of your enjoyments, pursuits, expectations, and hopes, you would cordially consent to that remove; without saying, Lord, let me stay a little while longer, to enjoy this or that agreeable entertainment, to finish this or that scheme? Can you think with an habitual calmness and hearty approbation, if such be the divine pleasure, of waking no more when you lie down on your bed, of returning home no more when you go out of your house? And yet, on the other hand, how great soever the burdens of life are, do you find a willingness to bear them, in submission to the will of your heavenly Father, though it should be to many future years; and though they should be years of far greater affliction than you have ever yet seen? Can you say calmly and steadily, if not with such overflowings of tender affection as you could desire, Behold, thy servant, thy child is in thine hand, "do with me as seemeth good in thy sight!" (2 Sam. xv. 26.) My will is melted into thine; to be lifted up or laid down, to be carried out or brought in, to be here or there, in this or that circumstance, just as thou pleasest, and as shall best suit with thy great extensive plan, which it is impossible that I, or all the angels in heaven, should mend.

These, if I understand matters aright, are some of the most substantial evidences of growth and establishment in religion. Search after them: bless God for them, so far as you discover them in yourself, and study to advance in them daily, under the influence of divine grace, to which I heartily recommend you, and to which I entreat you frequently to recommend yourself.

The CHRISTIAN breathing earnestly after Growth

in Grace.

"O THOU ever-blessed Fountain of natural and spiritual life! I thank thee, that I live, and know the exercises and pleasures of a religious life. I bless thee, that thou hast infused into me thine own vital breath, though I was once "dead in trespasses and sins;" (Ephes. ii. 1.) so that I am become, in a sense peculiar to thine own children, “a living soul." (Gen. ii. 7.) But it is mine earnest desire, that I may not only live, but grow; "grow in grace, and in the knowledge of my Lord and

Saviour Jesus Christ," (2 Pet. iii. 18.) upon an acquaint ance with whom my progress in it so evidently depends. In this view I humbly entreat thee, that thou wilt form my mind to right notions in religion, that I may not judge of grace by any wrong conceptions of it, nor measure my advances in it by those things which are merely the effect of nature, and possibly its corrupt effects.

"May I be seeking after an increase of divine love to thee, my God and Father in Christ, of unreserved resignation to thy wise and holy will, and of extensive benevolence to my fellow-creatures. May I grow in patience and fortitude of soul, in humility and zeal, in spirituality and a heavenly disposition of mind, and in a concern, "that whether present or absent I may be accepted of the Lord," (2 Cor. v. 9.) that "whether I live or die” it may be for his glory. In a word, as thou knowest I hunger and thirst after righteousness, make me whatever thou wouldst delight to see me. Draw on my soul, by the gentle influences of thy gracious Spirit, every trace, and every feature, which thine eye, O heavenly Father, may survey with pleasure, and which thou mayest acknowledge as thine own image.

"I am sensible, O Lord, I have not as yet attained: yea, my soul is utterly confounded to think, how far I am from being already perfect: but this one thing, after the great example of thine apostle, and the much greater of his Lord, I would endeavour to do; "forgetting the things which are behind, I would press forward to those which are before." (Phil. iii. 12, 13.) O that thou wouldst feed my soul by thy word, and Spirit! Having been, as I humbly hope and trust regenerated by it, "being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, even by thy word which liveth and abideth for ever;" (1 Peter i. 23.) "as a new-born babe I desire the sincere milk of the word, that I may grow thereby." (1 Peter ii. 2.) And may "my profiting appear unto all men," (1 Tim. iv. 15.) till at length "I come unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ;" (Eph. iv. 13.) and after having enjoyed the pleasures of those that flourish eminently in thy courts below, be fixed in the paradise

above. I ask and hope it through him, "of whose fuiness we have all received, even grace for grace;" (John i. 16.) "to him be glory, both now and for ever. Amen." (2 Peter iii. 18.)

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE ADVANCED CHRISTIAN REMINDED OF THE MERCIES OF GOD, AND EXHORTED TO THE EXERCISE OF HABITUAL LOVE TO HIM, AND JOY IN HIM.

