it leaves him powerless, till it returns again, and conquer him as usual, he learns his weakness. Temptations are not conquered because absent; for they often leave a person for a season, and his pride makes him secure, and his security prepares him for being led captive by Satan. This is one way of teaching him to profit," and leading him to know, certainly, that his salvation must be of grace. Before, a man may think so, and defend his opinion; but God's design is to assure him of it. This discovers the necessity of a higher security, than any within the reach of his own invention.

No. CLXXXI.-FAILURES IN PRAYER.

PRAYER is a very interesting duty to a Christian; and has for its ends, dependence, request, and worship from the creature towards God; and gracious, seasonable, and suitable communications from God to a believing sinner. When acceptable and successful, it has the glory and enjoyment of God for its object; Christ for its medium; the Holy Spirit for its author; the commands of God for its warrant; a renewed soul for its subject; the promises of God for its encouragement; a cloud of witnesses, and personal experience, to attest its efficacy.

It springs from faith in the promises, a consciousness of spiritual necessities, and is regulated by just views of God and ourselves. But, alas! alas! how seldom is prayer successful! And what can be the reason of its failing ?-because the prayers of God's children are too generally but pretences. We too often pray from custom. We mean nothing: and if so, can God, who knows the heart, lose sight of it through the disguise of a form, and mistake it for the humble and fervent prayer of faith? If it is a pretence; God sees it as such, and abhors the hypocrisy and lukewarmness of the feigned supplicant, although he is his child. Can one prayer, from a child of God, put up with a humble dependence on Christ and his Spirit, miscarry? Impossible! for " God is not a man that he should lie;" nor an unkind and forgetful Father, who might, in some change of frame, be inattentive to our sincere requests.

No. CLXXXII.-EFFECTUAL TEACHING.

WHAT a mercy to be taught of God! But many are taught by him, who fear they are not. For instance, I have heard a sermon this evening-it was a good one, but I did not feel it. What shall I say? If I attend to my own volatile heart, it tells me to hear again; to read more, especially some new book. Some new book! how strange! that my hopes are raised upon something I am unacquainted with, because I am so!

What did I then want under the sermon ? know

ledge? No: the truths to me were as plain as they were important. Was it life in the speaker? No: Mr.is by no means a dull speaker. Was it attention and reflection on the subject? No: for I found my attention fixed, and my reflection close and serious. What then did I want? Power-the power of God. And can nothing supply the absence of this power?-Not any thing in the whole world. If so, my path is plain-prayer, prayer, praver! is the grand means I must use, pleading for the Spirit in Christ's name. If God's Spirit is needful, in what way can I expect it but in answer to prayer? I may use many means, less spiritual and more agreeable to the inclinations of my heart; but if I do not wish to labour in vain, I must seek divine influence by prayer. No new man, new book, new place, new sermon, or new time, can alter my frame, to purpose. No: God's power, and that only, can afford the mind the one thing needful. But prayer is a spiritual duty, and hearing is much easier; and a deceitful heart promises us that from the number of easy duties, which we should expect only from a duty more difficult. Thus many go through years of Sabbaths, scores of books, and thousands of sermons, sometimes amused, and sometimes delighted; often discouraged, always disappointed, and never essentially and radically benefited. No: the mind is often flattered in the prospect of using a means, and very often fatigued in attention to it. It is obliged to live upon deluding promises, or die on the review of disappointed hopes. It trusts to time to cure its disorder, conquer corruption, or restore joy; but if time could relieve, should we not hear something of its efficacy? No!-The Bible affirms that all useful and saving impressions on the heart are from God; how vain then to expect them from creatures, Looks, sermons, time, or change of place or circumstances! Rather let me address with confidence and fervour, with humility and perseverance, “the throne of grace." All spiritual benefit must be derived from the Spirit of the Lord. This is the only agent that can make truth efficacious. The neglect of this ensures perplexity to some, formality to others, open transgression to many, and ruin to most. There is such a thing as vital and spiritual influence from God. should beware of resting short of it, by neglecting to seek it; by seeking it carelessly, or by mistaking natural emotions for the effect of spiritual-the Spirit's energy. If the preacher is clear, his expressions striking, his manner lively and affectionate; we may, or rather must, be affected by his discourse, whether on philosophy, politics, or divinity; but especially on the latter. And many, many may for a time suppose they are really and spiritually benefited, when nothing but the natural operations of the passions have been felt.

We

If a minister is speaking warmly upon the person of Christ, the glories of redemption, or the felicities of heaven, it is very natural to expect in the hearers, emotions of desire, hope and delight. If

hell in its horrors, sin in its effects, God in his awful attributes and threatenings, are discoursed of; it is natural to feel the emotions of fear, anxiety, determination to avoid misery, and self-reproach for past folly. The very frame of human minds renders it almost an impossibility not thus to feel. And it is not to be wondered at, if such passions thus awakened, urge the soul to resolutions, prayer, tears, and reformation. These things are natural effects of such causes. Terrible and pleasing objects in nature will produce the same effects, with some variation. They are as natural as the gratitude of a patient to his physician, who has restored him when recovery was apparently impossible. In general, danger known excites fear; possible happiness excites desire-probable happiness excites hope when certain, joy; and when impossible, despair. To confound the operations of God's Spirit, with the natural working of the affections, is very delusive and dangerous. It gives Satan advantages against us. It confounds all characters, distresses weak Christians, and emboldens presumptuous professors. Mistaking natural for spiritual affections, the self-deceived hastily and confidently concludes himself converted, triumphs in his mistake with joy, blesses the minister who occasioned his joy, "with a loud voice," and ventures to call his feelings, spiritual experience. And if this person is constitutionally warm, a weak believer of a cooler mind, may long and pray to experience what this professor does. Alas! a young Christian and a weak one, are both liable to be distressed and charmed by warm expressions, without distinguishing natural from gracious affections. How then may a person judge of his being spiritually profited? By the abiding effects, and by these only. If a slothful frame yields to diligence, corruption to truth, the world to God, conscience to the death and authority of Christ, most certainly the spirit of God produced these things. How can a soul be here deceived? But whatever the effects of a sermon, a book, or discourse, while hearing, reading, or talking; if the heart is left under the power of sin, such emotions are not the saving influence of the Holy Ghost.

