ould be
written in your faith and rejoicing? Tremble and fear indeed, but "rejoice
with trembling, because there is mercy with him." Sometimes there is
rejoicing and quietness in the soul, but that quickly degenerates into
carnal confidence, and makes the soul turn grace into wantonness and
esteem of itself above what is right, because it is not counterpoised with
the sense and apprehension of his holiness and justice. But O to have
these jointly written upon the heart in worship, fear, reverence,
confidence, humility and faith! That is a rare thing; it is a divine
composition and temper of spirit that makes a divine soul. For the most
part, our worship savours and smells nothing of God, neither his power,
nor his mercy and grace, nor his holiness and justice, nor his majesty and
glory; a secure, faint, formal way, void of reverence, of humility, of
fervency, and of faith. I beseech you let us consider, as before the Lord,
how much pains and time we lose, and please none but ourselves, and profit
none at all. Stir up yourselves as in his sight for it is the keeping of
our souls continually as in his sight which will stamp our service with
his likeness. The fixed and constant meditation on God and his glorious
properties, this will beget the resemblance between our worship and the
God whom we worship and it will imprint his image upon it, and then it
should please him, and then it should profit thee, and then it should
edify others.

But more particularly, the worship must have the stamp of God's spiritual
nature, and be conformed to it in some measure, else it cannot please him.
There must be a conformity between God and souls. This is the great end of
the gospel, to repair that image of God which was once upon man, and make
him like God again. Now, it is this way that Jesus Christ repairs this
image, and brings about the conformity with God, by the soul's worshipping
of God suitable to his nature, which, as it grows more and more suitable
to God's nature, it is the more and more like God, and happy in that
likeness. Now, "God is a Spirit, therefore," saith Christ, you "must
worship him in spirit and in truth." The worship then of saints must be of
a spiritual nature, that it may be like the immortal divine Spirit. It is
such worshippers the Father seeks. He seeks souls to make them like
himself and this likeness and conformity to God is the very foundation of
the soul's happiness, and eternal refreshment. This is a poin