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no reason to think himself slighted? Is not any one of these sad symptoms enough to awake his jealousy, if not to kindle his resentment? Are not we ourselves ashamed of so much ingratitude? Do you think, if he should now separately address you, by name, Man, woman, Lovest thou me ?” Could you boldly say, "Lord, thou knowest all things, thou knowest that we love thee." I hope you could, and are ready to add, "If we had not loved thee, should we have left all to follow thee? We had temptations enough to love the world, and our hearts were strongly inclined to mind earthly things, and to be pleased and satisfied with them." But when Christ was pleased, in sovereign grace, to call us, and bid us, and incline us to follow him, we immediately and cheerfully consented to give up the world, and all our expectations from it; and counted all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus the Lord. Would a feigned love have carried us through such self-denying painful work as that? Should we have sacrificed health, and wealth, and reputation to a shadow? Would houses and lands, relation and life, and all the world calls valuable, be so easily parted with, if we had not preferred the blessed Jesus above our chief joy? If we did not love Christ, should we have interested ourselves so much in his concerns? Would his friends be our friends; and his enemies be our enemies? Would his love and his hatred

determine ours?

Would it give us so much pleasure to hear the name of Christ spoken of with respect, and the gospel of Christ preached with success? Would it not be equally indifferent to us, whether the kingdom of Christ, or the kingdom of Satan were uppermost? But we are sure that it is not indifferent. We always weep when we remember Zion; to see iniquity so much abound in the world, and the love of so many of his own disciples growing cold. Would those things affect us so much as they do if we did not love him? Let not the Lord be angry, and we will speak.

If we did not love thee, should we be so universally satisfied with all thou doest, and with all thou requirest? Though thou sometimes writest. bitter things against us, and seemest coming out against us as an enemy, resolved to strike all our comforts dead; though the services thou callest us to seem sometimes hard and humbling, yet, in the midst of all, have we not, from the bottom of our hearts, said, "Not our wills, but thine be done? Whatever we lose, or whatever we suffer, Father glorify thy own name." Surely, we could never have said this if we had not loved thee. We should rather have quarrelled with thy providence, and charged God foolishly; and when thou biddest us deny ourselves, and take up our cross and follow thee, we should have thought it a hard saying, and turned back and walked no more with thee.

Will the Lord permit dust and ashes to mention one circumstance more? If we did not love thee, whence come those lookings and longings for thy second coming? What makes us so willing to be absent from the body? What makes life, in the greatest prosperity, a confinement, and death a deliverer? What makes us long for heaven, as the place where we are to behold and partake of thy glory? Could there be any thing of all this, if it were not founded on sincere and strong affection? Strong affection! Here, indeed, we must blush, and own ourselves defective. We are amazed at our insensibility, that we can think, and hear, and see, and feel so much of thy love, and be no more affected with it-no more constrained by it: that we must have recourse to signs, and marks, and arguments, to prove that which ought to shine as brightly and warmly as a summer's sun. there would be no room for such a startling insinuation, If ye loved me. Yes, O thou all-lovely, all-loving, and all-forgiving Saviour; loaded as we are with guilt and infirmities, notwithstanding all our failings, and miscarriages, and numerous backslidings, we dare appeal not to thy severe, but to thy merciful discernment, and say, "Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that we love thee." And because we love thee, we rejoice that thou art gone to the Father. We rejoice in it for thy sake, and not our own. We rejoice that thy

Then,

sufferings are now all over.

We wonder that thou

shouldst ever submit to suffer at all; that thou shouldst leave the glory, which thou hadst with the Father before the foundation of the world, and consent to be made flesh, and dwell among us, and to be despised and rejected of men, and become a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.

We wonder that thou shouldst submit to it at all, and that thou shouldst bear it so long; that thou didst not resent the first slight, and quit the world in anger. However, we rejoice that thou art now gloriously recompensed for thy wonderful patience and condescension, and we are happy to hear the apostle say, "Wherefore God hath also highly exalted him, and given him a name above every name; that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things on earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father," Phil. ii. 9-11. We rejoice to hear another apostle, speaking of the working of God's mighty power, say, "Which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead; and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principalities, and powers, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come: and hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the Head over all things to the church, which is his body,

Q

the fulness of him that filleth all in all,” Eph. i. 20 —23. We read this account of thy present aggrandisement with peculiar satisfaction. Every addition to thy glory is an increase of our joy; for what is so glorious to thee, is highly advantageous to us. Thou mightest well say, "It is expedient for you that I go away." If thou hadst not gone to heaven to purchase, and prepare, and take possession of a place for us, we had none of us ever been admitted. But now we rejoice in the assurance that thou wilt come again and receive us to thyself; that where thou art, we may be also. If thou hadst not gone away, the Comforter would not have come: but now thou hast engaged to send him to us. And when we consider who the Holy Ghost is, and what are his offices; and especially, when we perceive him at work upon our souls, whether convincing, teaching, witnessing, comforting, sealing, whatever part of the grand work he is carrying on, we rejoice and say, "All this we owe to thy going away; and we are far enough from being losers by thy absence." We have sometimes been foolish enough to wish that we could have kept thee always here; or that thou wouldst come again and dwell among us; but it is every way better that thou shouldst be where thou art. Thy bodily presence could have been only in one place at a time; but thy Spirit is every where, in all places, and at all times. If thou hadst not gone to the Father, we should not have