sible ground for believing ourselves within it, except our possession of these virtues. There is sound reason, and good religion, in the words of Manoah's wife, when her husband said unto her, "We shall surely die, because we have seen God. But his wife said unto him, If the Lord were pleased to kill us, He would not have received a burnt-offering and a meat-offering at our hands, neither would He have shewed us all these things, nor would He as at this time have told us such things as these 1." As baptized Christians, let us pray for grace to love God; and when we have by His mercy reasonable ground to think that we love Him, then we may also take comfort from the thought of His eternal purpose. "Wherefore," says Archbishop Leighton-and his words are the more valuable on account of his leaning towards the Calvinistic Theology,-" if you will take my advice, withdraw your minds from a curious search into this mystery, and turn them directly to the study of piety, and a due reverence of the awful majesty of God. Think and speak of God and His secrets with fear and trembling, but dispute very little about them ; and if you would not undo yourselves, beware of disputing with Him. If you transgress in any thing, blame yourselves; if you do any good, or repent of evil, offer thanksgiving to God. This is what I earnestly recommend to you; in this I acquiesce myself; and to this, when much tossed and distressed with doubt and difficulties, I had recourse as to a

safe harbour. If any of you think proper, he may apply to men of greater learning, but let him take care he meet not with such as have more forwardness and presumption'.

Let us then advance to the second point that to them that love God (for that is the description by which they are to know themselves) all things work together for good.

There are few considerations better fitted to impress a thoughtful mind with a high notion of the power and goodness of God, than the one here proposed to us by the Apostle.

Consider how many, and what, are the things comprized under his subject. He makes no reservation or exception-" All things:" not only things physical and irrational, which without questioning or deliberation follow the laws which God has impressed upon them; nor physical evil only, though it be hard for flesh and blood to be convinced that pain and sorrow are always messengers of mercy; but even human wilfulness and human sin; all and every of these have no power to hurt, or impede, or diminish the happiness, or interfere with the heavenly growth, with the increase of Christian stature, and fulness, of a soul that loves God. Not only do they possess no power to hinder or hurt, but by an almost inconceivable exercise of benevolent power they work together, they con

1 Works, Vol. iv. p. 243.

spire, their worst attacks are real contributions to its real good. We are accustomed to acknowledge the glory of God in the heavens, and His handiwork in the firmament. We are directed, by those who are able to explain to us the phenomena of the heavens, to admire the wonderful wisdom whereby the planets of our system pursue their appointed course, whereby the force with which they are themselves impelled, the attractions which they obey, to the sun, and to each other, are adjusted with such matchless skill, that each returns into its place, each observes its silent and unerring order. But what is this, wonderful and beautiful as it is, to the view which is presented to us in the moral world? Behold God, the Father of Lights, as the Great Free Will, Author, Disposer, Controller of all causes and effects within His system. Consider the millions of agents, not pursuing a course of simple and irrational obedience to laws impressed upon their frame, but free to choose, free to disobey, free to follow the caprices of their own wilful and ungoverned hearts :--consider them in their manifold and untold attractions upon each other; the influences of talent, example, education, and a thousand others; with an inward law of right, which should be their attraction towards God and heaven, but that inward law neglected, disobeyed, silenced often by persevering wickedness; their courses complicated by their own and others' previous acts of good and evil :-consider the wonderful

intricacy of the web of human causes and effects, any one of which may, for aught we know, be the indispensable condition and pre-requisite of any other; and then think of the Great Intelligence that presides not less surely, that foreknows not less infallibly, that brings good not less invariably out of this marvellous complexity, than in the simplest case of material machinery, the least intricate work of physical nature. The evil produced and propagated in the midst of this stirring scene of wilful agents will rest upon the heads of those who are impenitent, of those who do not love God, of those who are not the called according to His purpose. With the evil will attend sorrow and pain-its proper, natural, necessary issue. The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the people that forget God; but meanwhile, they who pursue His will, who rely on His aid, who strive to perfect holiness in His fear, who are taught by His love of them to have their hearts quickened with the love of Him, shall pass through all uninjured; what is to others an evident token of perdition, is to them of salvation, and that of God. Though they pass through the furnace of sorrow or trial or pain, yet the smell of fire passeth not on them; the purpose of God is sure to them, His grace is sufficient for them. All things work together for their true, final, eternal good!

To us, whose busy occupation in the midst of this various and apparently perplexed scene, dis

qualifies us from tracing out the full mechanism of so wonderful a system, there is nevertheless enough shewn to indicate the possibility, the likelihood of so glorious an issue. A thoughtful man is seldom at a loss to perceive that some good has actually resulted from almost every apparent evil: he can trace the tendency inherent in the natural course of things, to come right, to encourage virtue, to produce good, and, with good, pleasure. It is a profitable and delightful thing to follow out such considerations, to observe how calamities issue in blessings; how perhaps a man owes all that he most values to some event which, when it happened, he esteemed most unfortunate. And a Christian loves still more to feel that where he does not see, there he may trust himself in the merciful hands of God, whose care and superintendence are not less sure, not less abundant in mercy, though the ways of them be sometimes inscrutable, and far above out of our sight.

It is a remarkable point in the Apostle's statement, that he says that all things work together— not with chance operation, or irregular result, but as parts of a great and complex design. They who try to do us evil,-the Tempter himself, and all his weapons of bodily pain and mental trial, is so disappointed of his aim, as to furnish us only with means, opportunities, occasions of rising to greater good. We know not but that the existence of evil itself, the great difficulty which has beset all