Satan tries to abuse it; the more excellent any thing is, the more he tempts to the abuse of it. The unchangeable love of God towards his people, is the very sheet anchor of their souls' confidence. To imagine that because I change he changes, that he ebbs and flows according to my ebb and flow, is one of the most mournful creeds that can distress the conscience, harass the soul, and bring it into utter bondage. And yet to suppose, that God looks on me at all times with equal compassion-whether I am walking in his ways, pursuing after his laws, whether I am looking for dependence to his blessed Spirit, or whether I am careless, and go away after vanity: to suppose that at all times, God manifests the same love for me, is, I think a perversion of God's sacred word. There are various exhibitions of that love, just as the moon waneth, and waxeth, and fadeth; but the love itself is like the sun, immutable and eternal. It is a sweet remembrance, in looking back on the past year, to retrace the unchangeable love of God towards us. Who is it that has kept us? Who is it that has provided for us? Who is it that has restored us? Who is it, when the hands have hung down, and the knees have been feeble-who is it, when all real diligence has seemed to make to itself wings and fly away-who is it has brought up the poor soul, and led it again in the paths of righteousness? Who is it has oiled the wheels, and made them run swiftly in the ways of God's commands? Oh, my dear friends, I know of nothing so humiliating as the remembrance of God's mercy. The doctrines of grace are abused, but grace itself is never abused. Never was a sermon preached where the doctrines of grace were brought forward, but they were abused by some who heard them; but "the grace of God that bringeth salvation," teacheth a man "to live soberly, and righteously, and godly, in this present world." My brother, in looking back on the years that are past, is there any thing that so melts thy heart, so wins thee to the Saviour, as the remembrance of his unchangeable mercy towards thee? Friends have changed, but God has not changed. Thy poor heart has often been out of tune; but he has come and wound it up again, and put sweet melody into thy heart, and led thee to praise and bless the God of thy salvation.

Remark, secondly, the character of this ivory is, that it is bright. There is a purity in the love of Christ. Christ loves his people, but he loves not their sins; he loves their persons, but he loves not their follies; he has his rod for them. We are sometimes expecting heavy judgments in the way of afflictionsometimes expecting deep trials from the loss of friends, the loss of property, the loss of health, the loss of children; we forget the loss occasioned by having an itching ear; a vain, idle curiosity, that can take up the Bible, and speculate, and speculate, and draw out a hair-drawn system, and mistake it for truth. My dear friends, I would that you would desire nearer and closer walking with God; and then, I think, you will be conscious there is a heavy chastening in this. You take up your Bible, but you find not God in it; you pray to him, but your souls enjoy it not; you hear his word preached, but you profit not by it; you converse with God's saints, but you cannot find their communion to be sweet; walking in darkness, and seeing no light, and yet kept to trust in the name of the Lord. Oh, what a miracle of grace is it; what a wonder-working power of the Eternal Spirit of truth: the ivory is bright

The Lord Jesus loves not the carelessness of his saints. I do, from my soul, believe that earthly-mindedness is swallowing up the heart's blood of numbers; I will not say that it will touch their life; but I will say, they are thrusting the great business of life into a corner; they neglect God to the close of the day; 2 A

VOL. I.

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." 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 inan, and makes him a greater blessing than thou art; so that thou standest

God

amazed sometimes at thy own littleness, wondering at his greatness. 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 ɔbedience. 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, iu 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.

837

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." And it is of this that David here speaks.

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."