creatures; and, in the endurance thereof, unthinking minds might be tempted to suppose themselves forsaken of God. But examine

these. Are they in all their grievous weight necessarily thrown upon us? Is there no accompanying corrective to lighten their burthen? Then let us see whether by an impatience on our part, by angry or injudicious and uncharitable behaviour from ourselves, these social and domestic ills are not increased upon us tenfold more than would be the necessary consequences of our offending brother's wrong. If so, these sorrows, in their sorest infliction, come from ourselves, and are not sent or permitted by Almighty God, as a necessary portion of our moral discipline.

There are heavy human griefs through our own ignorance and lack of wisdom. We fall into many serious errors, we suffer much evil, through the want of sound discretion and judgment, apart from the consideration of an honest and good heart. But let us look to ourselves. What have been our past exer, tions to obtain the rich gifts and graces of sound wisdom and a discerning mind? Or have we ever made any? Have we cultiva ted and prayed earnestly for wisdom? Or have we wasted the seedtime of our days, and so lost the opportunities of learning and securing knowledge adapted to the intricacies and

difficulties of human life? Are we not still shutting up the inlets to wisdom and knowledge, by tempers impatient of reproof, irritated at instruction, still unteachable? If so, our ills herein are not from God; the righteous are still not forsaken; and God remains "justified in His saying, and clear when He is judged."

And, lastly, heavy are the ills which fall upon us in the various relationships of human life. But consider them separately, and see whether the weight of the sorrow here may not entirely proceed from some neglected duty; something omitted, which reason and natural affection, as well as religion, have most especially enjoined. Let us instance in one case only, If parents suffer their sharpest pangs in the ills arising from their own children, let them ask whether it be really God's visitation or their own neglect. If it be God's visitation upon a parent who has early, wisely, piously, and consistently brought up his child in the fear of God, and used the means of a firm and holy discipline throughout, (for all human exertions do not necessarily succeed,) his sorrows will then be lessened in their weight, and he will not suffer more for an evil which he did not himself bring down, than God will give him grace to bear, and to profit by.

In a

But, for the most part, it is not so. vast majority of those cases wherein parents suffer through their children's wickedness, it will be found useful to themselves to put this solemn inquiry: Have not we ourselves caused the evil which we suffer? Have we not lived to experience the painful truth, that indulgence and neglect of holy Christian discipline in early life have given a force to the natural evil of sin, which, otherwise, it would not have had? Have not our own forgetfulness of a parent's duty, our own neglect of the authority given unto us by God, added strength to the selfish will, the unrestrained appetite, the love of earthly things? Have not the necessary consequences of all this overtaken us, and in their dreadful excess in the disobedience, want of natural affection, and vicious living in our child, are they not now bringing down our grey hairs with sorrow to the grave?

If the conscience of the parent pass the judgment upon his own soul; if he have lived long enough to know by dear-bought experience that the spoilt child is always a thankless child, he will acquit the divine dispensations; he will acknowledge that the holy psalmist's assurance still remains uncontradicted, and will with profitable and humbled acknowledgment trace his parental sorrows to himself.

These are the ordinary sources of the ex

tremes of human sorrows; and under some one or other of their multiplied consequences, there are many who seem to pass their days in little else than one continued course of grief and suffering. But if, as we have now seen, our heaviest sorrows come from ourselves, and these sorrows seem well nigh to overpower our strength, we cannot blame God, who hath told us that the extremity of human grief, being "forsaken” of Him, shall never come upon "the righteous."

Upon the righteous undoubtedly will come many and heavy griefs, as well as upon others: But if we find these griefs, in all their bitterness, continue upon us, so that we seem as it were "forsaken," let us look well to ourselves, and judge whether, though we may not have caused their first beginning, we do not keep them, without their accompanying consolations, still upon us. Let some such course as this be pursued. Under these lasting sorrows, let each examine himself, and fairly ask his own conscience, whether he do not greatly overvalue the things for the loss of which he grieves; or whether in some way or other, he may not neglect the use of God's own appointed means of patient submission to His will, and so of lessening the weight of the keenest earthly trouble, and turning it to purposes of spiritual good. An exercise like

this close self-examination, carried on in honest dealing with our own conscience, would soon shew the real cause and the cure of all the extremity of human sorrows.

It is to the want of this plain-dealing with ourselves, that our natural aversion from selfknowledge becomes doubly strong, and our souls are tormented, and our lives embittered in the just consequences of our continuing ignorance of our own hearts. Our own experience furnishes us with this painful conviction, and the examples herein, in Holy Scripture, are manifold and impressive. We have a memorable instance in the apostacy of the rich young man in the Gospel. Until the test was applied to the ruling passion of his heart, he flattered himself into the hope that he really believed and obeyed God. So ignorant was he of the real state of his soul, that though upon the very threshold of the kingdom of God, when he was called upon to prove the sincerity of his faith by his works, " he turned and went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions ;" and would not part with them for the future but sure and certain prospect of an unchangeable treasure in heaven.

In the example, too, of Martha, a similar lesson may be learnt. Her trouble was caused by a worldly spirit, and the Saviour's reproof