This is Too Much!!

Only to be permitted to contemplate such a being as Jehovah, to ponder goodness, holiness, justice, mercy, patience and sovereignty personified and condensed; to ponder them united with eternity, infinite power, unerring wisdom, omnipresence, and all sufficiency; to ponder all these natural and moral perfections indissolubly united and blended in sweet harmony in one pure, spiritual being, and that being placed on the throne of the universe to ponder this would be happiness enough to fill the mind of any creature in existence! 

But in addition to this, to have this ineffable Being for my God, my portion, my all; to be permitted to say, "This God is my God forever and ever!" to have His resplendent countenance smile upon me; to be encircled in His everlasting arms of power and faithfulness and love; to hear His voice saying to me, "I am yours and you are Mine! Nothing shall ever pluck you from My hands or separate you from My love, but you shall be with Me where I am, behold My glory, and live to reign with Me forever and ever!" 

This is too much! It is honor, it is glory, it is happiness too overwhelming, too transporting for mortal minds to conceive, or for mortal frames to support! In Heaven, the saints will be entirely lost and swallowed up in God, and their minds will be so completely absorbed in the contemplation of His ineffable, infinite, uncreated glories! Oh, then, what must it be, to escape forever from error and ignorance and darkness and sin into the region of bright, unclouded, eternal day! 

What must it be, to behold your God and Redeemer face to face! What must it be, to continually to contemplate, with immortal strength glories so dazzlingly bright, that one moment's view of them would now, like a stream of lightning, turn your frail bodies into dust! What must it be, to see the eternal volume of the divine counsels, the mighty map of the divine mind, unfolded to your eager, piercing gaze! What must it be, to explore the heights and depths, the lengths and breadths of the Redeemer's love and still to see new wonders, glories, and beauties pouring upon your minds in constant, endless succession, calling forth new songs of praise songs in which you will unite with the innumerable choirs of angels, with the countless myriads of the redeemed, all shouting with a voice like the voice of many waters, "Alleluia, for the Lord God omnipotent reigns!" 

 [Edward Payson]

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Song of Soloman 6:3 ... I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine: he feedeth among the lilies.

John 10:28 ... And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.

1 Corinthians 13:12 ... For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

Revelation 19:6 ... And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, Alleluia: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.❤

You Will See The Reason

Above all, I would say to the Christian: Never distrust the kindness, the love, the wisdom and faithfulness of your Savior but confide in Him who has promised that all things shall work together for your good. Though you may not now know what He is doing you shall know hereafter. You will see the reason for  all the trials and temptations,  all the dark and comfortless hours,  all the distressing doubts and fears,  all the long and tedious conflicts with which you are now exercised. You will be convinced that not a sigh, not a tear, not a single uneasy thought was ever allotted to you without some wise and gracious design.

Say not, then, like Jacob of old, "All these things are against me!" Say not, like David, "I shall one day perish by the hand of Saul!"  For all these things are for your good and you shall never perish, neither shall any pluck you out of Christ's hand!

Why should you, who are sons of the King of Heaven be lean and discontented from day to day? Remember that you are the heir of God and joint heir with Christ of an incorruptible, eternal, and unfading inheritance!

Go to Jesus, the compassionate Savior of sinners, who heals the broken in heart, who gathers the lambs in His arms and carries them close to His heart. Go, I say, to Him! Tell Him all your griefs and sorrows! Tell Him that your souls cleave to the dust! Tell Him that iniquities, doubts, and fears prevail against you! Tell Him that you are poor and miserable and wretched and blind and naked.

Go to His mercy-seat, where He sits as a merciful High Priest. Go and embrace His feet, lay open your whole hearts and you will find Him infinitely more gracious than you can conceive; infinitely more willing to grant your requests, than you are to make them. He is love itself, it is His very nature to pity.

Have you a hard heart? Carry it to Him and He will soften it.  Have you a blind mind? Carry it to Him and He will enlighten it.  Are you oppressed with a load of guilt? Carry it to Him and He will remove it.  Are you defiled and polluted? He will wash you in His own blood.   Have you backslidden? "Turn unto Me," says He, "O backsliding children, and I will heal your backslidings."

How great are the privileges which result from an ability to say, "Christ is mine!" If Christ is yours, then all that He possesses is yours!    His power is yours to defend you!   His wisdom and knowledge are yours to guide you!    His righteousness is yours to justify you!   His Spirit and grace are yours to sanctify you!   His Heaven is yours to receive you!  You will never live happily or usefully until you can feel that Christ, and all that He possesses, are yours and learn to come and take them as your own!

[Edward Payson]

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John 13:7 ... Jesus answered and said unto him, What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter.

1 Peter 1:3-5 ... Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,  To an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, Who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.❤

Do You Ask Why He is Angry?

