removes the present world, and presents the world to come. By it we are refined in affliction, triumph in our troubles, in all our conflicts we are more than conquerors, and turn the battle to the gate. By it we listen to rebuke, are instructed by the rod, submissive under crosses, silent under losses, patient in tribulation, meek under reproaches, humble, though exalted, forgetful of injuries, mindful of benefits, faithful to our trust, merciful to our enemies, and friends with the whole worldh

By it we tremble at judgments, rejoice in mercies, observe providences, wrestle against our unbelief, are grieved at our ingratitude, and struggle against our daily failings.

By it our souls taste divine joys, and loathe the light food of worldly vanities. It sweetens our sorrows, mitigates our misfortunes, pierces the shadows, and seeks after unseen realities. Where it is implanted in the breast, every thing turns out to the advantage of the soul. The way of life, to others thorny, is flowery, and our path to our latter end is peace.

What to the carnal world is a curse, is to the possessors of this precious gem a blessing. By it our pains are banished, our pleasures are purified, expectation honied, burdens lightened, weakness strengthened, storms scattered, and harmony diffused within. What a noble thing is grace, or Christ by his spirit dwelling in the soul! No wonder, then, that such a glorious change is made, and all to the better, so that we can look towards eternity undismayed, expect the awful judgment with unshaken faith, meet the king of terrors with undaunted courage, and have hope in the expiring pang.

Let gold be a portion to the misers, honour to the ambitious, pleasures to the voluptuous, but let grace be mine; for thus my afflictions are sweeter than the prosperity of the wicked, my reproaches preferable to the applauses of a giddy world, and my very death more desirable than the life of the most splendid, if impious monarch.

MEDITATION CXV.

LOVE AND IMMORTALITY.

July 15, 1759.

WELCOME change, that waits to begin my hap

piness, and put a period to my complaint and pain. When this languor and lukewarmness shall be turned into immortality and love, I shall be all life and vigour, and this vigour shall be all love and praise. Now corruption is a counterbalance to my love, and mortality a clog to my devotion; but then every power shall be life, every faculty active, every thought winged, and every motion heavenly. I shall praise with transport, and sing with rapture; I shall adore with ecstasy, and love with delight, and all this, day and night, without ever ceasing, or being exhausted, being then perfect in every grace, and immortal in every power. Receiving my fulness from the divine plenitude, as a pipe supplied by the vast ocean, I shall pour out perpetual streams of praise, and torrents of love, and be more and more capacitated, enlarged, and replenished, by this eternal employment.

B b

Such is the happy state my hope claims, and to which, one time or other, I shall attain. Then shall my love be wholly a vigourous immortality, and my immortality exercised in nothing but love. On the Sun of Righteousness, divinely bright, tremendously glorious, I shall fix mine eyes, which shall be strengthened as they gaze, and never cease to behold and admire the divine object. I shall emulate the seraphim, and strive, not out of self-conceit, but from the glowings of sacred gratitude, the prevalency of divine love in my breast, to sing as loud, and love as intensely as they, the exalted One, whom I can call my Brother, my Husband, and my God.-I shall go out, in all the faculties of my soul, to Him, without one moment's intermission; and yet mine eyes shall never be so satisfied with seeing, as to shut them on the glories above, nor mine ear fatigued with hearing the hallelujahs on high. Sleep shall be as foreign to my immortal perfection then, as it is impossible for my immortal frame to subsist without it now. There is no comma in the hosannas above; no night in the years of the right hand of the Most High; no interruption in the warbles of eternal noon; no surfeiting on bliss, or loathing of divine love. No distractions shall disturb the adorers bęfore the throne, where perfect love casts out fear, where bliss is as boundless as their wish, and measures with eternity itself.

MEDITATION CXVI.

EXTREMITIES.

Gibraltar Bay, August 6, 1759.

GOD has in all ages been pleased to let matters

come to an extremity before he sent the deliverance; thereby teaching his people patience, and to hope unto the end; thereby also making the deliverance more glorious, and his care of them more conspicuous, than otherwise it would have been.-Wherefore then magnify I every difficulty in mine eye as a mountain that cannot be removed, and distrust that divine power that can do all things, and at the last extremity?

Now, to dispel these dark and dismal clouds that hang over my mind, to my great uneasiness, let me glance at his divine procedure with his church and people, from the days of old down through many ages.

See, then, the father of the faithful is old and stricken in years, while it ceases to be with Sarah after the manner of women, before the promised seed is born. Yet that extremity is God's opportunity; for he is born, in whose seed the nations should be blessed.But, again, young Isaac is, by divine authority, to be offered for a sacrifice, and that by none other than his aged, his affectionate father! Nor are the amazing orders countermanded, till the altar is reared, the wood laid in order, the stripling bound, and laid upon the wood, and the hand stretching out the knife to give the fatal wound. Now, what an extremity of extremities was this! but not too late for God to de

liver him.-Again, wandering Hagar sees not the well as soon as the bottle is spent; but after she had laid down the parched boy, and forced herself a good distance from him, that she might not hear his mournful cries, nor see him struggling with the pangs of death, God opens her eyes, scatters her fears, and removes her sorrows.-Also just Lot makes his escape out of Sodom only on that very day in which it was destroyed; and it was destroyed early in the day. A narrow escape indeed! Perhaps the heavens were thundering round about him, the brimstone and fire falling behind him, while he fled; yet he was safe enough under his protection, to whom extremity is the noblest opportunity.-Let me also look at Jacob when returning home: He is distressed at his brother's meeting him in such a hostile manner; but when he has arranged his little company for flight, or meeting the armed bands, the kindly embrace removes the doubt, and cheers his very soul.-Joseph is to be exalted, but he is first sold by his brethren, then sold again as a slave, then a prisoner, which was like the very reverse of what was so near; but, at the last extremity, when he could be brought no lower, he was advanced, till he could, as it were, be raised no higher. Even so, his aged father's sorrow, which had all this time mingled his other comforts with bitterness, is heightened by the story of his sons, about · the rough dealings of the man that was Lord over Egypt: But from this very dungeon of wo, he is in a moment set into a palace of delight, when he hears that that same governor is his own son, his own beloved, his long lamented Joseph.-Again, the promise is, that Israel shall be delivered from Egypt, and possess the promised land; but see how subtilely