me to perish, would he have brought me to know, and to value, and to plead his all-sufficiency to save me?

III. Conscious sincerity forbids despair. Men may think me a hypocrite. I do not blame them. They may see much that is amiss; and they cannot discern between a low state of grace, and a hollowness of principle. If they were to say, you are faulty in this or that," I would answer, you are right. "You neglect this or that duty," I would answer the same. But do they hereby prove me a hypocrite? I cannot yet come to their conclusion. They little know my inward anguish and groanings of spirit under the consciousness of my defects. They know not my honest desire to forget the things which are behind, and press forward to those which are before. They know not the trouble which fills me when the enemy overcomes me. An honest feeling of desire to be holy even as God is holy, to be freed from my sins and given up to the service of my Saviour, forbids despair.

Without going further then into the inquiry, I am satisfied: satisfied, not with my present state, but satisfied not to make my state worse by giving way to despair. I will endeavour still to lie at mercy's gate in the posture of an abject, self-condemned sinner. I will bring myself to the brink of Bethesda's pool and wait for the troubling of the waters. And if I cannot yet grasp the promise, and feel its healthful influence shed into my soul, I will hope for a brighter day, when the Lord "shall bring me forth to the light, and Í shall behold his righteousness.'

PROSPECTS OF A DYING SINNER.

Before him, robed in all his terrors, stands death, the messenger of God, now come to summon him away. To what, to whom is he summoned? To that final judgment into which every work of his hands will be speedily brought, with every secret thing; to that Judge from whose sentence there is no appeal, from whose eye there is no concealment, from whose hand there is no escape. Through the last agonies lies his gloomy dreadful passage into the unseen world, his path to the bar of God. What a passage! What an interview! He, a hardened,

rebellious, impious, ungrateful wretch, who has wasted all the means of salvation, prostituted his talents, squandered his time, despised his Maker, crucified afresh the Lord of glory, and done despite unto the Spirit of grace, now comes before that glorious and offended God, who knows all the sins which he has committed. He is here, without an excuse to plead, without a cloak to cover his guilt. What would he now give for an interest in that atonement which he slighted, rejected, and ridiculed, in the present world; in that intercession on which, while here, he never employed a thought: and in that salvation for which perhaps he never uttered a prayer? The smiles of redeeming, forgiving, and sanctifying love are now changed into the frowns of an angry and irreconcilable Judge. The voice of mercy sounds no more; and the hope of pardon has vanished on this side the grave. To the judgment succeeds the boundless vast of eternity. Live, he must; die, he cannot. But where, how, with whom, is he to live? The world of darkness, sorrow, and despair is his final habitation. Sin, endless and increasing sin, is his dreadful character; and sinners like himself are his miserable and eternal companions. Alone in the midst of millions, surrounded by enemies only, without a friend, without a comfort, without a hope, he lifts up his eyes, and in deep despair takes a melancholy survey of the immense regions around him, but finds nothing to alleviate his woe, nothing to support his drooping mind, nothing to lessen the pangs of a broken heart.

In a far distant region he sees the faint glimmering of that Sun of Righteousness, which shall never more shine upon him. A feeble dying sound of the praise, the everlasting songs of the general assembly and church of the first-born trembles on his ear, and in an agonizing manner reminds him of the blessings in which he also might have shared, and which he voluntarily cast away. In dim and distant vision those heavens are seen, where multitudes of his former friends and companions dwell; friends and companions who, in this world, loved God, believed in the Redeemer, and by a patient continuance in well-doing, sought for glory, honour, and immortality. Among them, perhaps, his own fond parents, who, with a thousand sighs, and prayers, and tears, commended him, while they tabernacled here below, to the mercy of

God, and to the love of their own Divine Redeemer. His children also, and the wife of his bosom, gone before him, have perhaps fondly waited at the gates of glory, in the ardent expectation, the cheering hope, of seeing him, once so beloved, re-united to their number, and a partaker in their everlasting joy. But they have waited in vain.

The curtain now is drawn, and the amazing vast is unbosomed to his view. Nature, long decayed, sinks under the united pressure of sickness, sorrow, and despair. His eyes grow dim, his ears deaf, his heart forgets to beat, and his spirit, lingering, terrified, amazed, clings to life, and struggles to keep possession of its earthly tenement. But, hurried by an unseen almighty hand, it is irresistibly launched into the unseen abyss. Alone and friendless, it ascends to God, to see all its sins set in order before its eyes. With a gloomy and dreadful account of life spent only in sin, without a single act of piety, or voluntary kindness to men, with no faith in Christ, and no sorrow for iniquity, it is cast out as wholly wicked and unprofitable, into the land of darkness, and the shadow of death, there to wind its melancholy journey through regions of sorrow and despair, ages without end, and to take up for ever the gloomy and distressing lamentation in the text," The harvest is past, the summer is ended; but I am not saved."-Dwight.

