thinking over your future engagements and pursuits, are you not in effect turning the house of God into a house of merchandize? The mind is a thoroughfare of vanity, crowded with a motley mixture of low and sordid, idle and foolish thoughts, which pass and repass, loiter, or lurk secure, without interruption. And indeed, whoever worships Mammon all the week, cannot be expected to change his master, when he changes his raiment, on the Sabbath. Be it then your concern, 0 my reader, to walk in all the ordinances of the Lord blameless, and worship him in spirit and in truth. Sanctify the Sabbath, and set a high value on the privileges of Zion; and God shall verify his word, and "make you joyful in his house of prayer."

CHAPTER III.

ON PRAYER, AS SUITED TO VARIOUS TIMES, CIRCUMSTANCES, AND RELATIONS.

SECTION I.

PRAYER IN ADVERSITY.

MAN is the child of sorrow, the heir of unnumbered wants and woes; and the sad inheritance is entailed upon him by a law which cannot be repealed. How is this? Why, all our suffering flows from sin. Many rashly talk of fate and fortune, without knowing what they mean; for there is no such thing as blind chance, because all the powers of nature are under the control of a wise superintending Providence. But although affliction cometh not forth of the dust, neither doth trouble spring out of the ground; yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward. We every where see the goodness of God blended with

awful proofs of his justice; and in the order of sublunary things, our very comforts are inseparably linked with calamities.

I. Let us consider that state of adversity or affliction to which even the people of God are subject.

We are not indeed to regard the condition of good men as always mournful, or as at any time replete with those measures of gall and bitterness which enter into the lot of the impious and ungodly. A good man takes religion for his guide, his counsellor, and his portion; earnestly seeking an interest in the blood of Christ, the pardoning love of Christ, and the sanctifying influences of the Holy Spirit. He prays fervently, that he may be enabled to enter into the spirit, and taste the enjoyments of the Gospel; and after he has known what it is to have communion with heaven, and feel the delights which spring from devotion, he would not exchange them for all the pleasures of the world. "God," says the pious Fenelon, "is the Father of mercies, comfort. (2 Cor. i. 3.) rates these two. His drawn, but his mercies still continue. He takes away what is sweet and sensible in grace, because you want to be humbled, and punished,

and the God of all He sometimes sepaconsolations are with

for having sought consolation elsewhere. Such chastisement is still a new depth of mercy." The smoothest course of the Christian has usually its obstacles, and the fairest prospect its passing clouds and shades; but there are seasons of sorrow which deserve to be particularly marked.

Affliction may spring,

1. From bodily infirmity.

He

The human frame, however majestic in appearance, and wonderful in structure, is built of weak and frail materials. Touched by the hand of God, it withers and decays, or on a sudden shakes under the most violent paroxysms of agony, We behold a man who lately moved with alacrity in the social circle, and with vigour in the pursuits of business, and the walks of benevolence, now languishing and sinking under the visitation of sickness. is chastened with pain upon his bed, and the multitude of his bones with strong pain. Disease drinks up the animal spirits, clogs all the springs of life, and reduces the most robust frame to debility and helplessness. When thou, Lord, dost correct man for iniquity, thou makest his beauty to consume away like a moth!" Good men have no exemption from these strokes of corporeal chastisement. Their blood is susceptible of fever, their lungs of asthma, their limbs of palsy, as well as others;

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they weep and sigh and faint, like the rest of the species, beneath the burden of those malaIdies which are the common lot of fallen humanity. Job had "his wearisome nights and months of vanity," which sometimes wrung from him complaints uttered in the anguish of his spirit, and the bitterness of his soul. But it may be said, Is not the bright hope of that blooming health and immortal life, which the Gospel gives to the believer, sufficient to annihilate the sufferings of the body? Ah! no: such a hope will alleviate, but not absorb grief; will take out the sting of guilt, but not take off the edge of sensibility to pain. "It is," says Dr. Owen, "the work of heaven itself, and not of the assurances of it, to wipe away all tears from our eyes."

2. Affliction springs from outward losses, difficulties, and trials.

Sometimes our sympathy lays us open to the keenest suffering. Beloved relatives, and endeared friends, are overwhelmed with an influx of grief, and we share their sorrow; or we are called to close their eyes in death, and weep over their graves. The aged pilgrim has lost many of his earliest and best companions, and cries," Lover and friend hast thou put far from me, and mine acquaintance into darkness;" and the disconsolate parent, bending over the cold remains of a darling child, exclaims,