They take pains to persuade their hearers, that the good work is begun in them, and admit of the lowest proof of such an important point: yea, and sometimes an absurdity is brought as proof-for instance: They ask, have you a desire after grace? and if not, do you desire to desire? If you do, the good work is begun, or from whence came that desire? Ah! deceitful comforters. Is the desire of a thing, that thing itself, or even a part of it? Is a desire of health, in the sick man's heart, health itself? Ask the sick man, who looks for health, but it comes not. His desire may lead him to use proper means for his recovery; to ask advice, and use medicine: but neither desire, advice, nor medicine, is health itself.

Is a desire of food, in a hungry man, bread? If so, why does the poor labourer toil and sweat for it? Is the desire of money, in the tradesman, wealth itself? Then, why does not he retire from business? Is the desire of knowledge, in the studious man, knowledge itself? Why then, spend his life in the pursuit of it? No! "the desire of the slothful KILLETH him; for his hands refuse to labour."

But it would be well, if this method of comforting the guilty, were only absurd: but it is highly injurious to hearers of a certain complexion. Persons living in some sin;-holding the unrighteous gains of past sin;-living with a worldly mind, and neglecting ardent and persevering intercourse with God; such persons hearing that a desire of grace is grace; or, that a desire to desire, is grace, or a sure sign of it; they bless themselves in a graceless state, and in the warm impressions of the moment, believe themselves in a safe state, and, extolling the preacher for his discourse, go home, exclaiming, "Well, I trust, I do desire to desire, at least," and Mr. Smooth said "this was a proof that I had grace." Thus, like a dose of poison, rendered very pleasant for the present, to the palate, and proves bitter in the end. The man swells with pride, and grows the more stupid and hardened for the false, though agreeable comfort administered. Every preacher, or writer, who shall contradict that sermon, is harsh and uncharitable.

Suchpreaching is attended with a third evil-it is a reflection on the gospel, as though it did not contain sources of consolation, genuine and adequate to the worst sinner's worst condition. If God's plan is found defective, is it likely that any human device will succeed better? Can a real falsehood, prove a source of true, strong and permanent comfort? Man of God! what art thou preaching? No longer tell the lost soul to make lies his refuge: but point him to Jesus! open his character; display his love; sound forth his death and mediation with God;-tell the sinner the worst of himself, to drive him from himself to this suitable, appointed, surprising and profound relief-redemption through the blood of Jesus!

Dextrous young man, one of your hearers says he desires grace, though he has none, and you tell him, that desire is grace. Another says, I have no grace, nor, I fear, any desire of grace: well, saith the preacher, but if you have not a desire after grace, only desire to desire, that is grace. Such preaching grieves the judicious, relaxes the diligent, deceives the weak, ruins the presumptuous, dishonours the gospel, exposes the preacher.

No. CXLIX.-INGRATITUDE TO MINISTERS.

MINISTERIAL trials are exquisitely painful. A faithful, laborious minister of Christ, deserves respect from his hearers; and if he has it not, he is useless. And there is every thing in a consistent minister to claim a grateful return from the people of his charge. Gratitude! did I say? Why, too many hearers of the Gospel suppose none can be ungrateful but ministers. If they make him a present or two in the year, they suppose him under an obligation to them for life; and, perhaps, soon think him very ungrateful, because he does not pay them more homage. If he reproves them for a fault after this, he is ungrateful! If their neglects are detected in the pulpit, this they miscall ingratitude. If he is equally kind to others, and shows it by his conversation and visits;-this is ungrateful! If he will not flatter them, and their friends, and censure all, in all, which they dislike, ingratitude is the charge. But there is a moment coming, when such hearers, will find out their mistake: they will see, and feel too, that hearers may be ungrateful to their ministers; a thing of which they have never suspected themselves to be guilty. They will one day know, that the man whose time, and talents were spent to promote the interest of their souls;-the man who spent studious days and sleepless nights, in thinking of them and for them ;-the man who spared not the money in his pocket, the strength of his mind and body in their service, was worthy of a grateful return. They will then know, that speaking unkindly of his person, his character, his work, and aims; and grieving his heart by cold words and cold looks, was treating him ungratefully. Go, unfeeling creature! and learn, that such a conduct, is as unworthy of you as a man, as it is unworthy of you as a Christian. Go, hard-hearted wretch! and know, that such conduct is ingratude. Ingratitude to God, and to his minister ;-ingratitude which will make thy conscience uneasy, and thy dying hour distressing. What is thy subscription of a guinea or two towards his support, compared with the spiritual and eternal blessings which the minister is the instrument of conveying to the souls of men? Consider his anxious fears; his strong desires; his tears and prayers on your behalf; and think much of your subscription if you can. Man of

