the arm of the Lord has been revealed.

When death removes

worthy characters, we must sometimes live, and lament to see their places unoccupied by others of the like character: and, what is worse, instead of increase by Christ's conquests, we must sometimes live to see a decrease by the conquests of the evil one! Many a faithful minister has had to preach, year after year, till, either by public scandals, or private disgusts, many of his people have gone off, and walked no more with him. But let him then remember the testimony of God: Him that honoureth me I will honour. Let him go on, and faithfully discharge his duty, whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear: let him, and those that are with him, walk by faith, and not by sight. It often proves, that, after such a night of weeping, comes a morning of rejoicing. Let us not be discouraged; better breath than ours has been spent apparently in vain. Our Lord himself seemed to labour in vain, and to spend his strength for nought; but he comforted himself in this, (herein leaving us an example,) Through Israel be not gathered, yet shall I be glorious in the eyes of the Lord, and my God shall be my strength. This may encourage and direct us in larger concerns; concerns which respect the whole interest of Christ in the world. If we compare the present state of things, or even the past, with the glorious prophecies of the word of God, we cannot think, surely, that all is yet accomplished. By these prophecies, the Christian church is encouraged to look for great things, at some period or other of her existence. She is taught to look for a time when the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea; when a nation shall be born at once; when the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ; and he shall reign from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth. But surely, for the present, though great things, upon the whole, have been done in the world, yet nothing like this has ever come to pass. Instead of the world being conquered, what a great part yet continues to stand out against him. Hea thenism, Mahometanism, Popery, and Infidelity, how extensive still their influence! In all probability, not a single country, city, town, village, or congregation, has ever yet been brought wholly to submit to Christ! Nay, is it not very rare to find, in any one

of these, so many real friends as to make even a majority in his favour? May not the Christian church then, for the present, adopt that language, We have been with child, we have as it were brought forth wind, we have not wrought any deliverance in the earth, neither have the inhabitants of the world fallen? What then? shall we despair? God forbid! The vision is yet for an appointed time but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it, because it will surely come, it will not tarry; and, meanwhile, the just shall live by faith.

Let us take encouragement, in the present day of small things, by looking forward, and hoping for better days. Let this be attended with carnest and united prayer to him by whom Jacob must arise. A life of faith will ever be a life of prayer, O brethren, let us pray much for an outpouring of God's Spirit upon our ministers and churches, and not upon those only of our own connexion and denomination, but upon all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord both theirs and ours!

Our hope of a better state, when this is over, is built on faith in God's testimony. We have no sort of evidence, but this, that any such state exists. We cannot see any thing of the kind, or aught from which we can infer it. We cannot learn it from any of our senses. Reason itself could never have found it out. Reason might have taught us the idea of a future state, but not of a future state of bliss. Though much might be argued from the fitness of things, to prove that man is not made barely for the present life, yet nothing could be drawn from thence to prove, that rebels against the Supreme Being should live in a state of eternal felicity; no, for this we are wholly indebted to the word of promise. Hence faith is said to be the SUBSTANCE. GROUND, or FOUNDATION of things hoped for. Supported by that, we sustain our heaviest losses; and attracted by these, we come up out of great tribulations, following the Lamb whithersoever he goeth, till we shall overcome, and sit down with him in his throne, as he also hath overcome, and is set down with his father in his throne.

II. We will now add a few words on the IMPORTANCE of such a life. If, all things considered, it would have been best for us to have always seen our way before us, to have been guided, so to VOL. VII.

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speak, with our own eyes, and not to have implicitly followed the directions of God, no doubt so it would have been ordered. But he who perfectly, and at once, saw the beginning and end of all things, judged otherwise. With the highest wisdom, no doubt, he formed the resolution, the just shall live by faith. It may be impossible for us, in the present state, to find out all the reasons for this resolution; but two or three seem to present themselves to our view.