I WOULD now suppose my reader to find on an examination of his spiritual state, that he is growing in grace. And if you desire that this growth may at once be acknowledged and promoted, let me call your soul to that more affectionate exercise of love to GoD and joy in him, which suits, and strengthens, and exalts the character of the advanced Christian; and which I beseech you to regard, not only as your privilege, but as your duty too. Love is the most sublime and generous principle of all true and acceptable obedience; and with love, when so wisely and happily fixed, when so certainly returned, joy, proportionable joy, must naturally be connected. It may justly grieve a man that enters into the spirit of Christianity, to see how low a life the generality even of sincere Christians commonly live in this respect. 66 Rejoice then in the Lord, ye righteous, and give thanks at the remembrance of his holiness," (Psalm xcvii. 12.) and of all those other perfections and glories, which are included in that majestic, that wonderful, that delightful name, The Lord thy God. Spend not your sacred moments merely in confession, or in petition, though each must have its daily share; but give a part, a considerable part, to the celestial and angelic work of praise. Yea, labour to carry about with you continually a heart overflowing with such sentiments, warmed and inflamed with such affections.

Are there not continually rays enough diffused from the great Father of light and love, to animate our bosoms? Come, my Christian friend and brother, come and survey with me the goodness of our heavenly Father. And O that he would give me such a sense of it, that I might represent it in a suitable manner: that

while I am musing, the fire may burn in my own heart, (Psalm xxxix. 3.) and be communicated to yours. And O that it might pass, with the lines I write, from soul to soul; awakening in the breast of every Christian that reads them, sentiments more worthy of the children of God, and the heirs of glory; who are to spend an eternity in those sacred exercises, to which I am now endeavouring to excite you.

Have you not reason to adopt the words of David, and say, "How many are thy gracious thoughts unto me, O Lord! How great is the sum of them! When I would count them, they are more in number than the sand." (Psalm cxxxix. 17, 18.) You indeed know, where to begin the survey; for the favours of God to you begin with your being. Commemorate it therefore with a grateful heart, that the eyes which saw your sub. stance, being yet imperfect, beheld you with a friendly care, when you were made in secret, and have watched over you ever since; and that the hand, which "drew the plan of your members, when as yet there was none of them," (Psalm cxxxix. 15, 16.) not only fashioned them at first, but from that time has been concerned in keeping all your bones, so that "not one of them is broken:" (Psalm xxxiv. 20.) and that, indeed, it is to this you owe it, that you live. Look back upon the path you have trod, from the day that God brought you out of the womb, and say, whether you do not, as it were, see all the road thick set with the marks and memorials of the divine goodness. Recollect the places where you have lived, and the persons with whom you have most intimately conversed; and call to mind the mercies you have received in those places, and from those persons, as the instruments of the divine care and goodness. Recollect the difficulties and dangers, with which you have been surrounded; and reflect attentively on what God has done to defend you from them, or to carry you through them. Think, how often there has been but a step between you and death; and how suddenly God has sometimes interposed to set you in safety, even before you apprehended your danger. Think of those chambers of illness, in which you have been

confined, and from whence, perhaps, you once thought you should go forth no more: but said with Hezekiah, "In the cutting off of my days, I shall go to the gates of the grave, I am deprived of the residue of my years." (Isaiah xxxviii. 10.) God has, it may be, since that time, added many years to your life; and you know not how many may be in reserve, or how much usefulness and happiness may attend each. Survey your circumstances in relative life; how many kind friends are surrounding you daily, and studying how they may contribute to your comfort. Reflect on those remarkable circumstances in providence, which occasioned the knitting of some bonds of this kind, which, next to those which join your soul to God, you number among the happiest. And forget not, in how many instances, when these dear lives have been threatened, lives perhaps more sensibly dear than your own, God has given them back from the borders of the grave, and so added new endearments, arising from that tender circumstance, to all your after converse with them. Nor forget, in how gracious a manner he has supported some others in their last moments, and enabled them to leave behind a sweet odour of piety, which has embalmed their memories, revived you when ready to faint under the sorrows of the first separation, and, on the whole, made even the recollection of their death delightful.

But it is more than time, that I lead on your thoughts to the many spiritual mercies which God has bestowed upon you. Look back, as it were, to "the rock from whence you were hewn, and to the hole of the pit from whence you were digged." (Isaiah li. 1.) Reflect seriously on the state wherein divine grace found you under how much guilt, under how much pollution! in what danger, in what ruin! Think what was, and O think with yet deeper reflection, what would have been the case! The eye of God, which penetrates into eternity, saw what your mind, amused with the trifles of present time and sensual gratification, was utterly ignorant and regardless of: it saw you on the borders of eternity, and pitied you; saw, that you would in a little time have been such a helpless, wretched creature, as the sinner that