to serve God in new obedience; for that which health is to the body, holiness is to the soul. Therefore the Sun of Righteousness is said to arise with "healing in his wings;" whereby we are to understand the gracious influence of the Holy Spirit, conveying the virtue of the blood of Christ to the conscience, even as the beams of the sun do the heat and influence thereof to the earth, thereby calling out the herbs and flowers, and healing those deformities which winter had brought upon it.

REYNOLDS.

Grace and peace be multiplied unto you, through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord, according as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness.-2 Pet. i. 2, 3.

Grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.-2 Pet. iii. 18.

THE whole life of a Christian here on earth is but, as it were, one continued sitting under the hand and pencil of the

Holy Ghost, till those first lines, and obscure shadows, which were laid in his new birth, receive more life, sweetness, and beauty, from his progressive sanctification. And this is a being "changed from glory to glory."

HOPKINS.

Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.-Phil. ii. 12, 13.

The God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you perfect in every good work to do his will, working in you that which is well-pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.Heb. xiii. 20, 21.

As an instrument, even when it has an edge, cuts nothing till it be assisted and moved by the hand of the artificer; so a Christian, when he has a will and an habitual fitness to work, yet is able to do nothing without the constant supply, assistance, and concomitance of the grace

of Christ, executing, moving, and applying that habitual power unto particular actions. He it is that enables us not

only to will, but to do: without him we can do nothing; all our sufficiency is from him.

REYNOLDS.

In me is thine help.-Hosea xiii. 9. Without me ye can do nothing.-John xv. 5. We are exhorted to dependence upon God, and continual recourse to him, as the fountain of all good; to keep an open and unobstructed passage between him and our soul. Say not, I have light enough in my house, and may now shut up my windows; for light within has dependence upon immediate supplies from the sun without, and so has grace upon continual supplies from the Sun of Righteousness.. . . . . Such a discomposedness and natural instability there is in the spirit of man, that, like strings in an instrument, it is apt to be altered with

every change of weather; nay, while you are playing on it, you must be ever new tuning it; like water heated, which is always offering to reduce itself to its own coldness. No longer sun, no longer light; no longer Christ, no longer grace.

REYNOLDS.

They that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit, the things of the Spirit.-Rom. viii. 5.

As the strength of water serves to carry it as high as its own spring and level, so the Holy Spirit will never cease to raise the hearts of his people, till it carries them up to their fountain and springhead in heaven.

As a piece of earth, when it is out of its place, doth ever move to the whole earth; so a spark of Christ's spirit will naturally move upward unto him who hath the fulness in him.

REYNOLDS.

Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God, that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. . . . . . We have the mind of Christ.1 Cor. ii. 12, 16.

THE still voice of God's Spirit within persuades more than all the loud crying without; as he that is within the house, though he speak low, is better heard and understood than he that shouts without doors.

If the world be in the middle of the heart, it will be often shaken, for all there is continual motion and change; but God in it keeps it stable. Labour, therefore, to get God into your hearts, residing in the midst of them; and then, in the midst of all conditions, they shall not move.

LEIGHTON.