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for railing, but contrariwise, blessing. We shall suffer afflictions of various kinds and degrees; and we are not to murmur and repine, but in patience to possess ourselves, and to pray for all longsuffering with joyfulness. We may be exercised with delays; and these will often be peculiarly trying, for hope deferred maketh the heart sick. God hides his face. Prayer seems unnoticed. The promise appears gone for evermore. We have little success in our spiritual warfare. Iniquities prevail against us in the sense of their guilt and the feeling of their power. The way is long. Heaven looks at an awful distance, and seems to advance from us as we advance. Without are fightings, and within are fears-But we must persevere, and "by patient continuance in well-doing, seek for glory, honour, and, immortality." It is not the first, but the last step in the race, that brings the candidate to the goal. He only that endureth to the end shall be saved.

This race set before us we are thus to run with patience, "looking unto Jesus." The Apostle had mentioned a great cloud of witnesses before as exciting and encouraging us by their example: but he now passes from the saints to the Saviour; from the servants to the Master; from the witnesses of faith to "the author and finisher of faith." He himself had an appointed course; he had difficulties to overcome, and much to endure: but he was not impeded or dismayed-" For the joy that was set before him he endured the cross, despising the shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God." That the Apostle immediately refers to him as our example is obvious not only from the foregoing words, and the words I have just recited, but from the application following: "For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds"-So Watts

"Our glorious Leader claims our praise.

For his own pattern given;

While the long cloud of witnesses

Show the same path to heaven."

But does this exclude any other reference? Are we to regard him as an example only? We cannot indeed be Christians without resembling him. "If any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of his." "He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk even as he walked." And every Christian loves his example, and prays to be likeminded with him. Yet what is the true exigency of our case? We are guilty-Where is the sacrifice that puts away sin? "We joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement." We want righteousness and strength-Where are we to find them? "Surely, shall one say, in the Lord have I righteousness and strength." How are we to be able to trace his dear steps as he goes before us in duty and suffering? "Without me," says he, "ye can do no thing" but my grace is sufficient for thee." We must therefore run, looking unto Jesus as delivered for our offences, as raised again for our justification, as one who ever lives to make intercession for us, as one in whom all fulness dwells, and from whose fulness we are to receive grace for grace. To him we are to look in every period, in every relation, in every engagement, in every trouble, in every danger, while we live-To him we are to look as we pass

through the valley of the shadow of death-And then we are to go and behold him in the midst of the throne, where he attracts every eye, fills every heart, and employs every tongue.

OCTOBER 7.-" And prayed unto him."-2 CHRON. XXXIII. 13.

FEW individuals ever surpassed Manasseh in depravity and wickedness. Yet he, even he, obtained mercy. And we here see the means employed for his conversion. Divine Providence so ordered things, that the enemy invaded Judah, and succeeded: "Wherefore the Lord brought upon them the captains of the host of the king of Assyria, which took Manasseh among the thorns, and bound him with fetters, and carried him to Babylon." There thus despoiled, degraded, and distressed; there the seeds of truth early sown in his mind began to revive; there the prayers of a pious father began to be answered-" and prayed unto him.”

Affliction alone never converted one soul. We have known fools who have been brayed in a mortar, yet has not their folly gone from them. Ice may be broken and not dissolved: rock may be broken and the factions retain the same hardness as before. Yet there is a natural suitableness in affliction to produce the effect. It shows what an evil and bitter thing sin is, as the procuring cause of all our sufferings. It cuts the man off from present temptation; and affords him time and leisure for reflection; and the want of thought is the greatest obstacle to religion: hence the Scripture says, "Consider your ways:" and hence David acknowledges, "I thought on my ways, and turned my feet unto thy testimonies." It shows the vanity of the world, and affords opportunity to introduce the proposal of a better portion; and to urge the resolution, "Therefore will I look unto the Lord, I will wait for the God of my salvation." It befriends confession and prayer; therefore says God, "I will go and return to my place, till they acknowledge their offence, and seek my face; in their affliction they will seek me early." The bemoaning and repenting Ephraim had been chastised. The famine made the Prodigal think of heaven, and resolve to throw himself upon his Father's mercy.

