To see heaven's shining courtiers round,
Each with immortal glories crown'd;
And while His form in each I trace,
With that fraternal band embrace.

As with a seraph's voice to sing!
To fly, as on a cherub's wing!
Performing, with unwearied hands,
A present Saviour's high commands.

Yet, with these prospects full in sight,
I'll wait Thy signal for my flight:
And in Thy service here below,

Confess that heavenly joys may grow.

In reviewing the life and character of Dr. Doddridge, we see that the grand principle which sustained and rejoiced him in all his abundant labors and exercises, was the constraining love of Christ. This enabled him to say, in writing to some of his friends: 'I bless God I feel more and more of the power of His love in my heart; and I long for the conversion of souls more sensibly than for anything besides. Methinks I could not only labor, but die for it, with pleasure. The love of Christ constrains me.'-'I feel the love of God in Christ shed abroad in my heart. Strive earnestly in your prayers for me that it may be continued and increased; that He may ever dwell in my soul, consecrate all its powers, and engage all its services; that I may be fitted for the whole of His will, in affliction

6

or prosperity, in life or death, in time or eternity. I want, above all things in this world, to be brought to greater nearness to God, and to walk more constantly and closely with Him.' And again: Indeed I feel my love to Him increase; I struggle forward towards Him, and look at Him, as it were, sometimes with tears of love, when, in the midst of the hurries of life, I cannot speak to Him otherwise than by an ejaculation.' So closely does he seem to have walked with God, especially during the last days of his pilgrimage, and so earnestly did he breathe after still closer and sweeter communion with his Heavenly Father, that his life became more and more spiritual and heavenly.* He appears to have enjoyed in an eminent degree, that felicity to which Archbishop Leighton alludes when speaking of the soul cleaving to God. The more,' says he, 'the soul withdraws, so to speak, from the body, and retires within itself, the more it rises above itself; and the more closely it cleaves to God, the more the life it lives in this earth resembles that which it will enjoy in heaven, and the larger foretastes it has of the first fruits of that blessed harvest.'

Some of the qualities that the Christian will most admire in Philip Doddridge may here be

*The love of heaven makes one heavenly.'- SIDNEY.

summed up, such as his unremitting diligence and perseverance; his extensive literary acquirements; his large intelligence; his mental activity and ardor; his ability and excellence as an author; his fidelity as a pastor and teacher; his patience and humility; his genial courtesy and amiableness; his kind and sympathetic heart; his intense affection for his domestic circle and friends; his earnest and energetic manner in the pulpit; his tender and pathetic exhibition of evangelical doctrine; his ardent desire to be instrumental in promoting the rise and progress of religion in the soul; and his UNDISSEMBLED,

FERVENT, AND EXALTED PIETY.

CHAPTER VII.

SPECIMENS OF HIS STYLE, IN PROSE AND VERSE.

THE WATER OF LIFE.

HE waters which followed Israel through the wilderness, failed when they came into an inhabited land. But this river of life will never forsake the believer; it will flow with

him sweetly through the dark valley of the shadow of death, till it spreads itself into wider and deeper streams, in the lovely regions of the heavenly Canaan. Thus we are told, that in the New Jerusalem the river of the water of life proceedeth from the throne of God and of the Lamb. And thus our Lord assures the woman of Samaria, Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him, shall never thirst; but it shall be in him as a well of water springing up into everlasting life. What then remains, but

that we each of us cry out, as she did, Lord, give us of this living water, that we may thirst no more, nor come, as now, to these ordinances to draw!

Clear spring of life! flow on, and roll
With growing swell from pole to pole,
'Till flowers and fruits of paradise
Round all thy winding current rise!

Still near thy stream may I be found,
Long as I tread this earthly ground!
Cheer with thy wave death's gloomy shade;
Then through the fields of Canaan spread!

MY FATHER'S HOUSE.

If it be so pleasant to me now and then, to cast a longing look towards my Father's house, and to read, as it were, this letter which His goodness sends to me, and to receive in the wilderness the tokens of His care, what will it be to come and dwell with Him, and with all my brethren in the Lord? O earth! all thy charms are not worth a moment's stay. It would be better, much better for me to be dissolved. How would my heart leap to see His chariot appearing! How welcome would the messenger be by which He should call me to His house, and to His bosom!