taken in writing it, he would not fear the loss of his labour. The employment detached him from the bustle and hurry of life, the din of politics and the noise of folly; vanity and vexation, flew away for a season, care and disquietude come not near his dwelling. He arose fresh as the morning to his task; the silence of the night invited him to pursue it ; and he can truly say that food and rest were not preferred before it. Every psalm improved infinitely upon his acquaintance with it, and no one gave him uneasiness but the last; for then he grieved that his work was done. Happier hours than those which have been spent in these meditations on the songs of Zion, he never expects to see in this world. Very pleasantly did they pass, and moved smoothly and swiftly along; for when thus engaged he counted no time. They are gone, but have left a relish and a fragrance upon the mind, and the remembrance of them is sweet."

May every sabbath you shall spend upon earth, bring down such a glimpse of heaven's glory and heaven's blessedness upon your habitations. No care; no poverty; no desolation, by the hand of death upon your household; no evil, saving remorse, that the world can oppose, need to keep such precious visitations away from you. But O remember that it is only to those who keep the sayings of the Saviour, that He has promised thus to manifest Himself; and it is only after a pure and watchful and conscientious week, that you can ever expect its closing sabbath to be a season of rejoicing piety, a day of peace and of pleasantness.

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LECTURE XVIII.

ROMANS V, 3—5.

"And not only so, but we glory in tribulation also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience; and experience, hope: and hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, which is given unto us."

THE apostle had before said, that we rejoice in hope of the glory of God; and he now says, that we glory in tribulation also. This impresses the idea of the great opposition that obtains, between an appetite for spiritual and an appetite for temporal blessings. To rejoice in hope of the one is a habit of the same bosom, that rejoices and glories in the loss or destruction of the other-not however that the ruin of any present good is desirable on its own account, for all such affliction is not joyous but rather grievous; but still upon the whole should it be matter of gladness, if the short affliction that is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; and if afterwards it yieldeth the peaceable fruits of righteousness to those who are exercised thereby.

"Tribulation worketh patience." You will observe that the word translated patience, is of a more active quality in the original than it is according to our customary acceptation of it. We understand it to be a mere virtue of sufferance,

the passive property of enduring without complaint. and without restlessness. But it really extends to something more than this. The same word has been translated patient continuance,' in that verse where the apostle speaks of a patient continuance in well-doing. The word perseverance, in fact, is a much nearer and more faithful rendering of the original than the word patience "Let us run with patience the race set before us," says the apostle, in our present translation. Let us run with perseverance the race set before us, were an improvement upon the sense of this passage. We wait with patience, or sit still with patience, or simply suffer with patience; but surely we run not with patience but with perseverance. It is well when tribulation is met with uncomplaining acquiescence, or met with patience-but it is still better when it not only composes to resignation, but stimulates to a right and religious course of activity. "It is good for me to have been afflicted," says the psalmist, "that I might learn thy law." "Before I was afflicted I went astray; but now have I kept thy word." It is very well when affliction is submitted to without a murmur-but better still when it quickens the believer's pace the divine life, and causes him to emerge on a purer and loftier career of sanctification than before.

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We conceive the main explanation of an afflicting process upon the heart to lie in this, that the heart must have an object on which to fasten its

hopes or its regards; that if this object be reft from it, a painful void is created in the bosom, the painfulness of which is not done away till the void be replaced; that the soreness of such a visitation therefore, as say the loss of a child, inflicted upon a worldly man, will at length find its relief and its medicine in worldly objects; and that in the succession of company, or in the intense prosecution of business, or in the variety of travelling, or in the relapse of his feelings again to the tone of his ordinary pursuits and ordinary habits, time will at length fill up the vacancy and cause him to forget the anguish of his present tribulation. But if, instead of worldly he be spiritual, he will seek for comfort from another quarter of contemplation— he will try to fill up the desolate place in his heart with other objects-he will turn him to God, and labour after a fuller impression of that enduring light and love and beneficence, which, if they only shine upon him in clearer manifestation, would effectually chase away the darkness of his incumbent melancholy. In such circumstances, and with such feelings, prayer will be his refuge; communion with God will be the frequent endeavour of his soul; he will try to people the vacancy created in his bosom by the loss of earthly things, with the imagery of heaven; he will heave up, as it were, his affections, now disengaged with that which wont to delight and to occupy them, but is now torn away; he will, in the stirrings of his agitated spirit, attempt to lift them to that serene and

holy and beautiful sanctuary, where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God. And who does not see that he has now more of heart to give to these things, delivered as it is from the engrossment of a fond and favourite affection; and that, as the fruit of these repeated attempts to follow hard after God, he may at length obtain a nearer approximation; and that, on the singleness of his intent and undivided desires, a light may be made to shine, which will disclose to him with far more clear and affecting impression, those great realities which are above and everlasting; and that with his faith so strengthened, and his separation from the world so widened and confirmed, and all the wishes of his heart so transferred from the earth that has deceived him to the inheritance that fadeth not away -Who does not see, that the afflicting process which the man has undergone, has transformed him into a more ethereal being than before; has loosened him from time, and rivetted him with greater tenacity and determination than ever to the pursuits of eternity; has forced him as it were to seek his resources from above, and thus brought him to abide by the fountain of living waters; has riven him, as it were, from the world, and left him free to attach his loosened regards to the invisibles which stand at a distance away from him-So that now he can fill up his heart with heaven as his future home, and fill up his time with the service and the occupations of that holiness which is the way that leads to it?