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from all sin, according to what we have been asking this day in the excellent words of our church.

"Grant, we beseech thee, merciful Lord, to thy "faithful people, pardon and peace; that they may "be cleansed from all their sins, and serve thee with a quiet mind through Jesus Christ our Lord. "Amen."

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THE

BALM OF GILEAD.

DISCOURSE XI.

THE

BALM OF GILEAD.

DISCOURSE XI.

JER. viii. 22.

Is there no balm in Gilead? is there no physician there? Why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?

ALL men love health. The desire of it is founded in nature. It is one of the natural instincts which never leaves us. So long as we love pleasure and hate pain, we cannot but love health, as the chief of all outward blessings. Indeed it is to be desired beyond them all, because without it we can enjoy none of them, without it we are unfit for our worldly business and employment, and unfit for the duties of religion. A good man would therefore wish for health with a view to the concerns of a better life, as well as to those of the present life. All men desire it upon a temporal account. But alas! how few have any real desire for the health of the soul? If the body be in great pain, with what haste do they send for relief, and how carefully do they follow the physician's prescription? But when their souls are wounded with sin, and they may endure the smart and anguish of their wounds for ever: for

these are by any human means incurable, and when a divine remedy is proposed, and they hear of a loving and an almighty physician, under whose hands no patient was ever lost, yet they have not one wish to be healed. What can be the reason of this? Why are the very men, who with an invariable affection love bodily health, so far from desiring the health of the soul, that when they have an offer of being healed of all their spiritual maladies, they neglect the remedy, and despise the physician? Is not this unaccountable conduct? What can make the same men in the same case reason so differently? If they had an infallible remedy for the recovery of bodily health, there is not one of them who would reject it; but there is a sovereign remedy for the recovery of the health of the soul, there is a balm in Gilead, and a most kind and able physician there to apply it, and yet spiritual maladies abound. Let us enquire into the cause of this inconsistent behaviour. It is an enquiry in which we are all nearly concerned. Our welfare depends on our being healed of the wounds of sin, by this balm of Gilead. We can have no true peace of conscience here, nor no true happiness hereafter, unless we take this sovereign medicine. May the Lord God dispose us all to take it by means of what shall be said in opening and explaining the text, in which there is,

First, Some sickness referred to.

Secondly, A sovereign medicine-there is balm in Gilead to heal it.

Thirdly, A great physician to apply it; and all the means of healing being thus ready at hand, the question naturally follows, in the

Fourth place, Why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?

If we look back to the 17th verse we shall find an account of the sickness referred to in the text. The people were stung with serpents and cockatrices, and of the most venomous and fiery sort, whose poison, once infused into the blood, acts like the most raging fire,

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