God, be not discouraged, turn thy thoughts from creatures, and ease your soul at that throne, which is gracious; and whoever may slight or forget you remember your Lord careth for you: he hears your cry. "Think of me, O my God, for good."

No. CL. IMPROVEMENT OF DEATH.

THE most serious objects we meet with, do not impress our minds always alike, and never profitably, unless the Holy Spirit works by the solemn objects which rise to our view. Death is a solemn thing. We hear of the death of a near neighbour, or see a near relative dead; we sigh over the former, and exclaim, poor creature! he is gone. We weep over the latter, and our impressions may be deep, lasting and convincing: but not advantageous, unless God teacheth by this bereaving providence. What are those tears and sighs; prayers and vows; convictions and self-censures good for, which leave the mind secure, proud, carnal, and giddy? Indeed, a man of carnal mind is injured by his impressions, if unsanctified to convince and renew his soul; because he thinks God will accept all his tears and grief about the dead, as repentance for his sin! He thinks it a clearing time, and that his sorrow for the dead, is an atonement for the sin of his soul, he fancies his soul cleansed from his sins, when his tears are wiped from his face. That he can feel tenderly for the dead, he numbers among his good works. He charitably hopes the dead person is gone to Heaven, however he might die; and thinks this charity (blind and senseless as it is), which covers the sins of the dead, will cover a multitude of his own sins. Perhaps, the dead friend seemed penitent; wept, condemned himself, prayed and received the sacrament; and having so done, eased his conscience, and died without any "bands, or difficulties in his death." If so, a carnal person exclaims, dear creature! he died like a lamb; and presumes, that he need not be over-solicitous about his soul, for when affliction comes upon him, he intends to repent, as his friend did, and thinks, no doubt, God must accept him. This is a striking proof of the hardness and deceitfulness of the heart. A third abuse of death appears, in being contented in accounting for the cause of death. If they know the disorder which proved mortal to them, and feel no symptom of the same in themselves, they grow the more secure, think themselves out of all danger of death. A young man hears that an old man is dead; and thinks he died because he was old, and that the evil day is far from himself. The old man, perhaps, with a mortal disease upon him, hears his old neighbour is dead, and ventures to presume, that his disease is not so dangerous; or, that his doctor treats it differently, and, therefore, he may live a few years longer. And do not these plain facts prove, that providences the most distressing and the most alarming, are ineffectual,

