and then, when their hearts are jaded, and their spirits worn out, they give themselves to God, instead of giving themselves to him first. He has his furnace for his gold; he has his Nathans to go and say, "Thou art the man.” Perhaps thou art brought here to-night for me to be a Nathan to thee; and I may come to thy conscience, whether thou wilt or not-I may come up to the secret caverns of thy heart; and God may speak to thee, and force thee to confess, "I am that heartless walker; I am walking at this great distance from God; and this is my state, and has been my state for weeks and months that are gone." May God give thee grace to see, that the love of Christ to his people, is a pure and holy love. He loves his people, but he loves not their sins; he loves not their half-heartedness, he loves not their loitering behind, he loves not their weak faith, nor their being satisfied with little things; but he loves to see them mount up, as on the wings of eagles. Oh, how we should pray, "Lord, we believe-help thou our unbelief."

Remark, thirdly, the character of this love is a costly love. The love of Christ cost him much; it cost him a life of suffering, and a death of agony; it cost him his couch watered with his own tears; it cost him bitterness, and anguish, and grief unutterable. There is not a blessing that comes to us, though it comes without money and without price, but it cost the Son of God a groan. Sweet and holy thought! Deep and humiliating thought! What! Does it come to me without money? Does it come to me without price? And yet did it cost Thee thy heart's blood, and cause Thee to exclaim, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Happy will that soul be, that finds every mercy that comes to him perfumed with the blood of Immanuel, that takes the bread that he eats, and the water that he drinks, and the raiment that he puts on; all the sweet solace of friends, all the communion of the saints, all the reading of the word, all delight in God, and all his prospects for a coming eternity; and finds them all fragrant with the precious blood of a crucified Immanuel. The promises are sweet indeed, but they are sweeter because they come through Christ; they are doubly sweet, because they have all the incense of his merit, and all the fragrancy of his heart in them.

There is a point I would not omit, and that is, this ivory is overlaid with sapphires. The love of Christ is oftentimes to us a mystery. We do not forget Newton's hymn; I suppose many of us are learning it out in the school of Christ. We expected once to walk happily with God in the way of simple faith, we thought at one time that we should put our foot upon the neck of our enemies, and find it an easy thing to walk in the strait and narrow path. We went to the Lord with fervency of desire, with great expectation, and we asked him to subdue sin in us. Did that fail? Never; God's ears are ever open to hear, and every prayer is filed in heaven's chancery, and never, never can be registered in vain. But how has the Lord answered it? Why, just by contraries; in the way we had not expected it, in the way we least desired it, in the way most mortifying to our pride. I suppose many of the saints of God may truly say, "If there be a way of getting my bread which I dislike the most, God gives it to me: if there were any cross which I would wish to be spared from, God gives me that cross." s." Thou thoughtest, it may be, that God would make thee most useful, that he would make use of thy tongue, and thy head, and thy prudence, and thy courage; and the Lord puts thee to the rear rank, and seems to make nothing of thee-perhaps takes some one that thou didst think a half-wicked man, and makes him a greater blessing than thou art; so that thou standest

amazed sometimes at thy own littleness, wondering at his greatness. God brings thy greatness to the dust; and why? That he may lift thee out of the dust, make Christ thy greatness, and endear himself to thee in all the vastness of his unutterable love. Oh, my brethren, these sapphires are all in their order; there is not one of them out of place. We often think that God is mistaken; but they are all set and arranged, even as the precious stones in Aaron's breastplate; and one might say, that as all the saints of God are there borne on his heart, and all are precious, though not all equally shining and glittering; so does the compassion of Jesus bear thee up, poor, weak, heartless creature as thou art in all thy helplessness and nothingness, ready to say, Well, I am less than the least; but sometimes I say, Am I any thing at all? And yet all thy care is on his heart, all his compassion is toward thee, from the beginning of the year to the end of it; not one stone is out of place, but all are arranged by infinite wisdom, and infinite goodness, and infinite faithfulness.

There are two or three observations with which I shall conclude.

