“JUNE, 1796.

“’I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the Lord.’  Psalm 122.

“’The house of the Lord, whither the tribes go up, the tribes of the Lord, unto the testimony of Israel, to give thanks unto the name of the Lord,’ to seek his face, to learn his will, to taste his love, to behold his’ glory, to enjoy God as their own God and reconciled Father.

“Lord, let my heart be warmed more towards thy house; I have sought and found thee in thy sanctuary, read thy providences, and been taught thy will; I have tasted thy love and beheld thy glory; I have enjoyed thy presence as my own reconciled Father in Christ Jesus; I have been satisfied with thy goodness, as with marrow and fatness; and yet how cold and languid at times, how little desire to return, how small my expectations, how wandering my imagination.  How do I sit before thee as thy people, and my heart with the fool’s eyes at the ends of the earth.  Lord, I should blush and be ashamed were a fellow-mortal to see my heart at times.  I may hide my eyes from viewing vanity, but the evil lies within.  O Lord, thou knowest the cause.  After all I have heard, seen, tasted, and handled of the word of life, I am still of myself an empty vessel, unable to speak a good word, or think a good thought.  Great are thy tender mercies, O Lord.  ’Quicken me according to thy word; turn thou away my eyes from beholding vanity, and quicken me in thy way:  then shall I run in the way of thy commandments when thou hast enlarged my heart.’

“The house of God; the owner, the builder, and maker is God, and it is his peculiar treasure.  Christ is the foundation and chief corner-stone, and his house are we, built upon him, cemented together, a spiritual building; the foundation cannot fail, the corner-stone can never give way; neither can we fall to pieces, or be separated from him.

“The house of God; ’Jerusalem, Zion, the rest of God, where he delights to dwell,’ where he will for ever stay; the house of God, the church, yea, the body of Christ:  Christ the head, his people the church, his members whose life is in him, and derived from him; and because he lives we shall live also.  Lord, enlarge my understanding to comprehend more and more of the height and depth, length and breadth of the love of Christ, which passeth all understanding.  Open my eyes to behold wondrous things in thy law and gospel.  I am as yet but a babe; glory to God that I am what I am, a babe in Christ.  I shall be nourished with life and strength from my divine Head; educated and nurtured by the blessings of the new covenant.  I shall arrive at the perfection of stature appointed, and stand in my lot at the latter day.  Amen.”

“AUGUST 4, 1796.