Numbers 16:50

REFLECTIONS

HERE stand, my soul, and contemplate the melancholy effects of a fallen nature, manifesting itself in such astonishing instances of rebellions, and murmurings, and disobedience, and ingratitude. And when thou hast duly pondered over the awful subject in the dreadful example of Korah and his company, turn thine attention inward to thyself. Alas! are not the same seeds of sin there, and do they not continually break forth and bud, and bring forth the same deadly fruit; and what is the world around thee but evidences of the same? And what the examples of suffering and sorrow, but proofs to the same amount? Full of misery because full of sin.

Precious, precious JESUS! relieve my soul in the view of those things, in turning mine eyes to thee and thy great salvation. Oh! thou almighty Aaron, thou great high Priest and Saviour of thy people, may my soul never cease looking unto and upon thee! Thou camest indeed from thy throne of glory, and didst leave the regions of the blessed to visit our miserable world. The plague of sin and the horrid ingratitude of thy people, even the wrath of thy FATHER issuing forth in fiery indignation in the destruction of sinners, did not stop thy love in prosecuting the wonderful deliverance of thy chosen; but thou didst run in among the people, and didst put on the incense of thy merits, and both by thy blood and righteousness didst make an atonement for them. Thou stoodest then between the dead and the living, and now thou interposest still between dead sinners and the living; GOD; and wilt continue in thine unceasing everlasting priesthood until the plague of sin, hell, death, and the grave is stayed, and thou hast rescued all thy redeemed from everlasting misery. LORD, grant by thy SPIRIT's work in my heart, my soul may be made willing to come under the preserving influence of thy censer; and as the dying Israelites were sheltered by the ascending offering of Aaron's incense, so I may take refuge under the covering of thy blood and righteousness, from all my sin and the sin of this ungodly wicked world, and be found in thee to the praise of the glory of that grace wherein I am made accepted in thee the beloved.