-Here is therefore a very instructive fact. It teaches us that prosperity is no proof of Divine favour; and that adversity is not incompatible with the love of God, but may even flow from it. We congratulate our friends on their successes and risings in the world; but frequently if we could see all we should rather bewail them; for we should see their table becoming a snare, and their prosperity destroying them. On the other hand, we go and mourn with them over their losses and trials, when, if we could look forward, we should rather rejoice and be thankful; for we should see the valley of Achor given them for a door of hope; the ploughshare breaking up the fallow ground to prepare it for the seed of the kingdom; the way hedged up with thorns to keep the traveller from going astray. How should we have pitied Manasseh, had we seen him reduced from all his greatness, and thus indignantly and cruelly treated. But he soon acknowledged, with his pious ancestor, "It is good for me that I have been afflicted ;" and he is now blessing God, not for his crown,

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but for his fetters-not for his palace, but for his dungeon.-" This man was born there."

Let us always look hopefully towards the afflicted. While the physician yet administers medicine we do not deem the case absolutely hopeless: while the husbandman prunes the tree, and digs about it, and manures it, we conclude he has not yet said to the feller, "Cut it down, why cumbereth it the ground."

O what fools are we to look shy upon our troubles, and be afraid of our trials, instead of viewing them as some of the means of grace which God has ordained to bring us to himself. Let us not think of the bitterness of the draught, but of the sweetness of health which it is designed to produce. "We have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live? For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness. Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby."

OCTOBER 8.-"Verily I say unto you, That many prophets and righteous men have desired to see those things which ye see, and have not seen them; and to hear those things which ye hear, and have not heard them."-MATT. xiii. 17.

SOME may suppose that our Lord here uses what scholars call an anticlimax, and be ready to say, Surely "a prophet" is above "a righteous man." Yet there is wisdom and design in the order in which he has mentioned these characters. A prophet was not necessarily a righteous man. Balaam prophesied, but followed the wages of unrighteousness. And the Saviour assures us that he will disown many in the last day as workers of iniquity, who prophesied in his name, and in his name did many wonderful things. And when the Apostle exhorts the Corinthians to covet earnestly the best gifts, he adds, And yet I shew unto you a more excellent way-adding, "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. Charity never faileth but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity." So superior is grace, not only to all natural, but even supernatural endowments and capacities. He that humbled himself as a little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of God. O that we were wise, that we understood this! But here we see the folly of men, who are eager to join those distinctions which are confined to few, and never insure eternal life, while they disregard those privileges which always accompany salvation, and lie open to all. And we see the goodness of God in rendering what is essential to our highest welfare universally accessible. All cannot amass wealth, but all may be rich in faith:

all cannot rise in the state, but all may sit with Christ in the heavenly places; all have not opportunity or capacity to acquire human learning, but all may become wise unto salvation. None can be "prophets" now, but all may be "righteous men."

We here see that the desires of the great and the good are not always gratified. We think it hard when the schemes on which we set our fond hearts are denied us. But we must learn to leave our wishes with God, and refer them to his goodness and wisdom. There may be reasons, for the refusal of which we have no apprehension. He is often constrained to say to us, "Ye know not what ye ask." Let the Lord choose our inheritance for us. And let us not murmur or complain if we are called to drink of the same cup with the most dear and eminent of his servants. Moses, who had conducted his charge for forty years, and brought them to the border of the promised land, was forbidden to enter, and no importunity could revoke the mortifying sentence. David, who so anxiously longed to build the temple of the Lord, and for which he had been preparing materials all through life, was not allowed the pleasure. "And many prophets and righteous men have desired to see those things which ye see, and have not seen them; and to hear those things which ye hear,

and have not heard them.”