1. Such a life brings great glory to God. Confidence is universally a medium of honour. To confide in a fellow-creature, puts honour upon him in the account of others, and affords a pleasure to himself; especially if he be a wise and upright character, as it gives him an opportunity of proving his wisdom and fidelity. Though the great God cannot be made more honorable than he is, by any thing that we can do, yet his honour may, by this, be made more apparent. We honour him, so far as we form just conceptions of him in our own minds, and act so as to give just representations of him to others. God is graciously pleased to declare, that he takes pleasure in those that hope in his mercy; and why? surely, among other things, because it gives him occasion to display the glory of his grace. And, as he takes pleasure in those that hope in his mercy, and rely upon it; so he takes pleasure in ordering things so that we may be put to the trial, whether we will rely on him, or not. It was this which induced him to lead Israel through the wilderness rather than by the ready road to Canaan. He knew they would be in fact, dependent upon him, let them be where they would; but they would not be sensible of that dependence, nor have so much opportunity of entirely trusting him, in any way as in this; and so it would not be so much for the glory of his great name. He therefore would lead a nation, with all their little ones, into an inhospitable desert, where was scarcely a morsel of meat to eat, and, in many places, not a drop of water to drink; a land of deserts and of pits, of scorpions and fiery flying serpents: here, if any where, they must be sensibly dependant on God. They must be fed and preserved immediately from heaven itself, and that by miracle, or all perish in a few days! Here God must appear to be what he was here mercy and truth must appear to go with them indeed!

What an opportunity was afforded them to have walked these forty years by faith; what grounds for an entire confidence: but, alas, their faithless hearts perverted their way, and, in the end, proved their ruin! Ten times they tempted God in the desert, till, at length, he sware, concerning that generation, that, for their unbelief, they should die in the wilderness, and never enter his rest. Few, if any, besides Joshua and Caleb, would dare to trust him, notwithstanding all his wonders and all his mercies! They, however, for their part, took hold of his strength, and thought them-、 selves able, having God on their side, to encounter any thing! Their spirit was to walk by faith, and not by sight; and herein it is easy to see how they glorified God.

O brethren! let the glory of God lie near our hearts! Let it be dearer to us than our dearest delights! Herein consists the criterion of true love to him. Let us, after the noble example of Joshua and Caleb, follow the Lord fully. Let us approve of every thing that tends to glorify him. Let us be reconciled to his conduct, who suffers us to hunger, that we muy know that man lives not by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. If he should bring us into hard and difficult situations; situations to an eye of sense impossible to be endured, let us remember, that it is that he may give us an opportunity of glorifying him, by trusting him in the dark. The more difficult the trial, the more glory to him that bears us through; and the greater op portunity is afforded us, for proving that we can indeed trust him with all our concerns; that we can trust him, when we cannot see the end of his present dispensations.

Those very much dishonour God, who profess to trust him for another world, but, in the common difficulties of this, are perpetually murmuring, peevish, and distrustful. How different was it with Abraham, in offering up his son Isaac. What, offer up Isaac ! my son, my only son of promise! Why, is not the Messiah to spring out of his loins? What are to become of all the nations of the earth, who are to be blessed in him? How natural and excusable might such questions have seemed; much more so than most of our objections to the divine conduct. case, had it been consulted, must have entered a thousand protests.

Sense, in this

But the father of the faithful consulted not with flesh and blood, not doubting but God knew what he was about, if he himself did not. (O that we may prove ourselves the children of faithful Abraham!) Against hope, in appearance, he believed in hope of divine all-sufficiency; fully persuaded, that what God had promised he was able to perform, he stretched forth his obedient arm; nor bad he recalled it, had not heaven interposed he was strong in faith, GIVING GLORY TO GOD.

2. It is productive of great good to us. The glory of God, and the good of those that love him, (thanks be to his name!) always go together. It is equally to their benefit as to his honour, for instance, to lie low before him, and to feel their entire dependence upon him. It is essential to the real happiness of an intelligent creature, to be in its proper place, and to take a complacency in being so. But nothing tends more to cultivate these dispositions than God's determining, that, at present, we should walk by faith, and not by sight. Faith, in the whole of it, tends more than a little to abase the fallen creature; and to walk by faith, (which is as much as to acknowledge that we are blind, and must see with the eyes of another,) is very humbling. The objects of our desire being, frequently, for a time, withheld, and we, being at such times, reduced to situations wherein we can see no help, and thus obliged to repose our trust in God, contributes more than a little to make us feel our dependence upon him. Agur saw that a constant fullness of this world was unfriendly to a spirit of entire dependence upon God; therefore he prayed, Give me not riches; lest I be full and deny thee. Whatever tends to humble and try us, tends to do us good in the latter end.

Great and wonderful is the consolation that such a life affords. In all the vicissitudes of life and horrors of death, nothing can cheer and fortify the mind like this. By faith in an unseen world, we can endure injuries without revenge, afflictions without fainting, and losses without despair. Let the nations of the earth dash, like potsherds, one against another; yea, let nature herself approach towards her final dissolution; let her groan, as being ready to expire, and sink into her primitive nothing; still the believer lives?