He is angry to see rational, immortal and accountable beings spending twenty, forty, or sixty years in trifling and sin; serving numerous idols, lusts, and vanities, and living as if death were an eternal sleep!

He is angry to see you forgetting your Maker in childhood, in youth, in manhood and making no returns for all His benefits.

He is angry to see you casting off His fear and rebelling against Him who has nourished and sustained you.

He is angry to see you laying up treasures on earth and not in Heaven.

He is angry to see you seeking everything in preference to the one thing needful.

He is angry to see you loving the praise of men more than the praise of God; and fearing those who can only kill the body, more than Him who has power to cast both soul and body into Hell.

He is angry to see that you disregard alike His threatenings and His promises, His judgments and His mercies. 

He is angry that you bury in the earth the talents He has given you, and bring forth no fruit to His glory.

He is angry that you neglect His Word and His Son, and perish in impenitency and unbelief.

These are sins of which every person, in an unconverted state, is guilty. And for these things God is angry, daily angry, greatly and justly angry! And unless His anger is speedily appeased, it will most certainly prove your everlasting destruction!

[Edward Payson]

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Psalm 7:11 ... God judgeth the righteous, and God is angry with the wicked every day.

James 1:20-21 ... For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God. Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls.

Matthew 10:28 ... And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.❤

Leave Us Alone!

Sinners do not like to retain God in their knowledge because He is omniscient and omnipresent. In consequence of His possessing these attributes, He is a constant witness of their motives and conduct, and is perfectly acquainted with their hearts. This must render the thoughts of His holiness still more disagreeable to a sinner for what can be more unpleasant to him, than the constant presence and inspection of a holy being  whom he cannot deceive,  from whose keen, searching gaze he cannot for a moment hide, to whom darkness and light are alike open, and  who views his conduct with the utmost displeasure and abhorrence?

Even the presence of our fellow creatures is disagreeable, when we wish to indulge any sinful propensity which they will disapprove. How exceedingly irksome, then, must the constant presence of a holy, heart-searching God be to a sinner! No wonder, then, that sinners banish a knowledge of Him from their minds, as the easiest method of freeing themselves from the restraint imposed by His presence.

[Edward Payson]

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Job 21:14 ... Therefore they say unto God, Depart from us; for we desire not the knowledge of thy ways.

1 Corinthians 2:14 ... But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

2 Timothy 4:3 ... For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;❤

Look To The Rock

It is profitable for the children of God often to reflect on what they formerly were, meditate on their once wretched and helpless condition,   look to the rock whence they were hewn, and to the pit whence they were dug.

Look back, then, Christians, to the time when you were the enemies of God, the despisers of His Son, the willing slaves of the father of lies, and children of disobedience!

Look back to the time when  your hearts were as hard as the nether millstone;  your understandings were darkened;  you were alienated from the life of God;  your wills were stubborn, perverse and rebellious;  your affections were madly bent on the pleasures of sin;  every imagination of the thoughts of your heart were only evil, and continually evil!

Look back with shame and self-abhorrence to the time when you lived without God in the world, drank in iniquity like water, served various lusts and vanities, fulfilled the sinful desires of the flesh and mind, cast God's holy law behind your backs, stifled the remonstrances of conscience, quenched the influences of the Spirit, neglected the Holy Scriptures, and  mocked God with pretended worship, while your hearts were far from Him.

A rebel against God, a resister of the Spirit, a slave of Satan, a child of wrath, an heir of Hell such, O Christian, was once your character!  Nothing was then before you, but a fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation!  Admire the God of free grace who save you from such a dreadful plight!

[Edward Payson]

Isaiah 51:1 ... Hearken to me, ye that follow after righteousness, ye that seek the Lord: look unto the rock whence ye are hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence ye are digged. ❤

Fanning the Inextinguishable Fire

If you would learn the full extent of that wretchedness which sin produces, then you must follow it into the eternal world, and descend into those regions where peace and hope never come. There behold sin tyrannizing over its wretched victims with uncontrollable fury, fanning the inextinguishable fire, and sharpening the tooth of the immortal worm!

See angels and archangels, thrones and dominions, principalities and powers tripped of all their original glory and beauty, bound in eternal chains, and burning with rage and malice against that Being in whose presence they once rejoiced, and whose praises they once sang!

See multitudes of the human race, in unutterable agonies of anguish and despair, cursing the Giver and Prolonger of their existence, and vainly wishing for annihilation to put an end to their miseries.

Follow them through the long, long ages of eternity and see them sinking deeper and deeper in the bottomless abyss of ruin! View them perpetually blaspheming God because of their plagues, and receiving the punishment of these blasphemies in continued additions to their wretchedness.

Such are the wages of sin, such the doom of the finally impenitent!

