must be ruined, and yet withhold that help? But, more than this, which of you would risk this temporary loss of his happiness, his health, or his reputation, unless you expected him to gain some great and lasting advantage, which would more than compensate for temporary loss or deprivation? And what father ever yet loved, or ever will love, his only child, as He loves us, who spared not His own, His only Son, for our sakes, from poverty, and shame, and death? "We know," then, as St. Paul saith, and observe the force of his language," we know,”-it is the instinctive feeling of the children of God," we know"-with a consciousness of security in our Father's love, which needs no argument to confirm it, and which no events however painful can weaken or disturb," we know that all things work together for good to them that love God." It is impossible it can be otherwise, while God is love, and while we continue in His holy fear; and, even though we should be conformed to the sufferings of His Son, and be partakers of His image and likeness, not

1 Rom. viii. 28.

merely in His holiness and meekness, but in His humiliation and death, still this is but to receive the highest destiny to which God himself can call us, to bear our cross as Christ has done before us, to share in the toils, and hazards, and wounds of our great Captain, and to enjoy the assurance of being hereafter partakers of His honours, and immortality, and repose. "If we be dead with him," says our

Apostle, "we "If we suffer, we shall also reign with him '."

shall also live with him."

But here it will be necessary to guard against an error as prevalent as it is dangerous; namely, that the mere suffering of affliction and annoyance in this world is in itself a pledge of our being made happy in another. It is by no means amongst the poor and the ignorant only, that there is a sort of undefined persuasion, that we must pass through a certain quantity of suffering either in this world or the next; and that, if our lot be sorrow and disappointment in this world, there is a sort of compensative justice by which we shall be repaid

hereafter. Fully to account for so mischievous a mistake is difficult. Our people have still a lingering superstition that there is something of a charm in suffering; something meritorious in the mere fact of being afflicted and distressed. Besides this, that instinctive assurance of the existence of a future state, and the certainty of a resurrection to eternal life, which we all have as members of the Church of Christ, and which we do not wholly lose even when by our unbelief and sinfulness we have forfeited all personal claim to share in its happiness, may serve to strengthen this delusion, and to give hope to those who have more reason for fearful forebodings of that day. My brethren, it is not our trials which can affect our happiness in a future state, but the spirit with which we meet and endure them. Temptation and suffering have no magical power to fix or to affect our final condition: they influence our happiness hereafter, just in proportion as they affect our character here. We are made better or worse, our moral character is made better or worse, by every trial of

our faith. No doubt our future condition is affected, and deeply affected, by every event which happens to us now; but it is because these events are injurious or beneficial to our principles and affections, and because the state of our principles and affections in this life is to measure and determine our everlasting portion.

Trials and sufferings are of incalculable benefit to those whose hearts are right with God, and whose minds are submitted to His will. But, as the same force will soften one substance, which will harden another, and the same atmosphere will crumble one stone to powder, and give cohesiveness and durability to another, so the same trial or temptation will produce very different and even opposite effects on different men. The benefit of affliction depends on ourselves, on our prayers, on our faith, on our yielding ourselves to the instructions of the Holy Spirit, and submitting our desires to the will of God. The same trial which will leave one heart softened, broken, and contrite, will

susceptible of the impressions which it ought to receive under the hand of the Almighty. We may deplore the ignorance of those who expect after this life to expiate their sins in the vindictive torments of an imaginary fire: but our error, my brethren, is fully as great, and in many instances, it may well be feared, far more ruinous to our salvation, when we look on our present sufferings of mind or body as entailing a necessary and certain benefit, without any reference to the effects which they produce on our character or conduct.

Trials and temptations are, indeed, a means of increasing our eternal happiness: not that they act as physical forces or chemical agents; still less that they are to be so much set off in mitigation or abatement of our sufferings in another world. Like all other means of spiritual improvement, they are employed or permitted for the benefit of those who are responsible and accountable beings, and for whom the divine mercy has provided a salvation which requires their sincere and diligent co-operation.