Ten directions how to frame our thanksgivings 3/5

   (2.) Love and joy.  Amour et gaudium faciunt musicum—love and joy, it is said, make a musician. Indeed then this music of praise is best—in heaven, I mean—where the graces are perfect.

           (a) Excite thy love.  This is an affection that cannot keep within door, but must be sallying forth in the praises of God. Austin, speaking of heaven, breaks out thus, ibi vacabimus et videbimus, vide­bimus et amabimus, amabimus et laudabimus, lauda­bimus et cantabimus—in heaven we shall have noth­ing to do but to behold the face of God, and seeing him we shall love him, loving him we shall praise him, and praising we shall sing and rejoice.  Love and thankfulness are like the symbolical qualities of the elements—easily resolved into each other.  David begins with ‘I love the Lord, because he hath heard my voice,’ Ps. 116:1.  And, to enkindle this grace into a greater flame, he aggravates the mercies of God in some following verses; which done, then he is in the right cue for praises, and strikes up his instrument, ‘What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits?’ Ps. 116:12.  The spouse, when once she was thoroughly awake, pondering with herself what a friend had been at her door, and how his sweet company was lost through her unkindness, shakes off her sloth, riseth, and away she goes after him.  Now, when with running after her beloved she had put her soul into a heat of love, then she breaks out into an encomium of her beloved, praising him from top to toe, Song 5:10.  That is the acceptable praising which comes from a warm heart; and he that would warm his heart must use some holy exercise to stir up his habit of love, which, like natural heat in the body, is preserved and increased by motion.

           (b) Excite thy joy.  I will sing ‘with joyful lips,’ Ps. 63:5.  A sad heart and a thankful hardly can dwell to­gether—I mean, sad with worldly sorrow.  The disci­ples for sorrow could not hold open their eyes to pray, much more sure were they unfit to praise.  This indeed makes the duty of praise and thanksgiving more difficult than to pray, because our joy here is so often quenched and interrupted with intervening sins and sorrows that this heavenly fore seldom burns long clear on the Christian’s altar from which his praises should ascend.  Temptations and afflictions, they both drive the soul to prayer and more dispose it for prayer; but they untune his instrument for praise. Hannah, she wept and prayed, but durst not eat of the peace-offering, the sacrifice of praise, because she wept.  It behoves us therefore the more to watch our hearts lest they be indisposed by any affliction for this duty.  Do with thy soul as the musician in wet weather doth with his instrument, which he hangs not in a moist nasty room, but where it may have the air of the fire.  Art thou under affliction? let not thy soul pore too long on those thy troubles, but bring it within the scent of God's mercies that are intermingled with them.  Sit near this fire of God’s love in Christ —warm thy heart with meditation on spiritual prom­ises—while thou art under bodily pressures, and thou shalt find, through God’s blessing thy heart in some comfortable tune to praise God in the saddest and most rainy day that can befall thee in all thy life.  Thus David could make music in the cave: ‘My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed: I will sing and give praise,’ Ps. 57:7.

5. Direction. Content not thyself with a bare narrative, but give every mercy its proper accent ac­cording to the enhancing circumstances thereof. There is great difference in two that sing the same song.  From one you have only the plain song; the other descants and runs division upon it, in which consists the grace of music.  The mercies of God af­fect our hearts as they are dressed forth.  If we put on them their rich habiliments—the circumstances, I mean, that advance them, they appear glorious to our eyes and enlarge our hearts in praises for them; but considered without these, we pass them slightly.  God himself, when he would express the height of his love to his people, presents them to his own eye, not as now they are, but as clothed with the glory he intends them.  ‘As the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee,’ Isa. 62:5.  At the wed­ding day the best clothes are put on.  Thus do thou, to draw out thy thankfulness for mercies, consider them in the circumstances that may render them most glorious in thine eye.  Some emperors have not suffered every one to draw their picture, lest they should be disfigured by their bungling pencil.  Truly, slighty praises disfigure the lovely face of God’s mercy.  They are but few that draw them to life.  To do this much study and meditation are requisite. ‘The works of the Lord are sought out of them that have pleasure in them.’  The curious limner studies the face of the man before he makes his draught.  Praise is a work not done in a trice, the lesson must be pricked before it can be sung.  Read therefore the word, and learn from the saints there recorded what aggravating circumstances they have observed in recognizing their mercies.