Are you still in the furnace of affliction? I am astonished when I behold what heavy pressures, deep heart-felt sorrows, and mighty loads of accumulated grief, some of God’s children are called to bear, and that for years together; but what can we not endure, through all-sufficient grace? I hope you find this grace supporting you, and at all times giving you kind assurances of glory. That you can say, with the same confidence as the Apostle, and all established believers, “We know, that if this earthly house of our tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” Where those heavens are it is of very little importance for you and me to know; our main concern is with the house there, called by our dear Lord, Many mansions. Our dwelling house, mansions, and joy, will not consist in merely being in a place called heaven, but it will lay in the full enjoyment of the love, favor, approbation, and sight of God in Christ; this was Job’s hope and expectation, “In my flesh I shall see God:”—and this is the promise to the Church, “They shall see his face.” David was so transported with this, that he exclaimed, in the sweetest confidence, “As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness. I shall be satisfied when I awake in thy likeness.” There will be no beholding the face of the dear Immanuel but in his righteousness. This glorious robe is imputed by God the Father, to poor sinners. We are taught out of his Law our need of this Surety’s righteousness; we are clothed with it, and brought by the Father in it to his dear Son, who graciously accepts us in it, owns us as his own, and gives us the Spirit of Adoption, to say, “My Father.”—The blessed Spirit carries on this work, by enlarging the heart, expanding the mind, and extending our views in the knowledge of Christ; and the longer we live the more we learn the real value of Christ—his goings forth in eternity, in a way of love to us—his mysterious incarnation—his surprising condescension—his holy life of obedience, and his great act of putting sin away, by the sacrifice of himself. These become precious to our souls as we grow in knowledge; nor do we stop here: the glorious victories he has obtained, the value of his work, and the acceptableness of it to God; the life of Mediation he is living for us in heaven, and the prevalency of his intercession; these are our food, our feast of fat things.—But the ever blessed Spirit carries on his work, till he has given us most exalted views of his Person, as one in the divine essence; as the Son of God, in away not known to angels or men; as God-Man Mediator; as the glorious head of the Church, and the Saviour of the body, and as our all in all. This is knowing Christ, and wherever the Lord has bestowed this favour on the soul, whatever trials, temptations, or griefs, may beset or befal them, such shall hold on their way, and wax stronger and stronger—