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death. Preserve, then, your souls from iniquity by the spirit of God within you: keep your lips from hasty language: your tongues from evil and your hearts from desires that belong not to the kingdom of God. O, bless the Lord your God and think of all His mercies! Bless Him for His goodness and praise Him for His loving kindness; for He has preserved you in sickness and restored you to health. He has made you to see the goodness of His Son and His sacrifice for sin. He has endowed you with intelligence, blessed you with education, supplied you with His Scriptures, and maintained you with His Spirit. In sorrow has He comforted your hearts, in poverty supplied your wants, in danger preserved you, in perils defended you, in temptations rescued you; and when you have fallen He has lifted you upon a rock of salvation, set your feet thereupon, and ordered your goings. He has kept you all in this life. Do not fail, then, to bless Him. Let not the Evil One prompt you to curse Him, but bless His holy name for ever and ever, for He is the friend, the only friend-the safest, dearest, longest friend— who will be with you to the last, and support you through that inevitable change of your condition when you shall put off mortality and be clothed upon with immortality.

May the Lord God, who preserved the pious Job, preserve and keep you all, inspire you with wisdom and resignation, and keep you both in life and in death, till the trumpet of victory summon us all to life eternal through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. -Amen.

I remain, your affectionate friend,
THE COMFORTER.

ADDRESS III.

O GOD, who hast taught us that it is better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of laughter, teach us at all times, we humbly pray thee, so to have our hearts fixed upon thee that the perishable joys of this earth may not ensnare our souls, but that we may look forward to the rest which remaineth for the people of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.-Amen.

There the wicked cease from troubling: there the weary be at rest!-JOB III. 17.

MY DEAR FRIENDS-The most piteous object upon earth was the pious Job, when Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite, came to condole with him in his afflictions. They lifted up their eyes and knew him not, so greatly was he altered by reason of the disease which the devil had put upon him! They lifted up their voices and wept, so completely were they overcome by his wretched appearance. Seven days and seven nights they sat down with him and never uttered a word, because they perceived that his grief was so great that silence was the best consolation they could give. In this manner, with dust upon their heads, these friends of Job showed him every outward mark of respect. At last, after this period, the full heart of Job burst forth and

proved to Satan that his views were not confined to the love of this life, that he would gladly have perished in his childhood, and would that he had never been born! But, taking a view of the grave, he hesitates not to describe it as a place of rest to be desired and not to be shunned and avoided; for he says, "There the wicked cease from troubling and the weary be at rest." My object in this address is to teach you the duties of resignation to the divine will, and, under all circumstances, to look forward to the grave as the appointed place for all living. I take this opportunity of addressing you upon this subject, not only because of the recent calamitous visitation, but because we can none of us tell how long it may be before we are induced to feel with Job the worthlessness of everything on earth compared with eternity. Death, the grave, mortality, and human decay, are subjects which we are frequently called upon to speak of; but they are subjects which, strange to say, we may speak of continually and few will take them as intended for themselves. We may generalise upon life and death-aye, and we may generalise upon Christianity and refine upon its doctrines and precepts-and yet individuals will not apply them to their hearts. Men forget that we are commissioned by God to speak to their souls: on this account the apostle says, "We pray you, in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God;" and to this purpose we must always address ourselves. We may tell you you shall die, and you all know it so well that you scarcely need to be told it. Men easily reconcile themselves to that which is inevitable; and, was our commission merely to tell you such an evident thing, it might, indeed, be

awful. But we have a different object in view, and in our reflections upon the grave, we would have you consider it in the light spoken of by Job, "There the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest."

The Christian, though faithful and hopeful, is yet surrounded in this world of trouble and anxiety by many severe temptations and trials. He may be joyful and lively sometimes; but the day of sorrow soon follows, and convinces him that there is an appointed change for everything under the sun. "I was not in safety, neither had I rest, neither was I quiet, yet trouble came." Trouble no living man is without he is born to it from the time he comes into the world to the time he goes out, and very little is the difference between one state and another in that respect. Sickness, disease, infirmity, restlessness, nervousness, pain, achings of heart and flesh, are felt as often by the rich on their bed of down as by the poor on their bed of straw. The unsatisfactoriness of everything in life is felt equally by all, and to one common end all men come. prince and the beggar are but dust, and their distinctions in death are but the variety of coffins which are hid from mortal eye, and soon forgotten. Where is Solomon's glory? The tombs of the kings of Egypt, are visited by the intelligent and enterprising travellers of our own country, and some of their stately mummies are brought to this island, put under glass cases-horrid spectacles of decay! —for the imaginations of reflecting minds to think upon; and what do we see in these things but the end of us all? We, Christians, ought to look upon the grave in these two points as a place of rest for

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the weary, where the wicked cease from troubling us, and we prisoners of the Lord rest together and hear no longer the voice of the oppressor. The small and the great are there, and the servant is free from his master. The grave! Desired as it was by the afflicted Job, his reflections are preserved by the Spirit of God on purpose that we Christians may often think thereupon, as we ought, in the spirit of truth. Job says, "There the wicked cease from troubling :" he tells us plainly that in this world they cannot cease from being troublesome : they are, as the prophet Isaiah says, "Like the troubled sea when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt" (Isaiah lvii. 20); or, as described in later days, "Like wells without water clouds, that are carried away with the tempest, to whom the mists of darkness are reserved for ever" (2 Peter ii. 17). But there, in the grave, they cease from their cruelties. Ever persecuting the just-ever ready to defame, injure, and detract from them-the wicked leave no stone unturned to plot the ruin of the righteous. They are never happy except they can cause others to err, and their sleep goes from them unless they have done some mischief.

The wicked are always plotting how they may take advantage of the righteous-how they may lay snares and catch him-how they may provoke him to anger and irritate him to transgress the commands of the Lord. The wicked live but for themselves, and care not how or in what way they may obtain success, provided only they do but gratify their own corrupt inclinations. They have no love for another-no desire for the happiness of others— no enjoyment in their pleasure-no wish to promote

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