with me: he has enabled me to rest on its promises by faith he has taught me to build on the only foundation that he has laid in Zion. And this is all my salvation: it all depends on it: all things are contained in it: it is founded on the best promises, everlasting and unchangeable, and therefore it is all in all. What can I have more? What can I wish more? What are my chief desires? Man is a weak and ignorant creature: I have said, 'Give me this,' and 'Give me that I have gone to broken cisterns, as well as other men: I have leaned on earth, like other men; and it has proved a broken reed, and oft a spear, and wounded my hand,—and shall I still idolize it? Away with my fond and childish desires: they are unworthy the man who can grasp the mercies of an everlasting covenant; and therefore, now that I am come to die, and to speak my right sentiments in my right mind, I say that this is not only all my salvation, but all my desire. If I am told, therefore, that I must walk sorrowfully, in a narrow way, in a puzzling road; that I must be accepted in a better righteousness; that I must even travel by myself in this road to heaven, I answer, 'So be it: I am satisfied.'

We have seen, then, that David, as well as we, had great complaints to make; but he espies, flies to, and embraces the only sure, firm, permanent dependance and foundation. He hath made with ME an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and

sure.

III. I will not detain you longer on this point, but would rather come still nearer to your bosoms, in the REMARKS that I would make upon the passage.

1. Whatever blessings a pious man receives on

the road, as he travels through the wilderness; yet he finds that he is not at home.

Abraham enjoyed many mercies; but he was not yet at home and, therefore, he looked, not at his children, nor at his cattle, his lands, his goods, or his three hundred servants, but to the house eternal in the heavens. He looked through temporal blessings to his possessions in glory; as a man looks across his neighbour's fields to his own estate.

Jacob, when he came to stand before Pharaoh, says, "Few and evil have the days of the years of my pilgrimage been: I am only a poor pilgrim going home: I am not yet there!"

David, in the midst of the splendour of his court, tells you, "I am not at home: that is above: my family is distressing to me: sin has entered it, driven out the peace and comfort of it, and poisoned it; but blessed be God, there is a house above, there is a covenant in which I can wrap up all my hopes and all my desires."

My dear hearers, till you learn to look beyond your houses here, and build on better comforts than this world can afford, you are under an imposition. You are deceived. You are seeking the living among the dead. Instead, therefore, of murmuring and repining, and desponding, because present things are uncomfortable, rather thank God that he will not suffer you to rest in them, nor make a portion of them; that there is a voice in them, such as Abraham heard, "Begone! Go to an everlasting covenant! Go to unchangeable promises! Go to that which shall grow think not to find a home and a rest here!"

I speak not these things to render you melancholy and gloomy. For while I would prevent your

building on the sand, I would warn you, that, though a good man feels he is not at home, yet he is still satisfied with what he finds on the road. The Christian is not a misanthrope, who says there is no good in the world, and quarrels with every thing around him. A Christian, when he finds he is not at home, is satisfied, on the whole, because he finds many blessings by the way; and knows that his Lord is bringing him by a right road through all his troubles, to a city of habitation. As the philosopher said when he was shipwrecked, and the people were busily employed in removing their goods from the vessel, and one said to him, "What! do you carry nothing away? Do you leave your goods to destruction ?" "No," said he: "I carry all my goods with me:" so, whenever the Christian is wrecked in death, he says, "I shall carry all my treasure with me: death cannot strip me of my treasure: for I have left my children, and houses, and lands in this life, that I may receive a hundred fold more in the world to come."

Are you called to walk in a dark path? Think of that bright morning, without a cloud, which is coming: Do you find changes within and changes without? Think of the everlasting covenant! Do you feel anxiety, confusion, and disappointment embittering your lot? Think of that covenant which is ordered in all things! Do you find you can place no dependance on friends and promises? Do your expectations fail? Think of the covenant which is sure! Can you keep no hold of any thing? God never intended you should: he offers you his everlasting covenant! Of that lay hold! Let other things go. They are not your portion. God intended to loosen your hold, that you might say, "I will look

to that which is all my salvation from sin and sorrow! I will look away from that which is precarious and uncertain, to that which is unchangeable. There is a branch that springs from Jesse: that shall be all my salvation and all my desire, when I can see nothing else grow."

Brethren! this is the true knowledge of the world, as well as the true knowledge of the Gospel. Here we see what we must live upon, and what we can die upon. Let us lay it down as a maxim, that a Christian, at the very worst, though a beggar in the condition of Lazarus at the gate, covered with sores, is far happier than the rich man in his best estate.

2. Let us learn from David's language, that the troubles of a Christian's house are particularly designed to lead him out from the world, and upward toward his home.

He is under special teaching. Another man is satisfied, and looks no further. There cannot be a sorer judgment: Ephraim has joined himself to idols: let him alone. Let him not find out the fraud.

Sometimes, indeed, the servant of God is gently drawn:-"Hearken, O daughter, and consider, and incline thine ear: forget also thine own people, and thy father's house. So shall the King greatly desire thy beauty; for he is thy Lord God, and worship thou him." But, if he is not disposed to leave his state and condition, if his heart still wishes to rest a little longer and a little longer, God knows how to drive as well as to draw. A thorn is put into his rest. Then he learns to say, "Nothing grows here: this is no longer my garden: here are no peaceful walks, no refreshing shades, no cheering fruits: I must go away: I must look higher."

Was not this the case with Adam?-with Noah? -with Abraham?-with Isaac ?-with Jacob?peculiarly so with Job?-most eminently so with Aaron?-most deplorably so with Eli?-and now, says David, "It is my case: I see what God is doing in my house, to make me look further; and I do look further: and I look to nothing short of the everlasting covenant.'

Brethren! if things grew to our minds, we should have no heart to leave them! Trials are the voice which says, "Leave these things! Begone! get away!" They speak to us: but till we are brought to say, "Though the fig-tree doth not blossom, though there is no comfort in the creature, yet will I joy in the Lord," we hear in vain.

3. I shall make a third remark: and that is, that we should hence learn, not only to live witnesses for God, but to die bearing our testimony to the report of the unsearchable riches of Christ, and the benefit and blessing of his everlasting covenant.

If fools will come and ask us what there is in the spirit of religion, we should endeavour to show, that, if it can do nothing else, it can bear up a dying sinner; that he has got hold of something substantial and abiding, when every thing flies from them.

The language of the heart carries its own evidence. Even disappointed worldly men leave a strong testimony. I know not that any thing ever more forcibly struck me on this subject, than the dying declaration of that haughty man, Cardinal Wolsey: "If I had served my God with half the zeal with which I have served my king, he would not have forsaken me in my old age."

If then we have tasted the good word of God, and