true way to profit by this humiliating sense of our faults is, to look upon them in all their turpitude, to detest and abhor ourselves for them, but not to lose our hope and trust in the mercy of God. To entertain this just sense of our faults! without despair, and to avoid the presumptuous supposition that we are faultless, is the temper of mind which we ought to cultivate as the true and spi- | ritual state of a christian.

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20. We often meet with a kind of humility which avows itself unworthy of the mercy of God, and therefore will not apply to him for it, and which founds a plea for continuing in a state of sin, upon the idea that repentance will avail This is not christian humility, but a reprobate and wicked state of mind. God is ever more ready to hear than we to pray; and we know that our Saviour came into the world to call, "not the righteous, but sinners to repentance."

} 21. Religion, in a great measure, consists in renouncing ourselves, in combatting our self-love, and resigning all to God. The pure love of God consists in our will; the greater our humility, and the more implicit and unhesitating our acquiescence in the will of God, the nearer we approach to that virtue and that love of him which he demands of us.

22. The strong truths of religion make it a terror to weak minds; but the reason of this is, that they do not properly understand it. They know not what it gives, and what it promises, so that to them it appears a system of severe and painful sacrifices, of gloomy and sorrowful practice. They will not understand that bond of love between the Creator and his creatures, which is the very essence of religion, and which makes easy all the duty which it requires. Those who possess the true love of God are at all times cheerful and happy; they find

that the yoke of Jesus is easy, and his burden light; they find that he gives, rest unto their souls, and that he refreshes all those who are weary and heavyladen with the burden of this life. But those divine words of our Lord can afford no comfort to those cowardly and debased souls, which cannot shake off the dominion of the world, and renounce the service of the devil. God's holy service, his supporting grace, and his refreshing comforts, are incompatible with a life devoted to the world, and to the slavery of sin. You must either give your heart to God, or to the world; you can make no reserves with your duty; the first commandment of the Law most clearly points out to us what God requires : "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy mind and with all thy strength." How then can they pretend to love God, or to serve him, who do not love him above all things? and what effect should our love of God have, but

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that of keeping his commandments? Those who call themselves Christians, and yet obey the laws which Christ has set before them, only when they find it.. conducing to their own pleasure or profit, resemble the multitude which followed Jesus, not for his doctrine, but “because they did eat of the loaves and fishes, and were filled." To such we may attribute that speech of St. Peter," Lord, it. is good for us to be here, and let us build here three tabernacles for ourselves;" but, like St. Peter, they know, not what they say. They are willing to be the disciples of Christ on Mount Tabor, but they will not follow him to Calvary. Those only are truly his disciples, who are always ready to accompany their Lord "to prison and to death," and this in defiance of the world, the flesh, and the devil.

23. The more humble and docile your soul becomes, and the more unresistingly

it follows the calls of the Holy Spirit, the greater is its progress in simplicity; not that it becomes blind to its own faults, and unconscious of its infirmities; it feels them with redoubled force, it regards them with horror; the knowledge of its own sinfulness increases every day, but it does not arrive at that knowledge through pride, vanity, or self-love; it discovers its own faults by comparing itself with the perfections of its Creator: thus it is free in its course, it goes on with its God, singly and uprightly, without turning out of the way for the profits or allurements which sin offers. It thinks more of God than of any thing which he has created. It has no vain and self-approving reflections, neither does it give way to any dejecting scru ples about its own condition, which so often produce, on weak, minds, superstition and melancholy, and in those which are stronger, a presumptuous confidence incompatible with the love of God.

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