dition, so dismal and so desperate, he has brought near to you a great salvation, which commences with the remission of sins, and terminates in the glories of immortality. He is urging this salvation on your instant acceptance, and positively "waiting to be gracious." But while you know not yourself, you cannot accept it in any sense which can ever avail you; and while your knowledge of yourself is. limited and erring, through your culpable neglect of means, you cannot possibly prosper, even after you have accepted it, in the daily use of its spiritual benefits. Attainment in the one department, must ever be measured by attainment in the other, just because you have a reasonable soul, which must be accounted for to Him who gave it. Know yourselves, and you shall know God; judge yourselves, you shall not be judged. and PERTH, December, 1828. D. Y. ON SELF-IGNORANCE, AND SELF-ACQUAINTANCE. 2 COR. XIII. 5. "Know ye not your own selves." INTRODUCTION. Directions to those who would be acquainted with themselves. He that is a stranger to himself, his sin, his misery, his necessity, &c. is a stranger to God, and to all that might denominate him wise or happy. To have taken the true measure of our capacities, abilities, infirmities, and necessities, and thereupon to perceive what is really BEST FOR US, and most agreeable to our case, is the first part of true, practical, saving knowledge. Did the distracted mindless world consider, what work they have at home for their most serious thoughts, and care, and diligence, and of what unspeakable concern and necessity it is, and that men carry within them the matter of their final doom, and the beginning of endless joy or sorrows, they would be called home from their busy idleness, their laborious loss of precious time, and unprofitable vagaries, and would be studying their hearts, while they are doting about a multitude of impertinencies, and would be pleasing God, while they are purveying for the flesh; and they would see that it more concerneth them to know the day of their salvation, and now to lay up a treasure in heaven, that they may die in faith, and live in everlasting joy and glory, than in the crowd and noise of the ambitious, covetous, voluptuous sensualists, to run after a feather, till time is past, and mercy gone, and endless woe hath unexpectedly surprised them. Yet do these dead men think they live, because they laugh, and talk, and ride, and go, and dwell among gnats and flies in the sunshine, and not with worms and dust in darkness: they think they are awake, because they dream that they are busy; and that they are doing the works of men, because they make a noise for finer clothes, and larger rooms, and sweeter morsels, than their poorer, undeceived neighbours have: they think they are sailing to felicity, because they are tossed, up and down: and if they can play the pike among the fishes, or the wolves in the flocks of Christ; or if they can attain to the honour of a pestilence, to be able to do a great deal of hurt, they are proud of it, and look as high as if they saw neither the grave nor hell, nor knew how quickly they must be taken down, and laid so low, that "the righteous shall see it, and fear, and laugh at them, saying, Lo, this is the man that made not God his strength, but trusted in the abundance of his riches, and strengthened himself in his wickedness.-Behold these are the ungodly that prosper in the world, and increase in riches; surely they are set in slippery places, and cast down to destruction, and brought to desolation |