analogous to what I have described-who feels that his heart is growing more hard, and his conduct becoming more lax-that the world is more in his actions and God less in his thoughts; -let him assure himself that he is at this very moment in extreme peril-that the assaults of the great adversary have begun to take effecthis engines are not worked in vain-the citadel is beginning to totter, and unless it be timely strengthened and secured, it will surely fall, "and great will be the fall of it." Let then the prosperous believer take this warning to his heart.

But "O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest and not comforted"-thou, who art familiar with the bitterness of disappointment-who hast seen thy plans and projects fail one after another, and art now enduring or anticipating the miseries of altered fortune, perhaps even the privations of poverty-think, there is at least this consolation: thy best interests are greatly less in danger than those of thy more prosperous brother. Thou at least hast no inducement to forget thy God and thy Comforter-rather hast thou every motive to remember him. Who can so powerfully taste that Christ is precious, as they who are strangers to the sweet intoxicating draught of pleasure? Who can so justly appre

ciate the true riches, as they whose eyes are not blinded by the splendour of the unrighteous mammon? Who can look with so much steadiness to the end, as those that have fewest obstructions in the way? Be assured, that the merciful Disposer of events never acts without an object -never sends either affliction or prosperity in vain. If the former is the trial of faith, the latter is the test of it. Often does the light of divine grace beam brightly through the cloud of affliction-as often is it dimmed and obscured by the dense and misty atmosphere of prosperity. We ought ever to account that the best which brings us nearest to our God: and it should be alike the encouragement of the afflicted and the admonition of the prosperous-that "all things work for good to him who loves God, who is called according to his purpose;" that to him who "ordereth his conversation aright shall be shown the salvation of God."

SERMON X.

ABHORRENCE OF EVIL, ADHERENCE TO GOOD.

ROM. XII, 9.

Abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is good.

THE system of religion which is completely and finally developed in the Old and New Testaments, proceeding as it does from an unsearchable God, might naturally be expected to abound in mysteries. Such indeed is the fact: but it is most worthy of observation, that none of these mysteries have any connection with our practice. The path of duty, and the way to immortality, are so distinctly indicated in the Bible, that they may be as clearly discerned by the child in whom reason is just beginning to dawn, and by the poor man, who has never enjoyed the advantage of intellectual cultivation, as by the patient scholar, and even the matured and experienced believer. Where mysteries do occur, they involve points of doctrine and articles of belief. Yet even here, the

mystery is attached to the cause, not the effect; to the reason of the doctrine, not the doctrine itself. Nothing, for example, can be more explicitly, more satisfactorily, more intelligibly laid down in the Scripture, than the eternal and essential deity of the Son of God; yet is it the great "mystery of godliness, that God should be manifest in the flesh"-a mystery which we should vainly attempt to unravel, a darkness and a depth which every endeavour to fathom and to enlighten would be fruitless. Enough that such is the case, and that the fact is confirmed to us by the veracity of Him who cannot lie.

Another of these mysteries, into which it is impossible to penetrate, is, the origin of evil, and the motives which have actuated the Deity in causing or permitting it to exist. All inquiries which have hitherto been made into this inexplicable subject, have been unavailing. They have proved like the arrow which rebounds from the tree, headless and pointless, without leaving a mark to show where it has struck, and whence it has recoiled-they are like the endeavour to sound an unfathomable gulf, where the light that has been let down is extinguished at a certain depth, and all is darkness impenetrable as before. Well is it, in such an enterprize, if the extinction of his light admonishes the bold explorer of the

personal danger which attends his adventurous search. Doubtless, had this subject been within the limit of human capacity, or had there been any practical benefit likely to result from the complete understanding of it, the Divine Being would either have accommodated the doctrine to our comprehension, or enlarged our capacity to the comprehending of the doctrine. But He has not done this-and therefore, instead of attempting to be "wise above what is written," and to investigate the secret things which belong to God, we shall do wisely to admit at once-for in truth it cannot be denied or even questioned the melancholy and notorious fact, that evil does exist; and study how to avert from ourselves those consequences, which Reason herself suggests as probable, while Revelation confirms them as certain and inevitable.

In the Bible, it is not only stated at the very commencement that man is a fallen creature, but the existence of evil is implied, as being antecedent to the first human transgression. We are told, indeed, in the thirty-first verse of the first chapter of Genesis, that "God saw all that he had made, and behold it was very good." But though all was good in the newly-created world, there were other parts of creation in which existed the opposite of good. And it is reasonable to suppose, that man was fully apprized of this that the nature