In the first place, there is nothing like living on the compassions of Christ, on his tender love. There is something so engaging to know that in all my afflictions he is afflicted; that in all my temptations he has been tempted; that Satan has never injected one temptation into my soul which he has not thrown on him; and though there was nothing in him that encouraged Satan, yet Satan tried to cast him down from the top of the temple; he tried to lift him up in self-consequence; he tried to make him work a miracle for himself; shewing that there is not a temptation into which we are thrown, but our Lord has been in it before us. Have you aching bones? Think of the suffering humanity of the Lord. Is the world unkind? Think of the suffering humanity of the Lord. Did he not feel it? You may ask, "If he was so divested of all sins, how could he enter into my sins?" How could the pure soul of Adam be tempted? If you will answer me that question, I will answer you the other. May the Lord make us sit down at the feet of Jesus as new-born babes. Blessed posture, blessed name!—to be a babe, taking the word as milk, and being fed by it. I believe the day will come when the philosopher must become a babe, otherwise he will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

The great end of all is, to live in the enjoyment of the compassions of Christ. What are the two directing truths? Living by faith-living in obedience. First, living by faith: taking God simply at his word. First of all, receiving Christ as the Saviour of the sinner. Some of you are lagging and lingering outside the ark in forgetfulness of it. You want Christ to be the Saviour of the excellent, and the good, and the pious, and the fruit-bearing, instead of taking Christ as the Saviour of the poor sinner. But if God bring that gleam into your heart, you shall find it shall enlighten the room in which you live, and shed a glory on all the objects around you. The first truth is, receiving Christ as the Saviour of a poor sinner; and what is the next lesson? Living by faith on his fulness. I find myself weak, and incapable of thinking a good thought, or speaking a good word, or performing a good deed. Christ has all fulness for the poor, the needy, the empty. When I am weak, then he is strong. Happy are they who are contentedly learning this lesson, to live out of themselves on the inexhaustible fulness of Immanuel. This is the way to enjoy much of the compassions of his heart, to be living by faith on the Son of God.

The second truth is, living in obedience. "If any man love me, he will keep

my words." God give you and me grace to understand that truth. Talk about revivals! if ever the pulpits of London have revivals, if ever the congregations of London have revivals, you will find this truth laid on the hearts and consciences of men, that in order to live holily, they must live by faith, receive Christ as a great Saviour, live on him in all his fulness, and live to him in the way of obedience. For though there is not necessarily a connexion between the obedience and the blessing, any more than there is between the furrow and the good seed, though there is no direct connexion, yet because God has declared that it is so, the mind in that posture is disposed to receive the blessing. There are shoots in some plants (as we see in the laurel) which seem to spring up in two or three weeks, there is such a vitality in them. So, when a soul is brought down, and kept down, brought to a simple reliance in the Saviour, up shoots the laurel, the soul makes a spring upwards toward God. Sometimes, in a few days, there is such an advance in the ways of God, as has not been made in years before. God lay these things on your hearts. Many are crying out, "My leanness, my leanness;" of whom, if we knew them more, we should say, Ye are Achan, ye are Achan. They would not like us for it, because there is a state of soul in which the wounds are so fretful you cannot touch them: and if I come and touch some of your views, and you do not like it, be assured it proves the necessity of touching them.

Do not let us be surprised if much of the love of Christ should be nearly hid from you by circumstances. You receive a letter-the letter is full of disappointment; you had expected just the opposite. You had formed your schemes nicely; you had marked out the track in which you thought to walk; you thought yourself wise enough to read it; but God puts you in a directly opposite course. Some of you have to learn this lesson-"The greatest trial of my life has been the greatest mercy of it; I was brought low, and he fed me." Some of you that are walking in the bitter paths of affliction, who are under heavy trials, and in such deep emergencies that you cannot describe them; it may be that when you are in heaven you shall say, "Of all things in my life, next to the gift of Jesus Christ, next to the gift of the Holy Spirit, there was this gift of my long and trying troubles." May it be a message to us from God to be looking upward and forward to the blessed inheritance of the glory that shall never fade! God grant it, for Christ's sake. Amen.

THE PROSPERITY OF THE RIGHTEOUS.

REV. W. JAY.

SURREY CHAPEL, JUNE 11, 1826.

"The righteous shall flourish like the palm-tree; he shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon. Those that be planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God. They shall still bring forth fruit in old age; they shall be fat and flourishing; to shew that the Lord is upright; he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him.”— PSALM, xcii. 12-15.

