to slip: He will give His angels charge over you, and in their hands shall they bear you up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone. "Those who seek the Lord their God shall want no manner of thing that is good." You shall be wonderfully sustained, as Job was in his trial; and shall not lose the integrity of your faith. You shall be wonderfully preserved in this guilty world. A thousand shall fall before thee, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but the arrows of death shall not come nigh you, for the Lord your God shall defend you as with a shield, and you shall not be afraid. Though terrors encompass the wicked and they fly when no man pursueth, faith shall keep your feet steadfast on the rock of your salvation, and there shall you take your stand till death be swallowed up in victory. May you all, then, fear the Lord and give glory to His Son Jesus Christ, now and for ever.

Believe me, your

affectionate friend,

THE COMFORTER.

ADDRESS XXVII.

O ALMIGHTY GOD, who seest the wretchedness of man, and knowest alone how to cheer the sorrowfui, grant unto all those who are afflicted beneath thine hand grace to surmount their trials, that they, seeking the comfort of thy word, may know how to bear and to forbear through faith in thy Son Jesus Christ. -Amen.

When I looked for good, then evil came unto me; and when I waited for light there came darkness.— JOB XXX. 26.

MY DEAR FRIENDS-One subject there is upon which we may discourse as long as the world stands, and it can never come amiss or be unseasonable at any period. Every congregation must contain many to whom it is applicable, and none whom God in His mercy corrects but will own it applicable to themselves-I mean affliction. To whom is it given on earth to be a stranger to this visitation throughout his short existence? We are not to judge of each other by what we see, even in our intercourse one with another; for who can tell the sorrows of the human heart-who dive into all the secret causes of grief in another soul? For" the heart knoweth its own bitterness, and a stranger doth not intermeddle with his joy" (Prov. xi. 10). We see each other

in the course of our worldly intercourse; but O, how few will ever speak of the sorrows of their souls

of that godly sorrow which really is sensible in wisdom of its repentance before God! No, indeed : the world is all smiles and favours externally, and admits of no mention of sorrow. It may talk of the accidents and offences of what it beholds, aud beyond that the world will recognize no man's sufferings, nor hear of any of his sufferings for sin. And yet it is for sin, and sin only, that he suffers at all. Well assured that we have all deep reason to exercise our faith in the midst of the various afflictions common to us all, and that we can never preach upon this subject without the assurance that all Christians will understand us, I shall make use of the afflictions of Job to convey a lesson to your ears, which, beneath the grace of God, may be acceptable to you for you all know there are two kinds of sorrow in this life-namely, the sorrow of the world which worketh death, and that godly sorrow which worketh salvation not to be repented of.

When this patient sufferer takes a view of human life as he had known it, and in his great sorrow says ____" When I looked for good, then came evil unto me; and when I waited for light then came darkness," he has a reference to the ingratitude he met with from those to whom he had previously been known; for, in the verse preceding my text, he asks the question which led him to give utterance to the text, "Did not I weep for him that was in trouble? Was not my soul grieved for the poor?" A man with such a heart, though his hands could not supply all distresses nor his word of comfort reach all ears, might surely be worthy to receive compassion when

afflicted; but, when we add to this that Job had the power in his prosperity of making many rich and did actually do so-that he obeyed the dictates of his pious, generous, and exalted soul, and did put in practice the wisdom which he taught-for such a man to receive in his affliction only reproaches from the meanest of the mean, was, indeed, an aggravation of his bodily calamities, which, as we know, were many and grievous to be borne. But let us hear his own words. It was the consciousness of his unmerited cruelties that bore him down, and made his heart give utterance to his complaint to the Almighty. O, let us not any of us think that we can equal Job, or have any of us a similar right to utter the same language. There is but one, and that one Jesus Christ, to whom, in its fullest sense, as the man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, this language is applicable. Job says "Oh, that I were as in months past, as in the days when God preserved me, when His candle shined upon my head, and by His light I walked through darkness." The wisdom of God was not withdrawn from him. Satan was permitted to afflict him—to bring him down from riches to poverty-from health to disease-from his high estate to his mean condition! Oh, what a difference does it make if we value prosperity so high that we forget Job, or rather, Jesus Christ our Saviour! Oh, let us look to Him-let us see Him who bestowed even upon Job his prosperity-consenting even to be poorer than His servant, and to be "rejected of all men!" It is, I say, the contemplation of Christ alone, and the consideration of His character, the cherishing Him in the heart, that that can make every condition in life,

or any condition of life, endurable with comfort and satisfaction. O, ye who know what it is to come unto Him, to have made Him your secret companion through your journey of life, tell me, did you ever fail to feel a consolation when you thought of Him? Pray to Him even now, lest your afflictions be most insupportable! But let us look at the reverse picture of Job, and hear his description of his treatment in his poverty, and may it do our hearts good, and incline us to be grateful to the Almighty, and teach us kindness, if not perfect justice, to our fellow-creatures. "But now (says Job), they that are younger than I have me in derision, whose fathers I would have disdained to have set with the dogs of my flock. For want and famine they were solitary; fleeing into the wilderness, in former time desolate and waste; who cut up mallows by the bushes and juniper roots for their meat. They were children of fools; yea, children of base men: they were viler than the earth. And now am I their song; yea, I am their by-word. They abhor me, they flee from me, and spare not to spit in my face. Because He hath loosed my cord and afflicted me, they have also let loose the bridle before me: they mar my path, they set forward my calamity, they have no helper. They came upon me as a wide breaking-in of waters in the desolation they rolled themselves upon me." "Did I not weep for him that was in trouble? Was not my soul grieved for the poor?" Marvel not that at last poor Job should thus exclaim in the words of my text-" When I looked for good then evil came unto me: and when I waited for light there came darkness." He had, if any man lad, reason to look for good at the hand of his fellow-creatures: he had reason to expect it. As to