From these depths of anguish and despair look up to the mansions of the blessed, and see to what a height of glory and felicity, the grace of God will raise every sinner who repents. See those who are thus favored in unutterable ecstasies of joy, love, and praise, beholding God face to face, reflecting His perfect image, shining with a splendor like that of their glorious Redeemer, and bathing in those rivers of pleasure which flow forever at God's right hand!

[Edward Payson]

Matthew 25:46 ... And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.


Luke 16:23 ... And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.


Romans 6:23 ... For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.❤

How is Your Beloved Better Than Others?

Does not our Friend as far excel all other friends as Heaven exceeds earth, as eternity exceeds time, as the Creator surpasses His creatures? See all the fullness of the Godhead dwelling in One who is as meek and mild as a child. See His countenance beaming with ineffable glories full of mingled majesty, condescension and love. Hear the soul-reviving invitations and gracious words which proceed from His lips. See that hand in which dwells everlasting strength swaying the scepter of universal empire over all creatures and all worlds. See His arms expanded to receive and embrace returning sinners.

While His heart, a bottomless, shoreless ocean of benevolence overflows with tenderness, compassion, and love. Such, O sinner, is our Beloved and such is our Friend.  Will you not then embrace Him as your Friend? If you can be persuaded to do this you will find that half, nay, that the thousandth part has not been told to you!

All the excellency, glory and beauty which is found in men or angels, flows from Christ as a drop of water from the ocean, or a ray of light from the sun. If, then, you supremely love the creature can you wonder that Christians should love the Creator! Can you wonder that those who behold the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, should be sweetly drawn to Him by the cords of love, and lose their fondness for created glories? All that you love and admire and wish for in creatures, and indeed infinitely more they find in Him!

[Edward Payson]

Song of Solomon 5:9 ... What is thy beloved more than another beloved, O thou fairest among women? what is thy beloved more than another beloved, that thou dost so charge us? ❤

How Loudly and Persuasively Does His Conduct Preach!

It was highly important and desirable that the Lord Jesus should not only describe Christianity in His discourses, but exemplify it in His life and conduct. In Him, we see pure and undefiled religion embodied. In Him, Christianity lives and breathes. How convincing, how animating is our Savior's example! How loudly and persuasively does His conduct preach!

Would you learn submission to parental authority? See Him, notwithstanding His exalted character, cheerfully subjecting Himself to the will of His parents; and laboring with them, as a carpenter, for almost thirty years.

Would you learn contentment with a poor and low condition? See Him destitute of a place where to lay His head.

Would you learn active beneficence? See Him going about doing good.

Would you learn to be fervent and constant in devotional exercises? See Him rising for prayer before the dawn of day.

Would you learn in what manner to treat your brethren? See Him washing His disciples' feet.

Would you learn filial piety? See Him forgetting His sufferings, while in the agonies of death to provide another son for His desolate mother.

Would you learn in what manner to pray for relief under afflictions? See Him in the garden of Gethsemane.

Would you learn how to bear insults and injuries? See Him on the cruel cross!

In short, there is no Christian grace or virtue, which is not beautifully exemplified in His life.

There is scarcely any situation, however perplexing, in which the Christian, who is at a loss to know how he ought to act may not derive sufficient instruction from the example of his divine Master.

[Edward Payson]

1 John 2:6 ... He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked.

1 Peter 2:21 ... For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps:

2 John 6 ... And this is love, that we walk after his commandments. This is the commandment, That, as ye have heard from the beginning, ye should walk in it.❤

This is Too Much!

Only to be permitted to contemplate such a being as Jehovah,  to ponder goodness, holiness, justice, mercy, patience and sovereignty personified and condensed;  to ponder them united with eternity, infinite power, unerring wisdom, omnipresence, and all sufficiency;  to ponder all these natural and moral perfections indissolubly united and blended in sweet harmony in one pure, spiritual being, and that being placed on the throne of the universe to ponder this would be happiness enough to fill the mind of any creature in existence!

But in addition to this, to have this ineffable Being for my God, my portion, my all; to be permitted to say, "This God is my God forever and ever!" to have His resplendent countenance smile upon me; to be encircled in His everlasting arms of power and faithfulness and love; to hear His voice saying to me, "I am yours and you are Mine! Nothing shall ever pluck you from My hands, or separate you from My love but you shall be with Me where I am, behold My glory, and live to reign with Me forever and ever!"

This is too much! It is honor, it is glory it is happiness too overwhelming, too transporting for mortal minds to conceive, or for mortal frames to support!

In Heaven, the saints will be entirely lost and swallowed up in God, and their minds will be so completely absorbed in the contemplation of His ineffable, infinite, uncreated glories!

Oh, then, what must it be, to escape forever from error and ignorance and darkness and sin into the region of bright, unclouded, eternal day!

What must it be, to behold your God and Redeemer face to face!