without the internal operation of the Spirit of God by them? Why does a man, who sees another linger in sickness, and die, say, poor man! he is released from all his miseries; he suffered so much in this world; surely, he cannot suffer in the next? Such a creature is blind; and sees not, that all the pains of this life, are trials. The next world is appointed for punishment. Another person blesses himself, when he hears of his neighbour's death, that he does not love and practice the sins in which he lived. He thinks his neighbour's sins were dreadful, and that his own are small; and doubts not but he stands fairest for Heaven, die when he may. Another gives himself no uneasiness about death; for he says, "It is the way of all the earth," and nature's debt, and therefore he shall fare as the rest, and need not be anxious about the consequences of dying. One says death is a solemn thing, owns himself unprepared to die; and adds, God knows we are all too forgetful of it. He then resolves to repent and reform, and thinks himself a better man than thousands, for his good thoughts and words about death, and espe cially for his good resolutions, which, perhaps, he never performs, nor eveu fixes the time when he intends to attempt to fulfil them. The afflicted hear of another's death, and declare, that if it shall please God to restore them to health, they will improve their days in God's service, and in preparing for another world; and, by fixing a time of health for repentance and conversion, they lose all their opportunities of seeking God in the affliction, which may prove their last. Deceived creatures! they forget that in a time of health they deferred repentance to a sick or dying bed; and now dying, they feel no disposition or power to repent; no satisfaction in a sick-bed repentance, and therefore propose repenting in health, which may never return. Hear all these vain excuses, false reasonings, groundless hopes, and hypocritical resolutions. Hear them, O man! remember that no affliction, however painful; no objects, however awful and interesting; no disease, however dangerous; no prospects, however tremendous, can produce one useful sensation in the mind, without God's spirit working by them. No! they deceive, flatter, harden, and ruin sinners, unless that blessed spirit operates with and by such rousing circumstances. These facts show the pro

priety of David's prayer. "So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom." To number our days, is "to take a right account of them," so as to answer their end and design. To act with a view to the period of them, and to secure the best consequences to ourselves. To answer the end of life; to be ready to part with life; to prepare for a nobler and more perfect life; this David would do: but could not without divine teaching. So teach us, he cried, conscious of his own weakness, and the need of a gracious influence from Heaven to impress and move the heart savingly. The death of mankind has a voice of instruction to the living. It proclaims man a sinner. It declares him an offender

against his Maker, in such a manner as to have forfeited his life. Death is an object of dread to man; he views it as an enemy, and abhors it. He views it as a penalty, or the deserved punishment of sin, and tries all methods to prevent it. Now, if man was created in such a condition, he was imperfect; and if God made him so originally, how is man the subject of blame and punishment, for what neither he, nor his first parents, could avoid? No; this is not the case. Man is fallen from God! from his duty, and his happiness. He feels himself an offender, and views death as a proof of it." Sin entered into the world, and death by sin." Death, then, loudly proclaims the fall, that is, the offence of man. Its language is, man is fallen! is fallen! And do men receive this evidence of their sinful and condemned state? Far from it. They suppose that death is a debt to nature: but death is against nature. Nature shuns it- dreads it. It is a debt to justice, whose sentence is, "Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." The natural union between the soul and the body is dissolved in consequence of this sentence.

Would a God of justice punish an innocent creature? Would a good God suffer the fears of death to reign in a creature's mind through a number of years, and then bring all his fears upon him, if he were perfect in his love and obedience? Far be it from God, whose goodness and justice always harmonize, to do after this manner. No: man received his life from God, and received every blessing to make that life happy, and a law to regulate his life, according to the will of his Maker. This was the end of his life, to enjoy and obey God; an end worthy of God to appoint, and of man to pursue. Man disobeyed this law, and began to live for himself, as his own lord, and his own end. This was changing the end of his creation, and forfeiting the life he had abused. He knew this was the consequence of disobedience. He took the forbidden fruit; his existence was lost; he instantly became wretched when he became sinful, and liable to death, that is, the loss of his existence in this world.

Death not only proclaims the fall of man, but also the dreadful evil of SIN. What an evil must that be, which takes man from all the enjoyments of the only state of existence he experimentally knows, and turns him out of the world!—which separates his soul from his body, and forces him into another state of life, quite unknown! How deceived is man in his estimate of sin. See, see! guilty mortal, what God thinks of thy sin, by his action, in depriving thee of life. "Fools make a mock at sin ;" but God makes a mock at fools, by forcing them to feel that evil in sin, which they are unwilling to own. But, my fellow-creature, thou must die; and if so, thou art a sinner, for death is the consequence of sin. Is death an evil? A great evil? An evil which you dread and take pains to avoid? Then, surely, sin, which is the cause of death, is an