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and with additional grace calling upon us for additional toils in His cause, and, as we are able to bear it, sending upon us additional trials, to prove us the more completely as soldiers of Christ. It is like one looking back in his travelling over the rugged mountains; just at his feet he can scarce discern the path, perhaps the step he is actually taking is all he feels sure about; but he may see behind the winding road he has come― over laborious ascents-down dangerous steeps-threading its way through the deceitful morass or along the edge of the giddy precipice. So may the faithful eye look back and see how God has guided him, and led him through all the changes and chances of this mortal life, and still led him on, to follow, where a Christian should follow, the steps of Christ.

But I was speaking more particularly of sufferings, and here how many will even in this day witness, that in such wise hath God dealt with them. As the minister of Christ I once stood by the bed-side of a sick woman,—worn out with long pain,—the time of her departure at hand, because her human

body could suffer no longer,-pain increasing, as life wore away. And what were the words of the sufferer? "Oh, Sir, if I could have thought that I should have had all this to go through, before I was ill, I could not have borne the thought; but now I can bless God for all the pain He has sent me,-I can in all this praise His holy Name." Whither Christ went, she could not have followed at first, but she followed afterwards.

Again, let us learn a lesson of patience, to abide doing our duty, where God has called us, until He calls us to further or different exertions. It is scarcely the crying sin of the present day, that men rush to be martyrs impatiently, desiring with sinful eagerness to endure sufferings for Christ or religion, without any sure test that He has designed such a course for them. And yet there is such a spirit, and it is wrong, as every spirit of impatience or presumption must be. Humility is our only safety,-to walk humbly, the only security that we shall walk with God. We are often apt to fancy, like S. Peter, that we are able to do more than really is yet in our power. "Lord, why cannot I follow

Thee now? I will lay down my life for Thy sake." In times past it has not been always the most confident, who has proved the bravest martyr. The contrary has been the case. The loudest in their professions of love to Christ, and willingness to suffer everything for Him, have sank, when the trial really came. They who doubted themselves, who feared their own weakness, who prayed to God for help,-these have been the conquerors in the terrible fight. And so to this day must you all take heed against the boastings of spiritual pride, or of presumptuous confidence. If ever you feel unquiet and think 'oh, if I were in a different situation to what I am, how I would serve God',-if you rush into difficulties without any apparent call,if you seek extraordinary practises of devotion before you have derived all the benefit you might from ordinary means, by using them as faithfully as possible,—if you are connecting excitement or violence of passion with religion, forgetting that deep feelings are to be sought, but that these are calm and still, not tumultuous and boisterous,—if you are beginning to despise the usual means of grace

calling them, as some have blasphemously done, beggarly elements, seeking for greater spirituality in greater liberty, rather than in an holier spirit and a more devoted obedience,-if you find yourself tempted in any of the thousand ways by which Satan assaults the serious-minded, knowing well how pride goeth before destruction, hear betimes our Saviour's words; God checks you. "Thou canst not follow me now." If we still persist,-if we still neglect the guidance of God's Providence, and seek even to become religious by methods of our own,—if we are still discontented with His Church, His Sacraments, His Prayers, His Ministers,— if we would still rush into dangers, to undergo which He has not given us His grace, and put ourselves in positions, in which, as He as not placed us, so He will not support us, though we imagine we are doing it for His sake, then He mercifully shows us what is really in us, why we cannot follow now. "Thou shalt deny me thrice." Oh! warned by S. Peter's fall, may we learn humbly to wait upon God, to seek no extraordinary means of seeing Him, if these want the sanc

tion of His appointment, but to be contented with such ordinary ways, as God has given us, to do our duty in that station of life, whereunto God has called us, to go just where God leads us, and while we take heed not to slip back, to beware also of pressing forward without that Hand, which alone can uphold us.

Again, while the promise of our Saviour should give us patience and quiet at the present, inasmuch as it tells us that there is One who, though unseen, is yet with us, in whose Hand are all our ways, it should enable us in this consciousness to derive instruction and benefit from the past. Endeavour to realise to yourselves the travellings of Israel in the wilderness, when the cloudy pillar went before them, and by manifest tokens and signs God was visibly seen amongst them. A not less real, though invisible guidance does the faith of the Christian recognize in his journeyings through this world's wilderness to reach the heavenly Canaan of his rest. He has passed through the waters, the waters of salvation to the people of God: he has sworn to the awful

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