fully with thee. For thou hast delivered my soul from death, mine eyes from tears, and my feet from falling."

Be persuaded, then, to follow in the footsteps, of "the saints and the excellent of the earth" who have gone before you. Imitate their example: be encouraged by their experience: let the success which accompanied their prayers and supplications determine you to pray and to supplicate without ceasing, whatever you need from Him whose "ear is never heavy that it cannot hear, and whose hand is never shortened that it cannot save." "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you; for every one that asketh, receiveth, and he that seeketh, findeth; and to him that knocketh, it shall be opened."

SERMON XV.

PRAYER IN AFFLICTION.

JAMES v. 13.

“Is any among you afflicted? Let him pray.”

I NEED not tell you, my friends, that you are all liable to affliction. You can scarcely have lived so long in the world as the youngest of you have done, without suffering it in some of its various forms. At this very moment, perhaps, I speak to not a few who are under its actual pressure. At any rate, there are many in the circle of your acquaintance, or in the range of your neighborhood, whom you know to be visited with distress in their own persons, or in those of their families and their friends, in their minds, or in their bodies, or in their outward condition. In all this you see an ample demonstration of the saying that "man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward." And from it you should learn that, though your "cup may now be running over," and your "mountain standing strong," it will not be so always-that the days of adversity will assuredly come, and that these days may be longer and darker, and more stormy, than you are at present willing to anticipate.

Now, in such circumstances, what does it become you to do? The apostle tells you in the words of my text; "Is any among you afflicted? Let him pray. Here we are taught that devotion is the true and unfailing refuge of the mourner-that our comfort in the midst of sorrow is to be found in the doctrines and the exercises of religion-that whatever be the nature of our distresses, we should have recourse to God, as the Father of mercies, the fountain of consolation, the rock of our deliverance and our safety.

No doubt, in the time of trouble, prescriptions very different from these will be freely tendered to you, and tendered with some appearance of wisdom, and with liberal professions of friendship.

The philosopher will tell you that afflictions are the lot of humanity-that they are absolutely inevitablethat your grief on account of them is useless and unavailing and that therefore you should try to become indifferent to them, and submit quietly to your fate, whatever it may be a lesson which it is impossible to reduce to practice while the constitution of our nature continues what it is, and which, were it practicable, would only serve, by deadening our sensibilities, to deprive us of all that is amiable, and to exhibit a case in which the remedy is incalculably worse than the disease. The man who could remain in stoical and deathlike apathy, amidst all the ills and calamities of life, is far less an object of envy, than the man who weeps at every trifling injury, and allows himself to be overwhelmed by disappointment and pain. The latter is only weak; and with his weakness, may have much that is interesting; but the former, in the sternness of that virtue which he has assumed, has lost every gracious attribute of the heart, and made himself as incapable of relishing the joys, as he has made himself proof against the sorrows, with which his lot is chequered.

The mere moralist will talk to you of the utility of those trials to which you are subjected; of the duty, the propriety, and the dignity of patient endurance; of

the examples of suffering and of magnanimity with which the history of mankind abounds; of the necessity that exists for summoning up the energies of your minds to meet the exigencies of your case; and of the advantage you will derive, and the reputation you will acquire, by rising superior to all that is harassing in your experience and gloomy in your prospects. And, doubtless, these considerations are not altogether inapplicable or useless. But yet, of themselves, they are far from being sufficient for the purpose for which they are professedly set before you. They rather point out what should prevent you from murmuring, than what will inspire you with comfort and resignation; they show you the temper and character to which you should aspire, rather than furnish you with the means and the motives that may secure their attainment: they do not carry you either to the source of affliction or to the source of consolation; they provide you only with what may heal your wounds slightly and superficially, not with what will cure them radically and effectually : they suggest to you some adventitious views which may help to mitigate your disquietudes, instead of urging upon you the principle whose power is adequate to subdue these disquietudes, if it do not remove their cause in short, they are marked by this capital defect, they while they deal but very partially both with our affections and our destiny, they make no provision for our inherent weakness, and fail to direct us to that divine aid, without which all our knowledge, and all our meditations, and all our efforts, are fruitless and inefficient.

Besides these, there is a class of comforters from whom better counsel might be expected, but from whom no better counsel, or rather counsel not so good, is obtained. The persons to whom I refer are nominally Christians. They profess to rest their own hopes of salvation on the gospel, and to think it essential to the salvation of others. And they would be indignant were we to accuse them of any disrespect for the Scriptures,

or for the scheme of mercy which the Scriptures unfold. But yet, the practical system upon which they act is as worldly as if they had no acquaintance with Christianity or no belief in it. And if you follow their direction when you are afflicted, you will find that sacred views and sacred employments are almost wholly interdicted, and that if you are to have any thing to do with these, the impression which they are to be permitted to make, and the influence which they are to be permitted to maintain, must be as feeble and as slight as possible. Accordingly, it is no uncommon thing for them to tell you, that, in such circumstances, you should beware of dwelling much, or of dwelling seriously, on what has befallen you; that religious books are a great deal too dispiriting and dismal for your perusal; that it is only to increase your malady when you seek for the conversation of a clergyman, or of a pious friend; and that nothing can be worse for you than to seclude yourselves from gay company, and to spend any portion of your time in retirement or in solitude. One would be apt to suppose that they would recommend the perusal of your Bible; but no, they would much rather put into your hands the news or the novel of the day. Surely they might be expected to suggest attendance on public ordinances; and yet, though they may not be so bold as to condemn it, they will be much more urgent that you should go to the theatre than to the church. And instead of the offices of private and domestic piety, they do not hesitate to substitute such miserable expedients as the card-table and the midnight assembly. In short, their only object being to dissipate your melancholy, and to restore your spirits to their wonted tone, and to bring you back to the enjoyment of life, as they call it, they would have you to give yourselves up without reserve to all the entertainments within your reach; to frequent the haunts of levity and mirth; to associate with those whose pursuits, and whose very countenances, are an antidote to sadness; to force the laugh which refuses to come spontaneously;