THE NATURE OF SAVING FAITH.

A persuasion that Christ is able and willing to save others, particularly the elect, is not saving faith, for devils and the desperate raise no doubt on that head. We may believe that one is able and willing to give a certain favour to others, while we do not believe he will give it to us: therefore it is not enough that we believe Christ is able to save us......But the belief of his power must be joined with that of his will. We must believe that He is able and willing to save us, even us. And if we believe both these, we certainly believe we shall be saved by Him. This cannot be denied. In believing that he is able to save us, we are persuaded that no obstacle can be too hard for him to surmount; that

neither earth nor hell, nay, nor worlds of guilt, can hinder Him. In believing that he is willing to save us, as willing as able, we are persuaded that He will make bare his arm on our behalf; that as nothing without Him can hinder Him to save us, so nothing within Him will. And if we believe that He is willing to save us, what else is this but to believe that He will save us?

Such a belief cannot but issue in sanctification. If we believe that Christ will save us, we cannot but love Him, and love to his person will inspire us with ardour to do his will. In proportion as we believe, we will love; and as we love, we will obey. If the first be weak, the second and third will be so too. If we believe the love of God, the love that He hath to us, (1 John iv. 16, John iii. 16,) that will draw out ours towards Him. Let me ask, can a sinner believe that he shall be saved by Christ, and at the same time have no love to Him? or can he have any love to Christ, while he does not believe that he shall be saved by Him? For my own part, I am satisfied that neither of these can be. And can a poor sinner love a Saviour, and not delight to do His will? No, he cannot. "This is the love of God," i.e. This is love to God, "That we keep his commandments," 1 John v. 3. Love is the fulfilling of the law, and faith begetteth love. Love is to obedience what wings are to the eagle, or sails to a ship. If we love, we cannot but obey the blessed Jesus.-Bell.

CHRIST OUR PATTERN.

We should mind all the actions of the Son of God, our Saviour, with the most wise grounds, endearing circumstances, and precious fruits of them; his birth, life, death, resurrection, ascension, intercession, as containing instances of the greatest charity and humility possible showed unto us-as arguments of the greatest love and gratitude due from us: mind them we should most seriously, so as to be heartily affected with them, so as to esteem worthily the transcendent honour done us by God assuming our nature, and exalting us to a conjunction with the Divine nature; so as to be deeply sensible of our obligation to so immense charity,

that could do and suffer so much for us, without any desert of ours; yea, notwithstanding our exceedingly bad deserts, our rebellions and enmities against him; so as to detest the heinousness of our sins, that needed so mighty an expiation, that caused so horrid a tragedy; so as not to neglect so great salvation, so frankly offered, so dearly purchased for us; not to frustrate the designs of so inconceivable love and goodness; so as to obey readily so gracious a Master, to follow carefully so admirable an example; so as, in imitation of him, and for his sake, to be meek and humble in heart and in deed, seeing he did so infinitely condescend and abase himself for us; to be patient and submissive to his will, who stooped so low, and suffered so much for us; so as to bear a general affection to mankind, grounded, like his, not upon any particular interests, nor limited by any partial respects, but extended freely, in real desire and intention, toward all; liberally to impart the good things we possess, and patiently to brook the crosses we meet with, and heartily to forgive the offences done to us; for that he freely did part with the greatest glories of eternity, with the highest dignities and the richest treasures of heaven, for our sake; when we were enemies in our minds by wicked works, dead in trespasses and sins, guilty of numberless grievous offences against him, by his blood redeeming us from wrath, reconciling us to the mercy and favour of God.-Barrow.

TRUST IN THE LORD.

What is the life of the greatest part but a continual tossing betwixt vain hopes and fears? All their days are spent in these.

Oh! how vain a thing is man, even in his best estate, while he is nothing but himself,-while his heart is not united and fixed on God, and he is disquieted in vain. How small a thing will do it! He needs no other than his own heart; it may prove disquietment enough to itself: his thoughts are his tormentors.

I know some men are, by a stronger understanding, and by moral principles, somewhat raised above the vulgar, and speak big of a constancy of mind; but these