of no clear understandings It is their ignorant Pride that makes them to talk so boldly of the Judgments of God which they do not understand but if ever their Consciences be awakened with a sense of guilt they 'll find in what I have now discoursed something more terrible than Fancy or Imagination Obj. 2. You take a way to discourage men from all Religion If it be such a mournful business it is better to let it alone and to rejoyce and to be merry and to take our ease and our pleasure Go by your selves to Heaven if you will we 'll joyn our selves to more chearful Companions we see those that are gay and brisk that know no sorrow while they live and that dye in peace and to their Assembly we will unite our selves In Answer to this I desire such to consider That it is not our Religion that is the Cause of our sorrows but our wandrings and our deviation from it If we were always obedient we should have an Eternal day our heavenly Father chastises us because we are undutiful and he does not delight to grieve the Children of Men and even in these necessary Corrections he carries on a profitable design for our future and final good 'T is true this is nothing but anguish of Conscience that draws up a process against it self that presents it self as before the Tribunal of God without hope of pardon or escape and the weight of Mountains would not be a load so heavy as this it is a night wherein we are kept waking with our danger whether we will or not Wicked men tho they have as great a burden yet are not sensible they feel not the bitterness of sin they are like fishes bred in the Sea that tast not the saltness of the water they are like swine that find something agreeable to their meaner appetites even in that which is most nauseous to other Creatures When they sin they feel not the weight of it for it is their nature to do amiss their iniquities are like waters that are not heavy in their own Element as Intellectual joy is most refin'd pure and durable so is the trouble of the mind of all others most troublesome Job 6.2 3. Oh that my grief were throughly weighed and my calamity laid in the balance together for now it would be heavier than the sand of the Sea therefore my words are swallowed up 2. 'T is attended usually with great pain of body too and so a man is wounded and distrest in every part There is no soundness in my flesh because of thine anger says David The arrows of the Almighty are within me the poyson whereof drinketh up my spirit Job 6.4 Sorrow of heart contracts the natural spirits makes all their motions slow and feeble and the poor afflicted body does usually decline and wast away and therefore saith Heman My soul is full of troubles and my life draweth nigh unto the grave In this inward distress we find our strength decay and melt even as wax before the fire for sorrow that is an ingrateful languor of the soul * Natural History of the Passions p. 152. darkneth the spirits obscures the judgment blinds the memory as to all pleasant things and beclouds the lucid part of the mind causes the lamp of life to burn weakly In this troubled condition the person cannot be without a countenance that is pale and wan and dejected like one that is seized with strong fear and consternation all his motions are sluggish and no sprightliness nor activity remains Prov. 17.22 A merry heart doth good like a Medicine but a broken spirit drieth the bones Hence come those frequent complaints in Scripture My moisture is turned into the drought of Summer I am like a bottle in the smoke wy soul cleaveth unto the dust my face is foul with weeping and on my eye-lids is the shadow of death Job 16.16 Job 30.17 18 19. My bones are pierced in me in the night season and my sinews take no rest by the great force of my disease is my garments changed He hath cast me into the mire and I am become like dust and ashes Many times indeed the trouble of the soul does begin from the weakness and indisposition of the body Long affliction without any prospect of remedy does in process of time begin to distress the soul
sacrifices of joy I will sing yea I will sing praises unto the Lord. Did we ever hope to see the Light of God again Did we ever hope to think of Heaven as our own portion and of Christ as our own Saviour Did we ever hope that we should be thus at ease and thus joyful as we now are God is our helper God is our refuge and our strong hold and blessed be the name of the Lord. 5. Let us call upon our Brethren and our Friends to help us to praise the Lord Psal 145.2 3 8 9 14. as to my self I make these requests Bless the Lord O house of Aaron and Levi Bless him ye Ministers of the Gospel that prayed for me in my trouble and have had your prayers granted Bless the Lord O House of Israel and all ye people every-where that sympathized and also kindly remembred me in my desolate condition Bless him ye Old men that you have got so far towards the haven without being thrown into the waves and so much endangered by the Rocks as I have been Bless him that you have not met with such violent tentations and great sorrows as I have met withal though I set out long after you Bless the Lord ye Young men that you have not been weakned in the way with sore affliction and with the terrors of the Lord which I long groaned under Bless him every one both small and great against whom he does not proceed in such smart and severe Providences and in such long and sharp Afflictions Bless him that you see before your eyes and to help your faith a person lately brought from the borders of the Grave and Hell one for whom you were concerned and for whom you prayed and one that still