The Saints' Everlasting Rest - Richard Baxter

die."
It is the will of God that this rest should yet remain for his people, and
not be enjoyed till they come to another world. Who should dispose of the
creatures but he that made them? You may as well ask why have we not
spring and harvest without winter? or, why is the earth below and the
heavens above? as why we have not rest on earth? All things must come to
their perfection by degrees. The strongest man must first be a child. The
greatest scholar must first begin with the alphabet. The tallest oak was once
an acorn. This life is our infancy; and would we be perfect in the womb, or
born at full stature? If our rest was here, most of God's providences must be
useless. Should God lose the glory of his church's miraculous deliverances,
and of the fall of his enemies, that men may have their happiness here? If we
were all happy, innocent, and perfect, what use was there for the glorious
work of our sanctification, justification, and future salvation?--If we wanted
nothing, we should not depend on God so closely, nor call upon him so
earnestly. How little would he hear from us, if we had what we would have!
God would never have had such songs of praise from Moses at the Red Sea
and in the wilderness, from Deborah and Hannah, from David and Hezekiah,
if they had been the choosers of their own condition. Have not thy own
highest praises to God, reader, been occasioned by thy dangers or miseries?
The greatest glory and praise God has through the world, is for redemption,
reconciliation, and salvation by Christ; and was not man's misery the
occasion of that?--And where God loses the opportunity of exercising his
mercies, man must needs lose the happiness of enjoying them. Where God
loses his praise, man will certainly lose his comforts. O the sweet comforts
the saints have had in return for their prayers! How should we know what a
tender-hearted Father we have, if we had not, as the prodigal, been denied
the husks of earthly pleasure and profit? We should never have felt Christ's
tender heart, if we had not felt ourselves "weary and heavy laden, hungry and
thirsty, poor and contrite." It is a delight to a soldier or traveller, to look back
on his escapes when they are over; and for a saint in heaven to look back on
61