I will hear what God the Lord will speak; for he

will speak peace unto his people, and to his saints but let them not turn again to folly.Psalm lxxxv. 8.

ALL comes from God's hand, and from his hand by way of handwriting, by way of letter and instruction to us; and, therefore, to ascribe things wholly to nature, to fortune, to power, to second causes, this is to mistake the hand, not to know God's hand;-but, to acknowledge it to be God's hand, and not to read it, to say that it is God's doing, and not to consider what God intends in it, is as much a slighting of God as the other. Now, in every such letter, in every judgment, God writes to the king; but it becomes not me to open the king's letter, nor to prescribe to the king his interpretation of that judgment. In every such letter, in every judgment, God writes to the state; but I will not open their letter, nor prescribe to them their interpretation of that judgment:

God, who of his goodness hath vouchsafed to write unto them in these letters, of his abundant goodness interprets himself to their religious hearts. But then, in every such letter, in every judgment, God writes to me too; and that letter I will open, and read that letter. I will take knowledge that it is God's hand to me, and I will study the will of God to me in that letter; and I will write back again to my God, and return him an answer in the amendment of my life, and give him my reformation in return for my information.

DONNE.

They search out iniquities; they accomplish a diligent search: both the inward thought of every one of them, and the heart, is deep. But God shall shoot at them with an arrow; suddenly shall they be wounded. - Psalm Ixiv. 6, 7.

GOD goes not out as a fowler, who for his pleasure and recreation, or for his commodity or commendation, would

kill, and therefore seeks out game that he may kill it; it is not God that "seeks whom he may devour:" but God sees the vulture tearing his chicken, or other birds picking his corn, or pecking his fruit; and then, when they are in that mischievous action, God takes his bow and shoots them for that. When God condemns a man, he proposes not that man to himself as he meant to make him, and as he did make him, but as by his sins he hath made himself.

DONNE.

Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth . . . . For our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness.-Heb. xii, 6, 10.

WE see in a jeweller's shop, that, as there are pearls and diamonds, and other precious stones, so there are files, cutting instruments, and many sharp tools for their polishing; and while they are in the workhouse they are continual neigh

bours to them, and often come under them. The church is God's jewellery, his workhouse, where his jewels are polishing for his palace and house; and those which he especially esteems, and means to make most resplendent, he hath oftenest his tools upon.

LEIGHTON.

All things come alike to all; there is one event to the righteous and to the wicked.-Eccles. ix. 2.

THE metal and the dross both go into the fire together; but the dross is consumed, and the metal refined so it is with godly and wicked men in their sufferings.

REYNOLDS.

Every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.-John xv. 2. AFFLICTION shall try the children of God, and God shall crown them, and

men shall grow wiser and more holy, and leave their petty interests, and take sanctuary in holy living, and be taught temperance by their want, and patience by their suffering, and charity by their persecution, and shall better understand the duty of their relations; and, at last, the secret worm, that lay at the root of the plant, shall be drawn forth, and quite extinguished. For so have I known a luxuriant vine swell into irregular twigs and bold excrescences, and spend itself in leaves and little rings, and afford but trifling clusters to the wine-press, and a faint return to his heart which longed to be refreshed with a full vintage; but when the Lord of the vine had caused the dressers to cut the wilder plant and make it bleed, it grew temperate in its vain expense of useless leaves, and knotted into fair and juicy bunches, and made account of that loss of blood by the return of fruit.

TAYLOR.

C