needs and beg your prayers that he may never come to such a sad and doleful night again It is a common Custom to congratulate our Friends recovery from sickness or when they return from some Foreign Land but nothing does more deserve our common thanks than when a Person is come from under the sense of God's displeasure to a sense of his favour and love again Thus it was with Job ch 42.11 Then came there to him all his brethren and all his sisters and all they that had been of his acquaintance before and did eat bread with him in his house and they bemoaned him and comforted him over all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him And with a design of exciting others to praise God with him is that Psal 66.16 Come and hear all ye that fear God and I will declare what he hath done for my soul Or as the Father of the Prodigal to his obedient Son that repined at the kind usage that he gave to him that was less dutiful upon his returning home Luke 15.32 It was meet that we should make merry and be glad for this thy brother was dead and is alive again and was lost and is found It is the design of God that the great and eminent Deliverances which he gives to some of his Servants should be taken notice of by all the rest that as they usually bring along with them a common Benefit so he should have a common return of praise Ps 66.8 O bless our God ye people and make the voice of his praise to be heard which holdeth our soul in life and suffereth not our feet to be moved And the joining with others that have been in great distress and are escaped is to answer the Obligation we are under to that Precept To rejoice with them that do rejoice And an encouragement to those who are yet in trouble Ps 130.7 Let Israel hope in the Lord for with the Lord there is mercy and with him there is plenteous redemption And to those that yet are at ease we may say as Paul to Foelix that we wish they were such as we in some respects that is excepting our bonds our anguish and tribulation that they also had such experiences of the goodness and the mercy of God 6. Let us always wait and hope for that eternal Felicity which will at length dawn upon all his people in the great morning of the Resurrection and at their entrance into Heaven there will be joy indeed There is no night there 't is a place that is continually blest with a bright and shining day It is true as one says that as in nature the nights are not equal those of the Winter are much longer than those of the Summer but how long soever they be they are always followed with the light of day so whatsoever diversity there is among the Afflictions of the faithful to one they are much longer than to another yet they shall have an end as Jacob wrastled all night but in the morning got the victory I confess that Sinners in this World have their pleasures but so beset with thorns so attended with fears and pains so short and so vanishing that they deserve not the name But in Heaven the Sun that rises in the morning of our new Glory will never set again those pleasures are not like those of Sin for a season but for evermore There our now imperfect Joy will be compleat and full It will be satisfying and eternal too We shall feel the love of God in so sweet and transporting a manner that we shall never doubt whether he loves us or not We shall always behold our Father's face he will look on us with delight and we shall look on him with praise and joy This world because of its lowness is subject to Inundations and Miseries and innumerable Vicissitudes of Pain and Grief but that high and glorious World is the place of Triumph and of Victory then we shall see our Sin that made us weep to be it self totally defeated then we shall see that Devil that tempted us to be trod under our feet and never to be able to tempt us any more Let us often remember that saying of our Lord John 16.21 22. A woman when she is in travel hath sorrow because her hour is come but as soon as she is delivered of the Child she remembreth no more the anguish for joy that a man is born into the world And ye now therefore have sorrow but I will see you again and your heart shall rejoyce and your joy shall no man take from you Oh! what a glorious morning will that be that shall have no cloud to obscure its light and never be followed with a sad or gloomy night As our sufferings here did abound our Consolations then will much more abound We shall forget all our Labour and all our trouble when we see to what a glorious Kingdom we are born tho it was by pangs and torment our joy ' will be like the joy of Harvest of an Harvest that will requite us well for all our care and toil Our hopes here are like the first streaks of light in the Sky that shew the coming of the day but our possession of blessedness will be as the Sun in the fulness of his Glory That delight will indeed be the Sabbath of our thoughts and the sweet and perpetual calmness of our minds that will never be in horror and anguish any more Precious and admirable are those Tears that end so well and which prepare us for so good a state who would not chuse thus to weep that he may rejoyce for ever Lift up your eyes to the Jerusalem above the City of the Living God ye Mourners and Prisoners of hope for it is the City of Peace Rev. 21.3 4. Behold the tabernacle of God is with men and he will dwell with them and they shall be his People and God himself shall be with them and be their God and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes and there shall be no more death neither sorrow nor crying neither shall there be any more pain for the former things are passed away THE END