And there is nothing more certain among all the certainties
of divine things than that he who feels himself to be in death and hell
with his heart so full of by-ends is all the time as far from death and
hell as any one can be who is still on this side of heaven. When a man's
whole will and desire is set on God, as is now and then the case, that
man is perilously near a sudden and an abundant entrance into that life
and that presence where his heart has for so long been. When a man is
half mad with his own heart, as Thomas Shepard for one was, that stranger
on the earth is at last within a step of that happy coast where all
wishes end. Watch that man. Take a last look at that man. He will soon
be taken out of your sight. Ere ever he is himself aware, he will be
rapt up into that life where saints and angels seek not their own will,
labour not for their own profit or promotion, listen not for their own
praises, but find their blessedness, the half of which had not here been
told them, in glorifying God and in enjoying Him for ever.
You must all have heard the name of a book that has helped many a saint
now in glory to the examination and the keeping of his own heart.
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