Page:Devotions - Donne - 1840.djvu/123

 Iam fallen into the hands of God with David, and with David I see that his mercies are great. Ior by that mercy, I consider in my present state, not the haste and the despatch of the discase, in dissolving this body, so much as the much more haste and despatch which my God shall use in recollecting and reuniting this dust again at the resurrection. Then I shall hear his angels proclaim the Surgite mortui, Rise, ye dead. Though I be dead, I shall hear the voice; the sounding of the voice and the working of the voice shall be all one; and all shall rise there mn a less minute than any one dies here.

MOST gracious God, who pursuest and per fectest thine own purposes, and dost not only remember me, by the first accesses of this sickness, that I must die, but inform me, by this further proceeding therein, that I may die now; who hast not only waked me with the first, but called me up, by casting me further down, and clothed me with thyself, by stripping me of myself; and by dulling my bodily senses to the meats and eases of this world, hast whet and sharpened my spiritual senses to the apprehension of thee; by what steps and degrees soever it shall please thee to go, in the dissolution of this body, hasten, O Lord, that pace, and multiply, O my God, those degrees, in the exaltation of my soul toward thee now, and to thee then. My taste is not gone away, but gone up to sit at David's table, 7o taste, and see, that the Lovd is good. My stomach is not gone, but gone up, so far upwards toward the Supper of the Lamb, with thy saints in heaven, as to the table, to the communion of thy saints here in earth: my knees are weak, but weak therefore that I