January 12

Give ear to my words, O Lord, consider my meditation. Hearken unto the voice of my cry, my King, and my God: for unto thee will I pray.—Psalms 5:1, 2.

My soul thirsteth for thee, O Lord, in a dry and barren land, where no water is; O that thou wouldst distill, and drop down the dew of thy heavenly grace into all its secret chinks and pores. One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, and behold his glory: for a day in thy courts is better than a thousand, and I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of the Lord, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness. All the kings of the earth they are thy tributaries; the kings of Tarshish, and of the isles, bring presents unto thee; the kings of Sheba and Seba offer gifts. O that we could but pay thee that which is so due unto thee, the tribute of our hearts! The heathen are come into thine inheritance; thy holy temple have they defiled: help us, O God of our salvation, and deliver us, and purge away our sins from us, for thy name's sake! O that the Lord, whom we seek, would come to his own house, and give peace there, and fill it with his glory! Come and cleanse thine own temple, for we have made it a den of thieves, which should have been a house of prayer! O that we might never give sleep to our eyes, nor slumber to our eyelids, till we have prepared a house for the Lord, and a tabernacle for the God of Jacob! The curse of Cain is fallen upon us, and we are as vagabonds in the earth, and wander from one creature to another. O that our souls might come at last to dwell in God, our fixed and eternal habitation! We, like silly doves, fly up and down the earth, but can find no rest for the sole of our feet; O that, after all our weariness and our wanderings, we might return into the ark; and that God would put forth his hand, and take us, and pull us in unto himself! We have too long lived upon vanity and emptiness, the wind and the whirlwind; O that we may now begin to feed upon substance, and delight ourselves in marrow and fatness! O that God would strike our rocky hearts, that there might spring up a fountain in the wilderness, and pools in the desert; that we might drink of that water, whereof whosoever drinks, shall never thirst more; that God would give us that portion of goods that falleth to us, not to waste it with riotous living, but therewith to feed our languishing souls; lest they be weary and faint by the way! We ask not the children's bread, but the crumbs that fall from thy table; that our baskets may be filled with thy fragments: for they will be better than wine, and sweeter than the honey and the honeycomb, and more pleasant to us than a feast of fat things. We have wandered too long in a barren and howling desert, where wild beasts, and doleful creatures, owls and bats, satyrs and dragons, keep their haunts: O that we might be fed in green pastures, and led by the still waters, that the winter might be past, and the rain over and gone, that the flowers may appear on the earth, and the time of the singing of birds may come, and the voice of the turtle may be heard in our land! We have lived too long in Sodom, which is the place that God at last will destroy: O that we might arise, and be gone; and while we are lingering, that the angels of God would lay hold upon our hands, and be merciful unto us, and bring us forth, and set us without the city; and that we may never look back any more, but may escape unto the mountain, and dwell safe in the Rock of Ages! Wisdom hath killed her beasts, she hath mingled her wine, and furnished her table; O that we might eat of her meat, and drink of her wine which she hath mingled! O that God would breathe into our minds those still and gentle gales of Divine inspirations, that may blow up and increase in us the flames of heavenly love! that we may be a whole burnt-offering, and all the substance of our souls be consumed by the fire of heaven, and ascend up in clouds of incense! That, as so many sparks, we might be always mounting upward, till we return again into our proper elements! That, like so many particular rivulets, we may be continually making toward the sea, and never rest till we lose ourselves in that ocean of goodness from whence we first came! Let but these be the breathings of our spirits, and this Divine magnetism will most certainly draw down God into our souls, and we shall have some prelibations of that happiness; some small glimpses, of which, is all that belongs to this state of mortality.