THE title of this Psalm is, "A Psalm or song for the Sabbath-day." Many foolish writers believe that it was written by Adam himself. If this were true, it would be an immense curiosity indeed: for of all he did, nothing else has come down to us but the sad consequences of his eating the forbidden fruit. "In Adam all died." "By one man sin entered into the world." This supposition is groundless it is contradicted by the internal evidence of the song itself; for there were then no musical instruments; then, there were no adversaries—there were no wicked men to rise up against him. "But the leaders of this people have always caused them to err; they destroyed the way of their fathers." The Jews are a lamentable proof that infidelity does not arise from want of evidence: they could always believe any thing, unless that He who opened the eyes of the blind, and who raised the dead, and who was raised again the third day, was the Son of God. We have every reason to conclude that it was composed by David, who was more distinguished by an attachment to the sanctuary of God, than by anything else. He could say, "I have loved the habitation of thy house, and the place where thy honour dwelleth." "One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord for ever."

It consists of praise; the materials of which are sketched from the works of Jehovah, and especially his dealings with the wicked, and above all, with the righteous. The case is this: the Lord loves his people infinitely; "he takes pleasure in them that fear him, in them that hope in his mercy." of this that David here speaks.

And it is

Let us interrogate this text, and obtain from it, if possible, answers to these six questions: first, Who shall flourish? The righteous. He shall flourish like the palm-tree." Secondly, How shall they flourish?" He shall flourish like the palm-tree: they shall grow like cedars in Lebanon." Thirdly, Where shall they flourish? “In the house of our Lord, in the courts of our God.” Fourthly, When shall they flourish? "They shall still bring forth fruit in old age." Fifthly, Why shall they flourish? "To shew that the Lord is upright," &c. Sixthly, Who can come forward and bear his testimony to this? "I," says the Psalmist; "he is my rock."

WHO SHALL FLOURISH? The righteous. "There is none righteous, no, not one." Such was the testimony of God himself, when he looked down from heaven on the children of men. Not when he looked down before the flood, when it is said, "the wickedness of man was great," and that " every imagination of their hearts was only evil continually;" but after so many means had been employed to reform the world. We may be imposed upon; we are often led to erroneous conclusions; but His judgment is always according to truth. You may entertain a hundred good opinions of your fellow creatures; but you cannot suppose that any one of them hath ever "continued in all things written in the law, to do them." You may have a flattering opinion of yourself, and especially compared with some who are grossly vile; but surely you cannot imagine that you are naturally innocent before God. But if you are transgressors, you are under the law and under the curse. Does not universal observation and experience accord with this testimony of God, that "there is none righteous, no, not one?" Yet the Scripture is perpetually speaking of the righteous and if there were no such characters to be found, nothing could be said concerning them.

The case is this: there are none righteous by nature, but there are some who are righteous by grace. There are none who are righteous by a righteousness of their own-that is, a righteousness derived from themselves; but there are those who are righteous by a righteousness derived from God. Of this the Apostle speaks; "That I may be found in him, not having mine own," &c. He tells us, that "Israel, which followed after the law of righteousness, did not attain to the law of righteousness; and wherefore?" says he, "Because they sought it not by faith; as it is written, Behold, I lay in Zion," &c. And yet they were distinguished by innumerable privileges, and were very zealous; but their zeal was in a wrong cause, and therefore carried them astray: "for they being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about," &c.

There is a two-fold righteousness, however, spoken of in the Scriptures: the righteousness of justification, and the righteousness of sanctification. These are very distinguishable from each other; and unless it is clearly discriminated, a confusion will pervade the whole of the religious system. The one is the change of our state; the other of our nature. The one is a relative change; the other personal. The one entitles us to glory; the other is a meetness for the inheritance of the saints in light. The one is an instantaneous operation, and applies at once; the other is gradual and progressive. Yet they are always inseparable, though distinguishable. "If any man be in Christ he is a new creature. Old things are passed, behold all things are become new."

With regard to this righteousness of sanctification, you will observe, that this at present is not complete. So far from it, "there is not a man that liveth and sinneth not." We are taught, by our Saviour himself, to pray for our daily pardon, as well as for our daily bread. This righteousness is so prevailing in the subject of it as to discriminate even to character: and when a Christian falls, he is acting out of character. In due time it will be complete; complete as the righteousness of justification. Now, as he has a new righteousness, he has new and right views, new and right feelings, new and right hopes. But all these righteousnesses have a mixture, but soon they will be without mixture before the throne for ever. Oh, Christian, it is a thing worth dying for-is it not? To drop this body of sin and death; to feel no more 46 a law in the members warring against the law of the mind;" no more to say, "When