Wesley Corpus

piness must be particularly pleasing in his sight, and enhance their own happiness. Nor is it a barren useless pleasure which these sons of God reap from their attendance on the children of men, but joined with im provement : in doing good to us, they accumu late good to themselves also ; and this perhaps is a second reason why the most High hath allotted this province to them, that by exer cising the goodness they already possess they continually acquire more, and swiftly too. Even we, fettered as we are in this tabernacle of earth, and weighed down by original cor ruption even we can perceive that the more acts of any virtue we perform, the stronger habit we slowly acquire : much more swiftly, then, must exercise improve those blessed spirits who have neither of these our impedi ments: much more sensibly, by the acts of benevolence which they perform, must they advance in this godlike virtue. And thirdly, as by this exercise of it they are more benevolent and happy, so thereby they treasure up to themselves an augmenting fund of future happiness. The greater good will they bear to men, the greater must be their joy when these men, in the fulness of time, are received into the glory appointed for them ; the more exquisitely will they sympa thize with them when all their sorrows are done away, when the days of sickness and pain and sin are passed for ever, and swallowed up in blissful immortality, and they are ad mitted with these glorious spirits to drink those rivers of pleasure which flow from the presence of God for evermore ! In those days we shall evidently perceive a fourth reason why these ministering spirits are now so constantly sent forth to guard those who are heirs of salvation ; namely, that when entered into their inheritance they might be gratefully sensible of their benefits ; that when they experience the inestimable value of them, this gratitude might ripen into love ; that this love might be a means of increasing their happiness by seeing those whom they loved, and seeing them so happy, and by re flecting that themselves, unworthy as they were, while in these earthly tabernacles of clay, had in some degree contributed to its augmen tation.