time appears to urge his progress tardily along, as if encumbered with the pressure of what we suffer. His course seems tedious, because we scrupulously mark it; and what we wish to accelerate is thereby apparently retarded. We count the moments, minutes, hours, saying, "in the morning would God it were even, and at even would God it were morning," in hopes that the one or the other may be accompanied by an auspicious change. Every past moment is registered in our memories, which, like a broken mirror, appears as it were to multiply those to come. The evil is constantly before us; and our consciousness of its presence is kept alive by the sufferings which it induces. We hate it, therefore, and our dislike naturally magnifies its deformity. On the one hand, whatever good we possess, we are apt to reckon below its value; on the other, whatever evils we meet with, we are disposed to exaggerate and raise above their real importance. We esteem, in fact, the one to be less, the other to be greater, than they really are. So that, if our lives were equally divided betwixt pain and pleasure, we should still appear to ourselves to suffer much more than to enjoy. It is, however, this very admixture of good and evil, which so distinctly characterizes the human condition, that balances its difficulties, and puts us in the best position for salvation, by keeping constantly before our view, that, as here, so hereafter, rewards and punishments will be dis

tributed, according to the issue of the final judgment, and thus urging us to "walk worthy of God, who hath called us unto his kingdom and glory." They offer to each other a mutual counterpoise. The evil prevents the good from elating us too highly; the latter prevents the former from depressing us too lowly. These mixtures are therefore salutary.

It will well become us, however, under the most trying circumstances of our temporal state, to "humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt us in due time." Let me add further, that when we consider the natural tendency in man to run counter to the commands of his God, is it to be expected that he should furnish us with all good things, and never visit us with evil? Where is the conscience that can dare to entertain a presumption of man's merit ever being sufficient to entitle him to look for uninterrupted good? On the contrary, will it not suggest that he has done everything to deserve chastisement? "Shall he then receive good at the hand of God, and shall he not receive evil?" No one surely can imagine that sin is to be committed in this world, and the sinner suffer nothing. Is not this against every law of moral and social justice? Among men delinquents are punished-should God be less just than man? Though a sinner do evil an hundred times, and his days be prolonged, yet surely it shall be well with them that fear God;

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but it shall not be well with the wicked, neither shall he prolong his days, which are as a shadow, because he feareth not God."

It is true that there does not appear to be always that equable distribution of good and evil among men, which their respective qualities might seem to claim: the wicked often appearing contented in the midst of their guilt, and the devout visited with very severe external afflictions. But who shall participate the secret counsels of the Most High? "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are his ways higher than our ways, and his thoughts than our thoughts." And who shall presume to pronounce, that the internal sufferings of the sinner, who has no show of evil to disquiet him, are not much more tormenting than the external pains of the "man after God's own heart," though the latter seem to be bowed down by his afflictions? The secret ways of God are past our finding out. He cannot be unjust; and they but sin who make a comparison between the evils which are opposed to them and others whom they may choose to judge less deserving; thus taxing the Almighty in their thoughts with inequality of mercy. God only knows who most suffers here below. Appearances are not always to be relied on. The heart of man is, to man, illegible; and this may bleed at every pore, when the sunshine of content seems to sparkle from the eye, and the "voice of melody" is warbled from the

tongue. However, unequal as may sometimes appear the divine dispensations, they are generally sufficiently intelligible. If the sinner be utterly insensible to the suggestions of the Holy Spirit ; if no act of grace can reclaim him; if he be "dead in trespasses and sins," God may cease to afflict him. But shall we think that there is no evil behind? He may be abandoned to the "god of this world, who hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them." Who would not rather undergo the greatest evils in this life, than be exonerated from them upon such terrible terms? Let us then no longer imagine, that our merciful Creator distributes his blessings or his punishments partially. We have been "bought with a price," and it is little likely that he who died to save us from the penalties of sin and the chains of eternal death, will deal otherwise with us than we most justly deserve. Did our punishments come up to our deserts, who could endure them? "If thou, O Lord, wilt be extreme to mark what we have done amiss, who may abide it?" abide it?" If our punishments, then, are so light by comparison with our faults, shall we presume to think that we suffer too much, only because others seem to suffer less? It is undoubtedly true, that, amid the mysterious dispensations of Providence, we frequently observe that "there is a just man perisheth in his righte

ousness, and there is a wicked man who prolongeth his life in his wickedness;" but are we, therefore, to set ourselves up as umpires between the Creator and his creatures? Have we any claims upon God's mercies, and has he not received sufficient provocation to exclude us altogether from his pardon?

Let us not then magnify the evils which we are called upon to endure, and think our yoke too heavy. We may remember, that those evils which the righteous Job suffered, terminated in riches and honours and length of days: we know not to what ours may lead. We are not, however, to calculate, under any circumstances, upon unmingled happiness in this life; it is altogether inconsistent with our condition. Adam cut off the entail from his posterity, when he let Sin loose into the world, to scatter her havoc among them. She has encumbered man's natural inheritance with many grievous and heavy burthens: she has fixed his doom upon earth, that "Man is born to suffer."

Dark and stormy as may be the evils of this life, and scattering, as they sometimes do, death and desolation in our path, yet have we the consolatory reflection, that there must be an end to the worst troubles that can befall us here; that eternity shall succeed to time, and bear us to the presence of Him" whose countenance shineth like the sun in his strength; where the Lamb, which