instruction upon the great subject to which it alludes, the sorrows and trials of human life.

For the better understanding of this subject, let us first attend to this consideration: that the psalmist is here speaking, not of those lighter troubles and afflictions to which we are all daily liable, from the very circumstances of our nature and situation in the world; but of the great and deep sorrows into which so many, nevertheless, are continually falling; sorrows which do not come from God in their utmost bitterness, nor in their prolonged continuance upon us. The sorrows which He sends upon us for our good, bring with them their accompanying balm to heal, their spiritual wisdom to teach. But the text leads us to those pangs and sorrows which come upon such as are forsaken of God, at least for a time, and whose crimes and follies are visited in all their necessary consequence, upon themselves, their children, and their children's children. Of the sorrows, then, which deprive the soul of comfort, because it has not God for its support and confidence, of the troubles and perplexing cares of life which take away all human help from the man whom God forsakes, we must now speak, and to those confine the whole inference which Holy Scripture so expressly warrants.

The psalmist plainly declares that neither the righteous are thus forsaken, nor do their seed beg their bread.

By the righteous we must understand to be meant those only whom God accounts righteous. And who are they? Not such as are without sin for then "no man living can be justified;"" for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God." Not those who in the spiritual exaltation of their own hearts deem themselves only righteous, and condemn others: for God hath said, "Who art thou that judgest another man's servant? To his own master he standeth or falleth."

Those only are righteous in the Christian sense whose life is built upon the only foundation of the promises of mercy in our Lord Jesus Christ; who, resting upon that only hope, are led by the Holy Spirit to give the daily fruits of a holy faith; whose lives, in plain and daily duties of kindly intercourse and charity towards their fellow-creatures, of holy piety and love towards God, of subdued and well-regulated will and desire of the inward man, do thus manifest to the eye of all a filial trust in the power and the love of God; whose hearts are directed towards Christ their Redeemer, for their acceptance under the heavy guilt of their unnumbered sins, the sad but decreasing influence of their weaknesses and ignorances.

Such it is of whom the Holy Scripture speaks, when it says the righteous are never forsaken.

This solemn assurance of a truth, (which, under a superficial consideration of human events, and not, guided by a reference to religion, would scarcely be received at all,) will be made more intelligible, and more likely become profitable to us, if we consider and apply the psalmist's assurance to the ordinary causes of the extremes of human ill; those sources of earthly affliction from which man derives his heaviest earthly troubles. These are-poverty, sickness, and bodily pain; the unkindness and ill conduct of our fellow-creatures; wilful ignorance; neglect of parental duty.

Many and grievous are the ills which arise from poverty; not the want of what are considered to be the ordinary comforts of life, such as are deemed necessary in these days of advanced estimate of personal ease and selfindulgence; but that only of which the psalmist speaks in the text; that which is really poverty: the frequent and returning want of the essential comforts and necessaries of life, without which life quickly consumes and perishes.

If this state of extreme poverty be our lot, and we seem to be deprived of that care and provision which God takes for the birds of the air and the lilies of the field, let us apply what

the psalmist says of the extremity of earthly evil to ourselves; when he declares that "the righteous" never is thus "forsaken, nor his seed begging their bread."

Have not our own sins and our continued perseverance in sin brought these evils upon us? Or, if the changes, the unforeseen and unavoidable issue of human events, the losses and casualties of life, or the unprovoked wrongs of our fellow-creatures, have, in the first instance, brought the extremes of poverty and temporal distress upon us, how have we borne them, and whither have we gone for our remedy? Shall we not, thus continuing to suffer, be compelled to confess our unwillingness to submit to the will of God, to be profited by His dispensation, to wait His good time, in patience possessing our souls; shall we not be forced to acknowledge that either wickedly we have used evil means, or slothfully and therefore sinfully used no good means of relieving ourselves? If so, our own sins have caused the continuance of our woe, and the pressure of our calamity hath been and still is heavier far than what God intended, and our necessary chastisement, for our spiritual good, required.

Many and sore are the ills which arise from sickness and bodily pains. If thus it be our lot to suffer without those alleviations which,

in rich spiritual consolation, make bodily pains comparatively light, let us see how far, in the first instance, we may not have brought them upon ourselves: whether by open sin, or by vicious habits; by pleasure, wrong in itself, or carried to excess; or by sloth and indolence, we have not ruined our health, and incurred the ills of bodily pain. If the extremity of these ills have continued, (though not at first of our own procuring,) and still continue upon us, let us look within, and see whether we have honestly endeavoured to derive spiritual good from bodily ill, or whether, through impatience, complaint, and fretfulness of spirit, through worldly anxiety, we have not aggra vated and still aggravate the evil, and rendered it lasting.

To the real Christian bodily pain and sickness soon loses more than half its bitterness, under the remembrance of the power and goodness of God, either in stopping the force of the consequences of our own sins, upon our repentance; or by an exact administration of spiritual strength apportioned to bodily ill. He can derive comfort from the assurance that "whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth." But this gives no peace to the wicked: for in his affliction "he is not exercised thereby."

There are heavy afflictions upon us from the unkindness and ill conduct of our fellow