Thus men who at the beginning dreamed of no such evil consequences, but merely followed their passions, because they were weary and discontented, have become drunkards, robbers, adulterers no sin so horrible, but they may be so led into it. The progress in sin of the unfaithful Israelites, is what too many may understand by their own miserable experience. First they murmured, then lusted after evil things, then committed fornication, then became idolaters, and fell away entirely from GOD.

O beware then, my brethren, of the first whisper of a discontented repining spirit! However natural it may seem to you, however slight and ordinary the occasion on which it is exercised, the Evil One, depend on it, is at hand, to make his advantage of it to our ruin: and the good SPIRIT of GOD too, HE, we are yet more sure, is at hand, to turn even this to good, if we will work with HIM.

For let it be ever so little a matter which annoys us, if we get over it because we are determined to be contented and cheerful, knowing such to be the will of GOD in CHRIST JESUS concerning us, this is the work of the gracious COMFORTER, this is that good thing which the Scripture calls Joy, and mentions, along with Love and Peace, among the fruits of the SPIRIT.

It greatly furthers true prayer, as any man may find, who after forcing himself in earnest, for conscience sake, to bear with disagreeable behaviour, or rude words, or untoward events, or irksome duties, kneels down to ask for God's blessing: there will be silent comfortable whispers of hope, so to call them, in the air around him, such as the wilfully restless and repining must never expect to find accompanying their prayers.

Such habits of self-denial in ordinary company and every-day work are a great help in that self-denial which is more properly called religious and devotional. If you are used to keep yourself from repining and gloom, when untoward things happen, you will the more easily command your appetite on your fasting-day, or resist any other pleasure which you know you ought not to indulge in.

For, strange to say, the disposition to be discontented, all painful as one would think it must be, takes hold of people in a way very like the love they have for any other evil thing. It haunts them, returns upon them, accompanies them every where :

they must watch, and deal warily with themselves, and try all ways to get the better of it. If you read the history of Saul, for example, the first king of Israel, you will see how the spirit of repining and jealousy, once indulged, gets hold of a man, and makes his whole life and heart, by degrees, miserable and wicked, a burthen to himself, and a calamity to all who come near him.

The greatest safeguard against it is the spirit of humility. If you truly think yourself of little worth, you will be truly satisfied with what God and man allow you, though it be but little. You will be, as the Psalmist teaches, like a weaned child, into whom no thought of pride has ever yet entered, and who is therefore soon taught content and patience, when debarred from that which had seemed most necessary to him.

The least regard from ALMIGHTY GOD, the least favourable turn of His Providence, is to such a simple humble person a wonder of mercy, because he accounts and knows himself to be unworthy of any favour at all. Other persons, probably of less saintly and less holy turn of mind, are astonished when they hear these contented ones so very thankful for what they deem such ordinary matters: they think it either a sort of affectation or childishness; but it is in fact an outpouring, in its degree, of the same SPIRIT which wrought in the blessed Elisabeth, mother of St. John Baptist, and caused her to cry out, upon the visit of her cousin, the Virgin Mary, "Whence is this to me, that the mother of my LORD should come unto me?"

Why should not we, my brethren, every one of us, try to enter into her mind; to take every thing pleasant, however trifling, as a token from HIM who then came invisibly with His mother to Elisabeth and to make unpleasant things also tokens of HIM, since they are opportunities given of enduring, though it be but a little, for His sake? What greater mercy or grace could have been shown to us, sinners as we are, by the FATHER of all mercies, than so to give us a chance of finding HIM in every thing? What greater misery and folly than ours, if we persist in fixing our foolish hearts on the mere present outward vexation or comfort, instead of looking on to the spiritual, eternal use of it?

Think of the blessed Saints, my brethren, and be ashamed to

murmur at your burthens, so light in comparison: think of the joy set before you, and how miserable it would be to lose that, by having all your own way now. Think of the CROSS-think of it in earnest; do not only say over its name, and that of the BLESSED ONE hanging on it, but think of it and of HIM deeply in your hearts; then surely, whatever your state, you will learn "therewith to be content."

SERMON CXCIII.

GOD'S THRESHING, AND THE CORN OF HIS FLOOR1.

MATTHEW Xiii. 39.

"The harvest is the end of the world."

THE labours of one more harvest are now, I believe, fairly completed; the plough and the harrow, the scythe and the sickle, have done their work for this season: the barns and the yards are stored, and the husbandman's anxieties are so far over. And surely we have great reason to be thankful to GOD ALMIGHTY for the comparative plenty of this season: especially when we look back on the last sowing time, and recollect how many weeks and months we had of what seemed most unseasonable weather, so that in very many places the principal crops could not be got into the ground until very long after the proper time, and there seemed reason to fear a great falling off in the provision of thousands for the next winter. From these fears we have been relieved not surely for any merit of ours, but entirely through the mercy of HIM who maketh His Sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and unjust. And it is to be hoped that we have all before now offered up thanksgivings again and again for so great, so undeserved, an instance of His fatherly care. Many of us for some weeks past have had in our mouths such words as these: "What a blessed time we have had!

1 Preached after harvest in 1842.

how gracious God has been to the land! how grateful we ought to be!" Surely it were a great pity to let all this spend itself in mere good feelings and good words. We should be ashamed to do so, if we had to deal with an earthly benefactor, whose bread we were daily eating. Did we know of any particular object on which he had set his heart, and which we had it in our power to forward, we should account it too bad in ourselves to neglect that object, or be but cold in pursuing it.

Now the great object with the LORD of the harvest, in the ordering of this lower world, is, as we know, the establishment and furtherance of the Kingdom of Heaven and He constantly sets before us the harvest, with its various cares and works, as what may teach us a great deal of that Kingdom. It may then, by His blessing, be a good way of showing our thankfulness, if we try to consider and fix in our minds what inward and spiritual lessons He meant us to learn, by the outward appearances and various experience of this and of every year's harvest. It is in fact a great and awful parable, repeated to our very eyes as regularly as the year comes round. Let us attend to it with something of the same earnest awfulness of mind, as if we were actually by, and heard our LORD explain it, as HE sometimes did in His parables, to the multitude gathered round HIM.

The harvest," HE tells us, "is the end of the world." It is the regular Scriptural image of the great Day of Judgment. Thus in the prophet Joel: "Assemble yourselves, and come, all ye heathen, and gather yourselves together round about;-let the heathen be wakened, and come up. for then will I sit to

judge all the heathen round about: Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe." And again, St. John in the Revelation “looked, and behold a white cloud, and upon the cloud one sat like the SON OF MAN, having on His head a golden crown, and in His hand a sharp sickle. And another Angel came out of the temple, crying with a loud voice to HIм that sat on the cloud, Thrust in Thy sickle, and reap, for the time is come for Thee to reap; for the harvest of the earth is ripe. And He that sat on the cloud thrust in His sickle on the earth; and the earth was reaped."

The ALMIGHTY then plainly intends, that thoughtful persons, having His instructions in their hearts, should be reminded, when they see a harvest field, of that which we shall all see at the end