Saturday Morning — Week 4

O Thou who hast said, I will be sanctified in them that come nigh me, and before all the people will I be glorified; may we have grace whereby we shall serve Thee acceptably with reverence and godly fear. Thou inhabitest eternity, but our age is as nothing before Thee. Thy understanding is infinite, but we know nothing. Thou art Almighty, but we are crushed before the moth. Thou art of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, but we are vile—what shall we answer Thee? We cannot answer Thee for one of a thousand of our transgressions; and had we followed the forebodings of our consciences, we could not have approached Thee.

But Thou hast proclaimed thy name, the Lord God, merciful and gracious ; Thou hast caused all thy goodness to pass before us; Thou has opened a new and living way into the holiest of all, by the blood of Jesus; and we have boldness and access with confidence by the faith of Him.

We bless Thee that in Him all fulness dwells, and that ignorant and guilty and depraved and miserably as we are in ourselves, from Him we can derive wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. And we rejoice that these blessings are attainable without money and without price, and that we may know they are ours by every title God himself can give, and shall be ours for ever.

And is this the manner of man, O Lord God? O let such undeserved, such infinite goodness, melt our hearts, and lead us to throw down the weapons of rebellion and weep over them. May we sorrow after a godly sort, that ever we offended a being so worthy of all our love and our obedience ; and while compelled to acknowledge, with a broken heart and a contrite spirit, O Lord, other lords beside Thee have had dominion over us, enable us to say, But henceforth by Thee only will we make mention of thy name. As our reasonable service, to Thee may we dedicate ourselves immediately without delay, and fully without reserve. To Thee may we yield our understanding and our intellectual powers ; our wills and our active powers; our senses and our bodily powers; our time, our substance and all our relative powers; may our words and our actions and our callings in life, be all holiness unto the Lord.

May we come out from the world, and touch not the unclean thing, and be received and acknowledged as the sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty. And though they are few in number, and the world knoweth them not, may we choose thy people as our companions, and delight in them as the excellent of the earth. With them at thy gates may we daily watch, and wait at the posts of thy doors ; with them may we courageously fight the good fight of faith ; with them may we patiently labor in thy vineyard.

May we love them all ; and as we have opportunity, may we unite with them all in holy communion, and cooperate with them all in schemes of civil and sacred beneficence. We bless Thee for the country and the age in which we live. We bless Thee for the spirit which has been awakened, and the efforts that are now making, to promote the temporal, and above all the spiritual welfare of mankind, by individuals and communities, and combinations of communities. O let them not labor in vain ; let the pleasure of the Lord prosper in their hand ; let thy work appear unto thy servants, and thy glory unto their children ; and let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish Thou the work of our hands upon us ; yea, the work of our hands, establish Thou it.

And prepare us for suffering thy will as well as doing it. May we never look for unmingled felicity here, but expect to find life, as all who have gone before us have found it, light and darkness, pain and pleasure, good and evil. When we meet with trials, may we never think them strange things, nor murmur and repine under them Rather may we be thankful that they are so few and alleviated; rather may we rejoice that they are all founded in love to our souls, and designed to make us partakers of thy holiness. Sustain us under them; improve us by them ; and assure us in due time of our deliverance from them, and of our entering the rest that remains for the people of God, where all sorrow and sighing shall cease, and all tears shall be wiped from our eyes.

And may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with us all, now and for ever. Amen.