THE PULPIT ASSISTANT; CONTAINING THREE HUNDRED OUTLINES, OR Skeletons of Sermons: CHIEFLY EXTRACTED FROM VARIOUS AUTHORS. WITH AN ESSAY ON THE COMPOSITION OF A SERMON. Apply thyself to reading.-St. Paul. COMPLETE IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. II. FIRST AMERICAN, FROM THE FOURTH LONDON EDITION. London: PRINTED FOR WILLIAM BAYNES AND SON. NEW-YORK: REPRINTED AND SOLD BY J. & J. HARPER, No. 327 Pearl-street. THE Pulpit Assistant. OF COMMUNION WITH GOD. Our fellowship is with the Father, &c.-1 John i. 3. COMMUNION With God is the top of the saint's experience in this life it is the height of experimental religion and powerful godliness. This, of all the enjoyments of God's people on earth, is the nearest to the heavenly bliss. I. Communion with God, in general, which appears chiefly in a large communication of grace, and the blessings of it from him conveyed through Christ, and applied by the blessed Spirit. 1. Communion is founded in union, and arises from it. There is a union between God and his people; for the more open manifestation and evidence of which our Lord prays; (John xvii. 21;) it is a conjugal union between them as between husband and wife. (Is. liv. 5.) The evidence of which union is the gift of the Spirit to them in regeneration and conversion; when there appears to be a vital union and a mutual inhabitation of God in them, and of them in God. (1 John iv. 13.) The bond of this union is the love of God to them. As it is the love of one to another which knits their souls together; as the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul. 2. The grand blessing of grace from this union is covenant interest in God, than which there cannot be a greater blessing: happy is that people whose God is the Lord!-He |