No. CLXXXIII.-SPIRITUAL STRENGTH.

THERE are in God's word many promises of spiritual strength made to believers; but they are not valued, talked of, pleaded, and experienced among professing Christians, so much as might be expected. And one reason is, that too many who call themselves Christians, are not engaged in those things which require spiritual strength to perform them. I observe them; at home, they are contented with the forms of religion, and the stories their servants bring home. In God's house, their attention is wasted upon the

dress or behaviour of some persons there; and an attempt to improve the sermons for others. To pass a censure upon the sermon, or to commend it; to praise or blame a singer, a tune, without judgment, without love to man, zeal for God, or concern for their own souls." These things constitute the religion of many in the church, and out of it. And does a person need supernatural aid to slander a neighbour; blame wiser and better men than themselves; talk idly, live doubtfully, and act at random? Does that person feel the want of spiritual strength, who slights his Bible, imitates the world, complies with temptations, indulges sinful passions, makes wilful exceptions to God's will, in all cases where it interferes with his own, and performs God's will, in other instances, because it happens to tally with his own? No, no!-It is the man who wishes to deny himself and obey God, without excepting to any part of his will; the man who wishes to enjoy, resemble, and honour God; to be kind, faithful, and just to man; the man who wishes to preserve a good conscience, a spiritual mind, and live a harmless and a useful life; the man who aims at the conquest of himself, sin, the world, death and hell, to lay his dearest interests at God's feet; to love his enemies, and be faithful to his friends, to please God, though he displease man; this, this is the man who needs and prays for spiritual strength. God knows thy hypocrisy, poor soul. Thy sad looks, thy good words, thy formal worship, thy gifts to the poor, thy sighs and tears, may all exist without spiritual strength from God. It is the poor in spirit, that will cry for the Spirit to clothe the inner man with might. It is such a soul who wishes to worship God in spirit, bears the cross with patience, enjoys its privileges, and discharges its extensive duties-will "wait upon the Lord to have its strength renewed."

Many a Christian is divinely strengthened for the purposes of the divine life, who questions whether he ever was blessed with spiritual assistance. How shall I know whether I do renew my strength!? Ask yonder man, who, a week since, was confined to his bed, and now can sit in his chair, how he knows he is stronger? or yonder man, who, last week, could not walk across the room, and now can walk half-a-mile? He cannot explain the manner in which his food, rest, medicine, and exercise, have contributed to restore him; but that he is restored-that he has renewed his strength, he is as certain as that, a few days ago, he could not stand, and now he can walk or run. Thus, a good man, who, a week ago, yielded to temptation, was conquered by his passions, felt gloomy and lifeless, barren and wavering, after waiting upon the Lord, finds sinful inclinations weakened, temptation successfully resisted, the affections spiritualized, the conscience settled in peace, the judgment established, meditation sweet, the cross tolerable, and duty pleasant; that man has as certainly renewed his strength, as the man who, the other day.

could not stand, but can now walk without fainting, or run without weariness; or as evidently as the eagle, which, lately, was so enfeebled through want of food, or injured wings, as not to be able to rise a yard from the ground, but now can, with ease and pleasure, mount up and soar beyond the limits of human sight. It is Satan's policy to lead the believer to judge of the Spirit's work by false rules and false evidences. But we should be careful to compare God's Word with our experience. There I see a saint's character: is it mine? Here I read the temper, experience, victories, comforts, and duties of a Christian: does the description, in these particulars, suit me? If they do, the Scripture ascribes them to the power and grace of the Holy Spirit; and, consequently, this Spirit dwells and operates in my soul as surely as his works are there!

No. CLXXXIV.—Power of GOOD AND BAD THOUGHTS.

THE power of some thoughts, as well as their tendency, shows their origin to be from God, or the devil. A thought enters my mind, whilst musing upon its present condition, and sudden as a flash of lightning-that I shall never be saved. Circumstances may favour such a thought: such as a sense of sin, a dark and gloomy frame of mind, a bad constitution of body, discouraging providences, repeated backslidings, the singularity of my condition or experience, fruitless struggles against sin, a ruffled temper or a searching sermon: such things are matter for Satan to improve; and he may point, arrange, and apply them, and in a moment draw the sad conclusion-I am undone! I am lost! it is impossible for me to be saved. Can words describe the agony such a despairing thought occasions? No! the mind that never felt it, can never conceive it. It is needless to ask whence comes such a thought. Its efficacy discovers a supernatural agent; and its tendency shows that agent to be the devil. For, at such a moment, all remedy seems impossible. The thought is inflaming as a poisoned dart: "It is a fiery dart of the devil." The same circumstances may occur at another time, and no such pain be felt. To some, these thoughts are more frequent than to others; and though short and violent, yet they are always painful beyond description.

It is some consolation to reflect that such distressing thoughts are short, and the shorter for their violence; and that they are often the introduction to the richest experience of divine favour. Often has a believer tasted of heaven and hell in the same minute! so quick are the operations of thought, and so mixed our condition and experience in this world. Yes, in the glass of revelation, and self-reflection, a soul in a moment sees and feels its interest in Christ's death,-beholds itself beloved and converted of God,