Observe, He giveth it unto us, as a free unmerited boon. "The wages of our sins is death, but the GIFT OF GOD IS ETERNAL LIFE, THROUGH JESUS CHRIST OUR LORD. Living or dying we are His property, purchased

unto Himself with His own precious blood." As St. Paul saith, "Whether we live we live unto the Lord, or whether we die we die unto the Lord, so that living or dying we are the Lord's." "Our life is now hid with Christ in God, and when Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall we also appear with Him in glory.”

With reason then, my Dear Brethren in Christ, may we sing aloud with the Apostle, "Oh Death where is thy sting! oh Grave where is thy victory! The sting of Death is sin and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ! Wherefore, my Beloved Brethren, be ye stedfast, immoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord. Forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord." Amen.

Now to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, &c.

SERMON VIII.

THE CAUSES OF, AND REMEDIES FOR, A CHRISTIAN'S DESPONDENCY.

PSALM XLII. 11.

Why art thou cast down, oh my soul? and why art thou so disquieted within me? Hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise Him who is the health of my countenance, and my God.

SOLOMON observes, in the 27th chapter of Proverbs, that "as in water face answereth to face, so doth the heart of man to man." Without pausing to examine the critical signification of these words, we may remark that, spiritually understood, they are very applicable to the Lord's people in all ages of the church; for scarcely does face answer to face more exactly than the experience of one believer corresponds with that of another. Let me not, however, be understood to assert that the experience of all Christians is precisely the same. Without doubt the difference of

ages, constitutions, outward circumstances, and degrees of grace, gives occasion to an infinite variety of frames and feelings in the breasts of the Lord's people; so that in this respect, to carry on the metaphor, we may say that there is perhaps as great a diversity between the religious perceptions of Christians, as there is between the features of their countenances. But what I mean to say is, that the leading features of their experience are similar. There is, generally speaking, an identity of feeling to a certain extent pervading all the members of Christ's spiritual-body, consisting in the consciousness, more or less, of the same joys, the same griefs, the same hopes, the same fears, the same pleasures, and the same pains, all proceeding from the operation of that "one and the self-same spirit," which inspires the whole with life and energy, and "divideth unto every part severally as He will."

And herein, my Beloved Brethren, consists, as I humbly conceive, one very strong internal evidence of the truth of the sacred Scriptures, viz. the extraordinary accuracy with which they depict the various workings of the human heart, both in a state of nature and in a state of grace. Insomuch, that when we read the accounts which they have recorded of what Moses, or David, or Paul felt, or said, or did, on such and such occasions, we see our own feelings and characters laid open before

us as in a mirror, so exactly that we are almost tempted to exclaim, "that is precisely my feeling, I am sure I should have acted in the very same way were I placed in the same circumstances." In this respect at least our own experience testifies that the Word of God is a matter of fact book. It describes human nature as we find it really is, not as poets and philosophers have falsely represented it. It gives us no high-wrought colourings of a perfect virtue or of an uninterrupted, and therefore imaginary happiness to be attained in this world. But with all the naked simplicity of truth, it holds up the characters of the persons described in its sacred pages exactly as they were, without either extenuation or detraction; so that their graces may serve as models for our imitation, their vices as checks to our presumption, their chastisements as beacons to warn us from sin, their consolations as motives to encourage our perseverance, and in a word, that by a comparison of our own religious feelings and character with theirs, we may thence discover what probability there is that the same spirit of grace, which wrought so effectually in them, worketh in us also.

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These reflections seem to be suggested by considering who the individual was from whom the words of our text proceeded. 'Why art thou cast down, oh my soul, and why art thou disquieted within me?" "Who is the person, let us ask,

that speaks in such desponding terms?" "Is it some poor melancholy outcast in the last stage of human wretchedness?" Far from it. Far from it. It is no less a personage than the divinely inspired monarch of Israel; he who was distinguished by the honourable appellation of "the man after God's own heart" and who seems to have enjoyed a nearer communion with God, and to have been favoured with a more abundant outpouring of the spirit, than any other mere mortal has ever been favoured with before or since. Seeing then that this most eminent of the Lord's saints was not without his seasons of disquietude and despondency-surely, my Dear Brethren, it need be no cause either of surprize or alarm if we have ours. On the contrary, the more closely our experience agrees in this respect with David's, and the nearer we can trace our own griefs and disquietudes to the same causes from which his proceeded, the greater may be our confidence that we are in some degree actuated by the same life-giving spirit...

With respect to the Psalm from which our text is taken, it was manifestly composed under the "hidings of God's countenance," seeing that the disconsolate state of the composer's mind is illustrated by one of the most expressive comparisons that can be imagined-" As the poor hart that has been long chased by the hunters over the sultry plains of Palestine, panting with heat and weari