Female Scripture Biography, Volume II: Including an Essay on What Christianity Has Done for WomenCox, F. A. (Francis Augustus)
Religion
Female Scripture Biography, Volume II: Including an Essay on What Christianity Has Done for Women
Cox, F. A. (Francis Augustus)
Bible -- Biography; Women -- Religious life; Women in the Bible
God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great
Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make
you perfect in every good work to do his will, working in you that which
is well pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ." Let us then, as
Moses expresses it respecting the bush which he saw at the back of Horeb,
burning, but still unconsumed, "turn aside and see this great sight." "God
is every where by his _power_. He rolls the orbs of heaven with his hand,
he fixes the earth in its place with his foot, he guides all the creatures
with his eye, and refreshes them with his influence; he makes the powers
of bell to shake with his terrors, and binds the devils with his word, and
throws them out with his command, and sends the angels on embassies with
his decrees.... God is especially present in the hearts of his people, by
his Holy Spirit; and indeed the hearts of holy men are temples in the
truth of things, and in type and shadow they are heaven itself. For God
reigns in the hearts of his servants: there is his kingdom. The energy of
grace hath subdued all his enemies; this is his power. They serve him
night and day, and give him thanks and praise; that is his glory. The
temple itself is the heart of man; Christ is the high priest, who from
thence sends up the incense of prayers, and joins them to his own
intercession, and presents all together to his Father; and the Holy Ghost,
by his dwelling there, hath also consecrated it into a temple; and God
dwells in our hearts by faith, and Christ by his Spirit, and the Spirit by
his purities; so that we are also cabinets of the mysterious Trinity; and
what is short of heaven itself, but as infancy is short of manhood, and
letters of words?" [48]
How inconceivably glorious is the beauty of holiness in the renovated
soul! That "God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness," should
"shine into our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of
God in the face of Christ Jesus"--that the vileness of our nature should
be superseded by the purity of grace--that sinners should be pardoned and
sin subdued--that the good seed should vegetate in such a barren and
overgrown wilderness of desolation--that we who were "sometime darkness"
should become "light in the Lord," is truly marvellous. This establishment
of "the kingdom of God _within_ us," excites the gratitude of saints, the
wonder of angels, and the loud anthems of triumph that vibrate from the
harps of heaven. When God made a fair world from a formless mass of
matter, "the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted
for joy;" but when he devised the plan to make a holy human being from a
base and fallen rebel, they sung "Glory to God in the HIGHEST."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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