They who have known something of the cause and glory of Christ will long to see and hear more. These persons had been favoured with some information concerning the Messiah, otherwise they could not have expressed these desires; for we cannot desire what we are entirely ignorant of: but the glimpse made them eager for the vision, and the dawn for the full day: the assurance made them eager for the reality, and the foretastes for the full fruition. It is always so. Knowledge keeps the possessor from self-satisfaction: and the more proficiency a man makes in any art or science the less will he be disposed to say, "I have attained, I am already perfect." It was a man who had seen more of the glory of God than any human being, who cried, I beseech thee, shew me thy glory." Let a Christian know as much of Christ as Paul did, and he will think he knows nothing, and exclaim, "That I may know him."

In the knowledge God communicates to his creatures there are various degrees. The patriarchs knew more than the descendants of Seth before the Flood. The Jews under Moses and the Prophets knew more than the patriarchs. John's disciples knew more than the Jewish Church before them. The disciples of Jesus knew more than the disciples of John: and he that was least in the kingdom of heaven was greater than John himself. And how much more did the Apostles themselves know after the effusion of the Holy Ghost than before, according to the intimation and promise of the Saviour, "I have yet many things to say unto you, but you cannot bear them now howbeit, when he, the Spirit of truth is come, he shall guide you into all truth." And the same remark holds with regard to personal experience. There are many classes of scholars in the same school of Christ. How wise are some Christians! how clear, and full, and influential are their views of Divine truth. How cloudy and indistinct are the conceptions of others: they resemble the halfenlightened patient in the Gospel, who "saw men as trees walking." The stations and callings of men differ; and some require more

knowledge than others. We are like the members of the body, all are necessary, but all have not the same office. The eye is for seeing, the hand for working: the one requires light; the other strength.

Above all we should learn from hence to compare our advantages with those of others. If superior, their pre-eminence should be applied to three purposes. First, to produce gratitude. "He hath not dealt so with any nation; and as for his judgments, they have not known them. Praise ye the Lord." Not that our gratitude is to turn on the destitution of others: but we need contrasts to excite our feelings. Thus, to induce us the more to be thankful for health, we compare ourselves with those who are made to possess months of vanity, and have wearisome nights appointed unto them. And thus we teach our children to say,

"Not more than others I deserve,
Yet God hath given me more;
For I have food while others starve,
Or beg from door to door."

And did we deserve our religious privileges? Did it depend upon us in what country we should be born, whether heathen or Christian, popish or protestant? Or from what parents we should descend, whether such as would neglect our souls or bring us up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord? Who sent us an evangelical ministry? Why have we been fed with the choicest of the wheat, and with honey out of the rock have we been satisfied? "Not unto us, O Lord, but unto thy name be glory." Secondly, to promote holiness. It would be shameful if persons below us in means and advantages should be above us in attainment and practice. Surely there is to be a correspondence between privilege and duty., He who holds the largest farm must expect to pay the largest rent. Where much is given much will be required. "What do ye more than others?" The Lord does not look for much where he bestows little; and he will not accept of little where he bestows much. Thirdly, to awaken fear. "That servant, which knew his lord's will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes." "To him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin." And what ignorance can we plead? Or what want of motive? Or what refusal of assistance? "Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it." How did our Saviour upbraid the cities in which he had done so many mighty works, because they repented not: "Wo unto thee, Chorazin! wo unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works which were done in you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I say unto you, It shall be more tole-rable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of judgment, than for you."

OCTOBER 9.-"All the house of Israel are hardhearted."-EZEKIEL iii. 7. How is this charge to be taken? There are two things in which hardness of heart is to be known; insensibility and inflexibleness. A hard heart is an insensible heart. The Apostle speaks of men being past feeling." This is to be restrained to its subject. He does not refer to inhumanity, but impiety. Persons may have