nion with God, if you would know what the beatific joy is. Heaven is perfectly miniatured, wherever you find a soul in perfect fellowship with the

Lord.

We have spoken in another chapter of the gracious visitations of the Spirit enjoyed by President Edwards. These were attended by experiences of the most seraphic delight-experiences in which the weight of glory was such as to cause him "to break forth into a kind of loud weeping," while he contemplated the character of God. Let us hear his description of this divine enjoyment:

"I found from time to time an inward sweetness that would carry me away in my contemplations. This I know not how to express otherwise than as a calm, sweet abstraction of the soul from all the concerns of the world; and sometimes a kind of vision or fixed ideas and imaginations, of being alone in the mountains, or some solitary wilderness, far from all mankind, sweetly conversing with Christ, and wrapped and swallowed up in God."*

But let it be carefully observed that these exercises came from no idle dreaming, no luxurious

* Edwards' Works, Vol. I, p. 16.

spiritual reveries. It was, he tells us, while reading the Scriptures that his soul so mounted up; and it was while his eye was fixed on God that his heart was kindled with holy delight. Men of this world talk about enjoying themselves; the believer's happiness is most intense when he is out of himself, so that he can "joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ." Edwards has given an extended and glowing narrative of high religious joy in another person with whom he was intimate; and who, though no name is mentioned, has been ascertained since his death to have been his own wife. We can give only a few snatches from this wonderful record of blessedness. If we wished for a living commentary upon John Howe's lofty discourse on "Delighting in God," we should select this. It is the theologian's argument set to heart-music; and it is especially interesting as being the manifest fruit of earnest consecration, and definite sealing by the Spirit. "Desire is love in motion; love is desire at rest," says Howe. Here was a soul who desired God above all other things. This desire expressed itself in the most searching self-surrender; and the delight which followed was this desire finding rest in its supreme

object. These exercises begun, he says, "near three years ago in a great increase, upon an extraordinary self-dedication and renunciation of the world." The person had been formerly subject to great unsteadiness in grace and frequent melancholy. But, says the narrator:

"Since that resignation spoken of before, made near three years ago, everything of that nature seems to be overcome and crushed by the power of faith and trust in God and resignation to him. The person has remained in a constant uninterrupted rest and humble joy in God, and assurance of his favor, without one hour's melancholy or darkness from that day to this.

These things have been attended with a constant sweet peace and calm and serenity of soul, without any cloud to interrupt it; a continual rejoicing in

all the works of God's hands the works of nature and God's daily works all appearing with a sweet smile upon them; a wonderful access to God by prayer, as it were seeing him, and sensibly and immediately conversing with him, as much oftentimes as if Christ were here on earth, sitting on a visible throne, to be approached to and conversed with; frequent, plain, sensible and immediate answers to prayer; all tears wiped away; all former troubles and sorrows of life forgotten, and all sor

row and sighing fled away, excepting grief for past sins, and for remaining corruption, and that Christ is loved no more and that God is no more honored in the world, and a compassionate grief towards fellow creatures; a daily sensible doing and suffering everything for God, for a long time past, eating for God and sleeping for God, and bearing pain and trouble for God, and doing all as the service of love, and so doing it with a continual, uninterrupted cheerfulness, peace and joy."*

We have given but a brief extract from this incomparable narrative. The reader must study the whole, if he would learn how sober, how orderly, how balanced with the most practical service all this exalted communion was.

We have no need to seek for any higher altitudes of spiritual delight than those here pictured. And yet to show the wonderful manifestations which God sometimes makes to his obedient chil

dren we may go still further. The experience of Mrs. Edwards seems to have been a continuous one, and to have constituted when attained an habitual state rather than an exceptional transport. But there are loftier peaks looking down. upon the most elevated table lands of commu

*Edwards' Works, Vol. III, pp. 302-306.

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spiritual Pisgahs and Tabors into which God sometimes calls up his servants that he may show them his glory. It will not harm us to listen to the favored few who have been summoned up thither, though we may have to discourage others from attempting to scale such heights. That sublime experience of the apostle Paul, when he was so entranced that he knew not "whether in the body or out of the body," and when he "heard unspeakable words which it is not lawful to utter,' was not an attainment, but a rapture. He evidently did not climb to it, but was lifted to it, by a sovereign and gracious act of the Lord. He was "caught up to the third heaven," he did not go up; and from this eminent height he could stretch out no beckoning hand to his brethren below. But even these anomalous experiences have their lesson, especially to an age which is so inclined to discredit all supernatural intervention. To those who are blind and cannot see afar off, they open` glimpses of the glory to be revealed, which may at least give a momentary uplift to the eyes that are cast down.

John Flavel was by temperament and habit as remote from enthusiasm as President Edwards.