shua-like, to serve the Lord, Joshua xxiv. 15. and to crucify them which cried out, "Crucify him, crucify him!" Luke xxiii. 21. for till this be done fully, they will be pricks in my eyes and thorns in my side, Numbers xxxiii. 55. and vex me while I dwell in the church below,

As fire devours thorns, so let the flame of divine love to my dear Lord and Saviour, who hath done and suffered so unspeakably much for me, burn vehemently in my heart, and consume all my sins and lusts; and may God, to kindle up this fire, shed his love abroad in my soul by the power of the Holy Ghost! Rom. v. 5.

To be sensible of their evil nature and their dreadful consequences, let me often take a view of them in the glass of my Lord and Saviour's sufferings; and so through divine grace, though these Canaanites be not all expelled out of my heart at once, yet they shall be driven out by little and little, Exod. xxiii. 30. till at length they be quite destroyed: for sin, like the plague of leprosy, has got into the walls of the house of our human frame, and hath spread over and corrupted our whole

nature, and though we may and must, through divine grace, be continually scraping and cleansing the house, yet sin will never be finally destroyed, till at last the walls of the house, even of our mortal tabernacle, be thrown down by death, Levit. xiv. 37.---45.

As the man whom the priest saw fully covered over with leprosy was to be pronounced clean, Leviticus xiii. 12, 13. so we can have little or no hope of ever being pronounced clean by the great High Priest of our profession, Heb. iii. 1. till we have seen ourselves, not in part, but altogether, soul and body, defiled and covered with the dreadful leprosy of sin, and have fled to him for cleansing; if this be done, we may rest assured God the Father will pronounce us clean, in and through the justifying righteousness of Christ Jesus the great High Priest, who hath atoned fully for all such lepers.

Let every one of us, then, like the leper of old, come to him and say, Lord, if thou

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wilt, thou canst make me clean;" that he may say unto each of us as he said unto him, "I will, be thou clean,” Matt. viii. 2. for he is as willing to cleanse us at this

day from our sins, as he was at that time to cleanse the leper, if we believe in him who is able to save to the uttermost all those that come to God through him, Hebrews vii. 25.; nay, if we may use the expression, it is in a manner contrary to his will that any should perish; for, eternally blessed be his name! he willeth not the death of a sinner!

Say unto them, as I live, saith the Lord "God, I have no pleasure in the death of the "wicked, but that the wicked turn from his

way and live turn ye, turn ye from your "evil ways; for why will for why will ye die, O house "of Israel!" Ezek. xxxiii. 11.

In my wanderings through this pleasant wood, I find through different windings I am got back again to that place where 1 beheld the spreading bay; but where is it now? not a trace of it is to be seen: it was but a little ago when its spreading verdure seemed to promise lasting prosperity; but the woodman has been here, and for some cause or other has not only blasted its beauty, but removed it root and branch, so that I can scarcely tell where it grew. Just so the wicked are removed according to that striking description of the Psalmist, which I no

ticed a little before, when I saw this tree growing in full verdure in this place; "I "have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay tree; yet he passed away, and lo, he was not; yea, I sought him, but he could not be found," Psal. xxxvii. 35, 36.

Nor will a reflection on their latter end yield the smallest satisfaction to surviving friends or acquaintances; nay, aghast, they rather force off their thoughts from contemplating such a subject. O how needful then is this ardent wish to be adopted by all living, which we find recorded in Moses's song, thus: "O that they were wise, that they un"derstood this, that they would consider their "latter end!" Deut. xxxii. 29.

O that the wicked in a day of prosperity would thus consider their latter end! that if they go on in their evil course, notwithstanding of all their worldly prosperity and grandeur, their end at last will not only fill their friends and acquaintances with awful reflections; but prove beyond description dreadful to themselves; whereas the latter end of the righteous affordeth, not only plea

sant contemplations to their surviving friends and neighbours; but satisfaction, eternal sa1 tisfaction to themselves, agreeably to the following passage in that beautiful psalm of contrast of the righteous and the wicked; "Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright; for the end of that man is peace," Psalm xxxvii. 37.

Again we are told, the memory of the wicked shall rot, Prov. x. 7. that is, prove unsavoury to their friends and former acquaintances, be as disgustful to their reflections as rotten stinking things are to our nostrils, be quite disregarded, and striven to be forgot; but the memory of the just is blessed. "The righteous shall be in everlasting "remembrance," Prov. x. 7. Psalm cxii. 6. Their memory, like "a good name, is better "than precious ointment," Eccl. vii. 1.; it spreadeth a fragrance around where they live, yieldeth a delightful savour after they are dead, and the grateful odours of it invite men into the same pleasant paths of righteousness in which they walked. Their memory may be said, in some respect, to be like the name of the Lord, even as ointment poured forthy, Cant. i. 3.