restores and sustains the soul. So that, strictly speaking, we should not call the sick man wretched, because of his aching head and wasting frame; or the poor man wretched, because his measure of worldly good is so very scant; or the bereaved mourner wretched, because some dear fellow-traveller to the grave has found it before him. All these are indeed in sorrowful circumstances, but still we should not pronounce them to be wretched without knowing them better. They may, each one for his necessity, possess inward resources of abounding consolation, which are altogether unaffected and unassailable by the moth and the rust, by the wind and the storm of outward invading circumstances. We shall do well therefore, in such cases, to suspend our judgment until we come to know, as near as we reasonably can, what is the inward leading principle of those who, in this transitory life, are in trouble, sorrow, need, sickness, or any other adversity; whether they walk by sense and sight, or by faith and hope. I proceed then to observe, that, without a living and trusting faith in the promises of God man has no safe anchorage in affliction-no sovereign balm for his wounded spirit-no cordial for his fainting mind. How can he? his own corrupt nature is the very spring of all his sorrows, the root of bitterness, the polluted fountain of those troubled waters. So, then, if in the time of trouble man look to his own native resources and to the strength of any natural principles, he will, sooner or later, discover their total insufficiency.

For consider awhile, what is man without the faith of which we shall hereafter speak? He is of the earth, and speaketh of the earth; his aspiring hope, his strong affection, his fond pursuit, his chief joy, are all idolatrous. The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life are the world's Trinity, and earth is to him in the place of heaven. His smiles and his tears, his love and his hate, his happiness and his discomfort, take their character from those changes which are incidental to human life: he lies at their mercy; with them he rises or sinks, revives or faints, hopes or despairs. What then, I would ask, is the support of man in the day of adversity? Nature faints. There may indeed be,

for a time, at least, an assumed bravery, a semblance of fortitude, a mask upon the countenance of unaltered features and forced smiles: but there is no real conquest of sorrow in the worldling's heart unless you can minister afresh to its worldly cravings; his earthly peace has left him, and he is unacquainted with that better peace which is placed far beyond all the possible intrusions of time and sense. Cannot then the sorrow of the world find any relief? No, not upon its own principles, except it be by the removal of sorrow's immediate occasion. Is the worldly man tossing on a bed of pain and sickness? why then he cannot be comforted but by the removal of that sickness. Is he cast down under any loss of property? Then you seek in vain to comfort him by any arguments but those of gold and silver; he is so blind to the spiritual objects of faith and all those sanctifying operations of faith which support and bless the Christian under the various trials of life, that he feels no force in any arguments derived from such a source. He proudly murmurs under affliction; feels, or affects to feel, a self-righteous surprise, that he is at all plagued like other men; repines against Providence: nor can he be comforted without a recovery of that earthly good under the loss of which he is at present grieving. Such a one never looks upon suffering as the desert of sin, but as the result of untoward circumstances; and if any friend (more faithful than friends generally are) shall venture to suggest to him the duties of humble submission, and diligent self-inquiry into his state before God, and so forth, that friend of true affection will most probably be considered as intrusive and uncharitable, while thus performing one of the very highest duties of Christian friendship. Thus the man whom trouble overtakes in the course of this world spends the dark and heavy night of his affliction in ungodly impatience, if not in gloomy despondency. He has no notion of being weaned from the spirit of the world by the discipline of affliction; he knows not its refining uses, its precious occasions for the illustration and proof of faith, and its simplicity, for bringing home sin in deeper conviction to the conscience, for strengthening our sense of

its exceeding sinfulness, and, indeed, for every other purpose of humility, holiness, and greater advancement of the Christian through this chequered pilgrimage which sin has evermore tracked with sorrow, and the Gospel faith alone with any true abiding consolations. We rightly judge, therefore, that man, under affliction, left to the working of his carnal mind, and the poor remedies of his own fancy, cannot either reap the true advantages of his condition, or raise his heart above those times of calamity which are to be expected, sooner or later, by every inheritor of sinful flesh. And, my dear readers, if this child of a corrupt nature is so deserted and forlorn in spirit amidst the afflictions of life, while the one alleviating hope ever remains, that time to come may bring a change for the better, what tongue can fitly tell that utter destitution which awaits the unregenerate soul under the visitation of death? No mention can then be made of time to come as an argument against despair; "the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living" has indeed, in such a case, been the abused experience of the past, but it cannot be to him the subject of faith for time to come. Eternity, measureless, hopeless, waits to receive the fainting outcast into the deep gloom of infinite and unutterable woe. "This is the second death."

