in grace’s sappy soil, they lie open to the warm beams of the Sun of Righteousness; and the winter blasts may be sharp and long; clouds may intercept the heat, and nipping frosts may cause a sad decay, and all the sap may return and lie, as it were, dormant in the root; yet the winter will pass, the rain will be over and gone, and the flowers will appear on the earth; the time of singing of birds will come, and the voice of the turtle will be heard in the land; then shall even the wilderness and solitary place be glad, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose, it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and singing; the glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it, the excellency of Carmel and Sharon, they shall see the glory of the Lord, and the excellency of our God.  We wonder that ’tis not always hot summer days, a flourishing and fruitful season, with souls and with churches.  But know we the thoughts of the Lord; see we to the bottom of the deep contrivance of infinite wisdom?  Know we the usefulness, yea, necessity of long winter nights, stormy blasts, rain, hail, snow, and frost?  Consider we, that our state and condition, while here, calleth for those vicissitudes, and requireth the blowing of the north as well as of the south winds?  If we considered, how grace had ordered all things for our best, and most for the glory and exaltation of grace, we would sit down and sing under the saddest of dispensations, and living by faith and hope, we would rejoice in the confident expectation of a gracious outgate; for as long as grace predomineth (and that will be until glory take the empire) all will run in the channel of grace; and though now sense (which is oft faith’s unfaithful friend) will be always suggesting false tales of God, and of his grace unto unbelief, and raising thereby discontents, doubts, fears, jealousies, and many distempers in the soul, to its prejudice and hurt, yet in end, grace shall be seen to be grace; and the faithful shall get such a full sight of this manifold grace, as ordering, tempering, timing, shortening, or continuing, of all the sad and dismal days and seasons that have passed over their own or their mother’s head, that they shall see, that grace did order all, yea, every circumstance of all the various tossings, changes, ups and downs, that they did meet with.  And O what a satisfying sight will that be, when the general assembly and church of the first-born, which are in-rolled in Heaven, and every individual saint, shall come together, and take a view of all their experience, the result of which shall be, grace began, grace carried on, and grace hath perfected all, grace was at the bottom of all?  What shoutings, grace, grace unto it, will be there; when the head-stone shall be brought forth?  What soul-satisfying complacency in, and admiration at all that is past, will a back-look thereat yield, when every one shall be made to say, grace hath done all well, not a pin of all the work of grace in and about me might have been wanted; now I see, that the work of God is perfect, grace was glorious grace, and wise grace, whatever I thought of it then.  O what a fool have I been, in quarrelling at, and in not being fully satisfied with all that grace was doing with me?  O how little is this believed now?