ty reprobates those pretensions to friendship which are founded upon interested motives, and the justly admired author of the Night Thoughts inquires, "Can gold buy friendship? impudence of hope!" If we possess any genuine love to a friend, it must be for something which we discover amiable or lovely, entirely distinct from any good which we expect to derive from him; but if that friend should prove not only amiable, but also should rescue us from misery and bondage, and become our benefactor, then indeed, our gratitude would be excited, and our obligations increased. It will easily be perceived that love and gratitude, although often united, are yet different and distinct affections, and we can readily conceive of feeling gratitude to a benefactor whose character so essentially differs from what we approve, that we cannot cherish a love of complacency towards him.-The soul, however, that has fled to the Lord Jesus Christ for refuge, and felt the powerful attractions of his love, discovers itself bound by every possible obligation to love good works. Yes, the love of Christ constrains the believer, to a cheerful and willing obedience, and he no longer desires to live to himself, but to God-and having professed a good profession before many witnesses, he desires to adorn the doctrine of God his Saviour by a holy life-old things in him and to him are done away, and all things become new. His purposes and aim are fixed, and whatever changes he may experience and pass through, these never change:-his chief end and design is to glorify God, and his prevailing desire to attain conformity to his image. Sin has now become his heaviest burthen, and whatever trials and afflictions of a worldly nature he may be called to in this life, he can say in reference to them, they are light afflictions when compared with the evils which result from the remains of sin and unbelief, SERIOUS HINTS TO LOUD AND ALARMING PREACHERS OF THE GOSPEL; RECOMMENDED TO THE PERUSAL OF THE ORDERLY AND REGULAR PROFESSORS OF RELIGION, OF ALL DENOMINATIONS. These that have turned the world upside down, are come hither also. Acts xvii. 6. under which he is still constrained to groan. The christian life is justly termed a warfare, and the duties of a soldier strongly characterize the followers of the Lord Jesus Christ. No man that warreth, saith the apostle, entangleth himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier:-and the christian must beware how he permits his affections to be drawn off from the grand business of his life, that is, to do and to suffer the will of his divine master, lest he become weary and faint in his mind.-The Lord Jesus Christ is the great captain of our salvation, and we are directed to look to him as the author and finisher of faith. Could the christian but keep his eye steadfastly fixed upon him, and preserve his affections from an inordinate attachment to all beside, what peace would he possess, how many evils would he shun. [This was to have been continued*. *These are the words of the Author, |