These two are the senses of instruction: there is no other way for intelligence to be conveyed to the soul, whether in secular or in spiritual affairs. The eye is the window, the ear is the door, by which all knowledge enters. In matters of observation, by the eye; in matters of faith, by the ear. Rom. x. 17.

Had it pleased God to shut up both these senses from thy birth, thy condition had been utterly disconsolate; neither had there been any possible access for comfort to thy soul. And if he had so done to thee in thy riper age, there had been no way for thee but to live on thy former store. But now that he hath vouchsafed to leave thee one passage open, it behoves thee to supply one sense by the other; and to let in those helps by the window, which are denied entrance at the door. And since that infinite Goodness hath been pleased to lend thee thine ear so long, till thou hast laid the sure grounds of faith in thy heart; now thou mayest work upon them in this silent opportunity with heavenly meditations, and raise them up to no less a height than thou mightest have done by the help of the quickest ear.

It is well for thee that in the fulness of thy senses, thou wert careful to improve thy mind, as a magazine of heavenly thoughts; providing with the wise patriarch, for the seven years of dearth. Otherwise, now that the pas sages are thus blocked up, thou wouldst have been in danger of famishing. Thou hast now abundant leisure to recal and meditate upon those holy counsels, which thy better times laid up in thy heart; and to thy happy advantage, findest the difference betwixt a wise providence and a careless neglect.

SECTION 10.

The better condition of the inward ear.

THINE outward hearing is gone :-But thou hast an inward and better ear, by which thou hearest the secret motions of God's Spirit, which shall never be lost.

How many thousands whom thou enviest, are in a worse condition. They have an outward and bodily ear, by which they hear the voice of men; but they want that spiritual ear, which perceives the least whisperings of the Holy Ghost. Ears they have, but not hearing ears; for fashion, more than use. Solomon makes and observes the distinction: The hearing ear, and the seeing eye, the Lord hath made even both of them. Prov. xx. 12. And a greater than Solomon can say of his formal auditors, Hearing they hear not. Matt. xiii. 13. If thou have an ear for God, though deaf to men; how much happier art thou than those millions of men that have an ear for men, and are deaf to God.

SECTION 11.

The grief that arises from hearing evil.

It is

THOU hast lost thy hearing:-And therewith no small degree of sorrow. How would it grieve thy soul to hear those woeful ejaculations, those pitiful complaints, those hideous blasphemies, those mad paradoxes, those hellish heresies, wherewith thine ear would have been wounded, if it had not been barred against their entrance. thy just grief that thou missest of the hearing of many good words; it is thy happiness that thou art freed from the hearing of many evil ones. It is an even balance, betwixt the benefit of hearing good, and the torment of hearing evil.

CHAP. XII.

COMFORTS AGAINST BARRENNESS.

SECTION 1.

The blessing of fruitfulness seasoned with sorrows.

THOU Complainest of dry loins and a barren womb:So did a better man before thee, even the Father of the faithful. What wilt thou give me, seeing I go childless? Gen. xv. 2. So also did the wife of faithful Israel : Give me children, or else I die. Gen. xxx. 1. So desir ous hath nature been, even in the holiest, to propagate itself, and so impatient of a denial. Lo, children and the fruit of the womb are a heritage and gift, that cometh from the Lord. Happy is he that hath his quiver full of such shafts. Psal. cxxvii. 3-5. It is a blessing that David grudged to the wicked, that they have children at their desire. Psal. xvii. 14. It was the curse which God inflicted upon the fatnily of Abimelech, king of Gerar, that he closed up all the wombs in his house, for Sarah's sake. Gen. xx. 17, 18. The judgment threatened to Ephraim is a miscarrying womb, and dry breasts. Hos. ix. 14. And Jeconiah's sad doom is, Write this man childless. Jer. xxii. 30. On the contrary it is a special favour of God, that the barren hath borne seven; and it is noted by the psalmist as a wonder of God's mercy, that he maketh the barren woman to keep house, and to be a joyful mother of children. Psal. cxiii. 9.

It is a pity he was ever born, that holds not children as a blessing; yet not simply and absolutely, but according as it may prove. She hath a double favour from God that is a joyful mother of children,' for many a one breeds both her sorrow and her death. There is scarcely any other blessing from God seasoned with so much acrimony, both of misery and danger. Do but lay together the sick fits of breeding, the painful throes

of travail, the weary attendances of nursing, the anxious cares of education, the fears and doubts of misguidance, the perpetual solicitude for their provision, the heartbreaking grief for their miscarriage; and tell me whether thy lamented barrenness have not more ease, and less

sorrow.

SECTION 2.

The pains of Child-bearing.

IT is thy sorrow then, that thou art not fruitful:Consider that thou art herein freed from a greater sorrow. In sorrow shalt thou bring forth children. Gen. iii. 16.

Do but think upon the anguish thou hast seen and heard in the painful travails of thy neighbours. One thou hast seen wearying the days and nights in restless pangs, and calling for death in a despair of delivery ; another, after the unprofitable labours of the midwife, has been compelled to submit to severer treatment. One hath her dead burden torn from her by piecemeal, another is delivered of her life and birth together. One languishes to death after her delivery, and another is weary of life, through perpetual sickness. All these sorrows thou hast escaped by this one; and how many whom thou enviest, have thought thee happier than themselves!

SECTION 3.

The misery of ill-disposed and undutiful children.

If

THOU art afflicted because thou art not a mother :Many a one is so that wishes she had been barren. either the child prove deformed and misshapen, or upon

further growth, unnatural and wicked, what a corrosive is this to her that bore him.

Rebekah thought it long to be twenty years childless; her holy husband at sixty years of age, prays to God for issue by her. Gen. xxv. 20, 21. His devotion, as the jewish writers say, carried him to mount Moriah for this purpose; that in the same place where his life was miraculously preserved from the knife of his father, it might by the like miracle be renewed in his posterity. God hears him: Rebekah conceives: but when she felt that early combat of her struggling twins in her womb, she could say, If it be so, why am I thus? And when she saw a child come forth all clad in hair, and afterwards his condition no less rough than his hide, do we not think she wished that part of her burden unborn?

Certainly, children are according to their proof either blessings or crosses. Hast thou a child well disposed, and well governed? A wise son maketh a glad father. Hast thou a child disorderly and disobedient. A foolish son is the heaviness of his mother, and the calamity of his father. Prov. x. 1. xv. 20. Hast thou a son that is unruly, stubborn and unnatural, as commonly the cions overrule the stock: He that wasteth his father, and chaseth away his mother, is a son that causeth shame, and bringeth reproach. Prov. xix. 26. And if such a son should live and die impenitent, what can be answerable to the distress of that parent, who shall think that a piece of himself is in hell?

SECTION 4.

The cares of Parents for their children.

THOU hast no children;-As thou hast less joy, so thou hast less trouble.

It is a world of work and thoughts, that belong to these living possessions; for as they are our greatest cares, so they bring many lesser cares with them. Be