But, leaving these mournful thoughts, I now turn to better principles and to a brighter experience. This the Psalmist presents to us in the text, "I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living." Genuine faith in God and his. goodness is the only sustaining principle under affliction. The Christian, occupied together with other frail adventurers on life's precarious ocean, is not exempted from those winds and storms which are continually scattering so many fair and fond hopes, and which do ofttimes strand the vessel on the very shore where we trusted to land in safety. The Christian, a man of like passions and of like general exposure with other men,-who can estimate true loss and gain, hope and disappointment, sorrow and joy, with far juster valuation and more rational regret than other men; who can appreciate the tics of kindred and friendship with the kindliest sensibility, and who can

mourn their dissolution as sincerely as others: I say, the Christian, standing on this common ground of human brotherhood, frailty, exposure, and change, has in no case any natural advantage over the rest of mankind; and therefore, like the rest of mankind, he too would soon become, in time of affliction, the easy victim of unallayed sorrow, were it not for one sovereign principle engrafted and nurtured in the heart, and to which the experience of the world is an entire stranger.

Thus then the Psalmist, and with him every true Christian, expresses his firm conviction, saying, "I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living." Faith in the Faith in the goodness of God is the afflicted Christian's restorative and preservative. Whatever the particular emergency may be, either of outward temporal calamity, or of inward mental distress, in every possible case the simple and sacred method here prescribed by one who had tried it well ever holds good, and its relief is complete. Want you the proof of faith's efficacy under the distress of painful and severe sickness, when the pulses of life run fitful and wild in the raging of fever, or sink almost to nothing in the nearly exhausted frame-when even the native light of heaven is offensive to the eye and the air of heaven dangerous to the life-I say, would you seek to prove the efficacy of the Christian's faith under the various distractions and dejections of distempered health? Go, then, and inquire into the inward experience, the hidden man of the Christian sufferer! Truly his outward man is in suspense, perhaps in decay; it may that the nature of his disorder allows but small hope of recovery; he may be hard at death's door. Is he, therefore, helpless and hopeless? nay, though the outward man languish, sink, and perish, the inner man is renewed day by day; he faints not, having received mercy to believe; he faints not, believing to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living; believing that God, in his good pleasure, will either raise him up again to life in this world, or to the better life and unchanging vigour of a blessed immortality above. In either case grace prevails over nature, and faith over sense; arguing and

assuring, as with the voice of God Himself, that neither suffering, sickness, or even death, can quench the Christian's hope, or bring to nought his well-grounded confi=dence in the God of his salvation. And as it is in the visitation of severe sickness, so in every other affliction which comes upon him; faith in that divine, unerring goodness which, under the Gospel covenant, engages to preserve, advance, and perfect the Christian's true and eternal interests; I say, this faith, fixing on the engagement and unfailing promise of God, bears up the afflicted spirit against all opposing circumstances, producing resignation, satisfaction, and rest. Such is the property of a trusting faith in God and his goodness. It causes light Eto shine out of darkness; it inspires a gracious hope when nature hopes no longer; it even closes up the open gulf of a calamity which but now seemed sure of its victim beyond relief, beyond redemption. Such, I repeat, and so effectual is the power of genuine faith in the goodness of the Lord amidst the exigencies of temporal affliction. In sickness, in bereavement, in poverty, in the discord, perhaps, of a graceless family, under the slander and reproach of an ungodly world, the treachery of false friends, the ingratitude of poor dependents, or whatever other outward cross the Christian may be called upon to take up and bear, the divine power of faith, the gift of God, enables him to bear it. whilst mere human judgment keeps murmuring into the ear of sense "all these things are against us," faith denies the conclusion; rightly judging that, whatever the visitations of Providence may be in the experience of any of God's people, they are most certain to be overruled and sanctified to the best and noblest ends. But, again, faith in the goodness of the Lord is the Christian's restorative and preservative, not only when he is under the visible cloud and extreme pressure of outward calamity, but also with peculiar grace when he is suffering the pangs of a wounded spirit. Temptation, old sins lying heavy on the conscience, the constant struggle between grace and a nature renewed only in part, frequent interruptions in the experience of spiritual comfort, those dreary times of desertion when fears of an absent God

And