What must it be, to continually to contemplate, with immortal strength glories so dazzlingly bright, that one moment's view of them would now, like a stream of lightning, turn your frail bodies into dust!

What must it be to see the eternal volume of the divine counsels, the mighty map of the divine mind, unfolded to your eager, piercing gaze!

What must it be to explore the heights and depths, the lengths and breadths of the Redeemer's love and still to see new wonders, glories, and beauties pouring upon your minds in constant, endless succession, calling forth new songs of praise songs in which you will unite with the innumerable choirs of angels, with the countless myriads of the redeemed, all shouting with a voice like the voice of many waters, "Alleluia, for the Lord God omnipotent reigns!"

[Edward Payson]

1 Corinthians 13:12 ... For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.  ❤

The Great Goddess

So long as they remain in their natural state, the world is, in some form or other, the great goddess Diana, the grand idol of all its inhabitants! They bow down to it. They worship it. They spend and are spent for it. They educate their children in its service. Their hearts, their minds, their memories, their imaginations, are full of the world. Their tongues speak of it. Their hands grasp it. Their feet pursue it. In a word, it is all in all to them! And all the while, they give scarcely a word, a look, or a thought to Him who made and preserves them and who really is all in all.

[Edward Payson]

Acts 19:34 ... But when they knew that he was a Jew, all with one voice about the space of two hours cried out, Great is Diana of the Ephesians.

Ephesians 5:5 ... For this ye know, that no whoremonger, nor unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.

1 John 5:21 ... Little children, keep yourselves from idols. Amen.❤

Of All The Sins ...

The pride of the wicked is the principal reason why they will not seek after the knowledge of God.

In the first place, pride renders God a disagreeable object of contemplation to the wicked and a knowledge of Him as undesirable. Pride consists in an unduly exalted opinion of one's self. It is, therefore, impatient of a rival, hates a superior, and cannot endure a master. In proportion as it prevails in the heart pride makes us wish to see nothing above us, to acknowledge no law but our own wills, to follow no rule but our own inclinations.

Thus it led Satan to rebel against his Creator and our first parents to desire to be as gods.

Since such are the effects of pride, it is evident that nothing can be more painful to a proud heart than the thoughts of such a being as God one who is infinitely powerful, just, and holy who can neither be resisted, deceived, nor deluded who disposes, according to His own sovereign pleasure, of all creatures and events and who, in an especial manner, hates pride, and is determined to abase and punish it. Such a Being, pride can contemplate only with feelings of dread, aversion, and abhorrence. It must look upon God as its natural enemy, the great Enemy whom it has to fear.

The knowledge of God directly tends to bring this infinite, irresistible, irreconcilable Enemy full to the view of the proud man. It teaches him that he has a superior, a master from whose authority he cannot escape, whose power he cannot resist, and whose will he must obey or be crushed before Him, and be rendered miserable forever! It shows him what he hates to see that, in despite of his opposition God's counsel shall stand,  He will do all His pleasure, and that He is infinitely above them.

These truths torture the proud unhumbled hearts of the wicked, and hence they hate the Scriptures which teach these truths. On the contrary, they wish to remain ignorant of such a Being, and to banish all thoughts of Him from their minds. With this view, they neglect, pervert, or explain away those passages of Scripture which describe God's true character, and endeavor to believe that He is altogether such a one as themselves.

How foolish, how absurd, how ruinous, how blindly destructive of its own self does pride appear! By attempting to soar it only plunges itself in the mire! While endeavoring to erect for itself a throne it undermines the ground on which it stands, and digs its own grave!

Pride plunged Satan from Heaven into Hell; it banished our first parents from paradise; and it will, in a similar manner, ruin all who indulge in it. Pride keeps us in ignorance of God, shuts us out from His favor, prevents us from resembling Him, and deprives us in this world, of all the honor and happiness which communion with Him would confer.  And in the next world, unless previously hated, repented of, and renounced pride will bar the door of Heaven forever against us, and close the gates of Hell upon us!

O then, my friends, beware, above all things beware of pride! Beware, lest you indulge it imperceptibly, for of all sins it is the most secret, subtle and insinuating!

[Edward Payson]

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Psalm 10:4 ... The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek after God: God is not in all his thoughts.

Proverbs 16:18 ... Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.

1 John 2:16 ... For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.❤

Later You Will Understand

You shall see the reason of all the trials and temptations, all the dark and comfortless hours, all the long and tedious conflicts and you will be convinced that not a sigh, not a single uneasy thought, was allotted to you without a wise and gracious design!

[Edward Payson]

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John 13:7 ... Jesus answered and said unto him, What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter.

Hebrews 12:10-11 ... For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness.  Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.

1 Peter 4:12-13 ... Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you:  But rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings; that, when his glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy.❤