Value That Which Is Most Valuable (2)

What a pity, that God should give us our understandings for better things than we can see or hear in this world, yet we employ them in things of the world wholly. Let us not do as some shallow, proud heads, that regard not divine things. The Scriptures they will not vouchsafe to read once a day, perhaps not once a week; some scarce have a Bible in their studies. 'Learn on earth that which will abide in heaven,’ said Augustine. Let us be stirred up to value the Scriptures and the mysteries of salvation in the gospel that breeds an inward peace and joy that is unspeakable and glorious. All that we have in the world is not worth those little beginnings that are wrought by the hearing of the word of God. If the firstfruits here be joy 'unspeakable and glorious' (1 Pet. 1:8), what will the consummation of these things be at that day?
Here you see a ground of the wonderful patience of the martyrs. You wonder that they would suffer to have their souls severed so violently from their bodies. Cease to wonder; when they had a sense wrought in them by the Spirit of God of the things that eye has not seen nor ear heard. If a man should have asked them why they would suffer their bodies to be misused, when they might have redeemed all this with a little quiet, they would have answered presently, as some of them have done: 'We suffer these things in our bodies and in our senses, for those things that are above our senses. We will have more glory in heaven than we can have misery here. For we can see this, and there is an end of it; but we will have joy that eye has not seen, nor ear heard.' As Paul said in Romans 8:18, the things that we suffer here are not ‘worthy of the glory that will be revealed.' Let us not wonder so much at their patience as to lay up this ground of patience against an evil day when we might have to seal the truth with our blood.

Devotional Readings taken from Puritan Richard Sibbes 'Refreshment for the Soul.'
A Glance of Heaven, Works, vol. 4, pp. 163-64
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