ance follows upon everything which you find to be contrary to true wisdom-to the light of God within you. You believe in God as the Searcher of the heart, who, whilst you sat in the valley of the shadow of death, being fast bound in misery and iron, has loosed the bonds of wickedness and suffered the oppressed to go free. Your desire of your eyes is taken away with a stroke: you no longer look on sin with pleasure, but as the torment of your life, from which death alone can release you. In your faith you desire to depart and be with God; but in your patience you possess or keep your souls. What a different man is the Christian to the mere natural man! How differently does he look at things -how completely are his views changed! His affections are set on things above-not on things of the earth. Consequently you cry aloud, “Examine me, O Lord, and prove me: try out my reins and my heart!" Your desires are centred in God: your hopes are placed in Him: your love is increased towards Him: His sacrifices are pleasant to your taste, and you devour them as your wholesome meat. In a word, heaven is your place of rest and earth your place of pilgrimage. You feel, you own, you confess, that you are a stranger and a pilgrim upon earth, for whom there is no rest, but that which belongs to the people of God. On this account you continue to redeem your mispent time by daily applying your heart to that wisdom which is from above, which is pure, peaceable, and holy; full of faith and good works. Can anything more forcibly show you the difference between a converted and an unconverted man? -between him who is of this world and him who is of the next? If you can but see the difference, I pray God that the latter may be your lot, and that He whose province it is to bring light out of darkness may shine in you to the destruction of the corrupt and sinful man, and the encouragement of the new one, which, after Christ Jesus, is created in holiness and truth. If such be the case, how pleasant do your Sabbath days become! They will appear, indeed, holy days, in which your soul will delight itself in fulness, and joyful praises speak the gladness of your hearts. Oh, that such a state may be yours! Oh, that you may love the Lord your God, and keep His commandments, and observe to do them all the days of your life!—that when the time of your presentation at the throne of grace shall come you may not hesitate to cast yourself upon the waters of the great deep; but, looking unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of your faith, may say "O, Lord, to thee I come; accept the offering of my soul, and take me into thy favour through thine own eternal recompense, and be my guide and guardian into heaven." I remain, yours affectionately, ADDRESS XIV. ALMIGHTY FATHER, in whom we live, move, and have our being, O, let us love thee, that we may never put our confidence or trust in any friend but thee; that we, walking in thy fear and obeying thy commandments, may, whether we live or whether we die, trust only to thy mercy, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Though He slay me yet will I trust in Him: but I will maintain mine own ways before Him. He also shall be my salvation: for an hypocrite shall not come before Him.-JOB xiii. 15, 16. MY DEAR FRIENDS-An honest heart is one of the best qualities a man can have. Talents and accomplishments may be pleasing and carry away the superficial suffrages of men who may be entertained for the time by the liveliness, freedom, and powers of the mind and general good humour of person; but, however brilliant his wit, however catching his eloquence, however engaging his manners and his powers of conversation, after a time all these things, and the tastes for them, fall away: they sicken and cloy by repetition, and the very person who appears so brilliant we even learn to avoid. We find more real satisfaction, more solid comfort, in the honest man's good-hearted rebukes-because he regards God-than we do in all the wild fancies of the free and boisterous, because they led us into error. "Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful" (Prov. xxvii. 6), says Solomon. He pains himself in attempting to give us compunction: it pains him to reprove where he would be glad to encourage: it is a grief to him to rebuke where he would be glad to exhort: and when his words of wisdom do come with force and smite us, they yet carry healing on their wings-the balm of consolation to our afflicted spirits. It is the same feeling which leads the pious man to take the chastening of the Almighty with submission: not to be discontented, murmuring, disobedient, unthankful, and unholy; but, knowing God is good, that He afflicts for good, the truly pious man will exclaim with Job, "Though He slay me yet will I trust in Him." The piety of this venerable patriarch is thus conspicuous in his trust in God. "Though he slay me yet will I trust in Him." So convinced is he of the love of God towards His creatures, and especially towards those who confide in Him, that death cannot prevent his consciousness of belonging to Him. Job was an upright man, an honest-hearted man, one that feared God and eschewed evil, of whom God is represented as saying to the prince of this world, "Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in all the earth- —a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God and escheweth evil." Well, then, might the patriarch, when justifying himself before his tormenting friends, say, "I will maintain mine own ways before Him." It is true that this was saying too much of himself, as he was afterwards convinced and confessed the same when God came to talk to him. Yet he was honest and sincere, even in this declaration, before those whom he well knew had plenty of lip-service -plenty of knowledge, of prudential instruction, and were learned in all the letter of the law, but yet knew nothing of the vital influences of religion. These are not uncommon characters in the world: we may frequently meet with such men, who can talk with us from Genesis to the book of Revelation-whose tongue runneth through the heavens and descends again to the depths of hell in their solemn vociferations men mighty in their words and in the ideas of their own vast knowledge of their religion: they have a text for everything but this one—that is, their own hypocrisy, their own insincerity, their own abominable selfishness: this never entered their minds, saving when, unseen by men, they make excuses for continuing in their iniquities and thereby prove themselves to be hypocrites. These men are not like Job-sincere in their defence of themselves, but sincere enough in their condemnation of others. But Job, in the very next sentence, after saying that he would maintain his ways before Him, adds-"He also shall be my salvation; for an hypocrite shall not come before Him." God is the salvation of every sincere-hearted man-that is, the man who does not disguise his heart before Him; but confesses and acknowledges his own utter unworthiness, and feels himself so great a sinner before Him as to have no eye for other people's iniquities, but sincerely for his own. This it is to feel that God is his salvation-when the sinner reflects in the depths of his soul concerning those things which he owns he has left undone and has done those things which he |