The Communicant's Companion
up, nor awake your love, nor give any disturbance to your communion with him.
III. Let us address ourselves to it with a holy awe and reverence of the Divine Majesty.— We ought to be in the fear of the Lord every day, and all the day long, for he is our strict observer wherever we are, and will be the judge of persons and actions, by whose unerring sentence our eternal state will be decided; but in a special manner he is "greatly to be feared in the assemblies of his saints, and to be had in reverence of all them that are about him," and the nearer we approach to him, the more reverent we should be. Angels that always behold God's face, see cause to cover their own. Even then when we are admitted to sit down at God's table, we must remember that we are worshipping at his footstool, and therefore must lay ourselves very low before him, and "in his fear worship towards his holy temple." Let us not rush into the presence of God in a careless manner, as if he were a man like ourselves, nay, so as we would not approach to a prince or a great man; but observe a decorum, "giving to him the glory due unto his name," and taking to ourselves the shame due to ours. If he be a master, where is his fear? We do not worship God acceptably, if we do not worship him "with reverence and godly fear."
1. We must worship him with reverence as a glorious God, a God of infinite perfection and almighty power, who "covers himself with light as with a garment," and yet, as to us, makes darkness his pavilion. Dare we profane the temples of the Holy Ghost, by outward indecencies of carriage and behavior, the manifest indications of a vain and regardless mind? Dare we allow of low and common thoughts of that God who is over all, blessed for evermore? See him, my soul—see him by faith upon a throne, high and lifted up; not only upon a throne of grace, which encourages thee to come