minished by accident or by disease; and whose painful limbs, and burning hands, and dim eye, and aching head, and sleepless nights, already warn them, as with a voice of thunder, to prepare themselves; to set their houses and their hearts in order; and while they yet have time, and while their Judge yet standeth before the door, to seek, by earnest prayer, and by repentance unfeigned and speedy, either a reprieve of their sentence, or that favour of the Lord by which their sentence will be made the source of blessedness.

And the truth is, that, some few cases excepted, in which the hardness of men's nature has led them to a desperate defiance of God's terrors, or their ignorance and levity has caused in them a childish and fatal neglect of His threats and warnings, with some few such exceptions,-the minds of men are, of themselves, sufficiently disposed to turn, in their pain and apparent peril, to that God who hath smitten and who only can make them whole; and to betake themselves to religion as a last ground of hope when all earthly comforts fail them. And thus it is, that, in the afflictions which God sends us, His great mercy is made visible: and thus it is, that ، whom the Lord loveth He correcteth, even as a father the son in whom he delighteth." Many there have been who have trod the paths of

1 Proverbs, iii. 12.

folly and of sin, till some gracious sickness, like a good but severe schoolmaster, has called back the truants from their perilous wanderings; and has instructed them in their best and most lasting interests; and has taught them by times the worthlessness of those guilty pleasures, and of those fleshly or worldly hopes, which have flattered only to destroy them. Many there have been, and some whom I myself have known and know, who have acknowledged with thankful tears, that it has been "good for them that they have been afflicted:" and that the loss of limbs, of health, and even of friends, has been a cheap and blessed payment for the knowledge of their own hearts, and the hopes and comforts of religion.

But, the misfortune is, that, partly from ignorance and former inattention to serious things, partly from disturbance of mind, and from allowing the immediate sufferings of the body, and the immediate apprehension of death to engross the attention, rather than those considerations of God's mercy and justice and wisdom and power, and those truths of the Gospel, which, whether in health or sickness, are the great and only sources of spiritual instruction and consolation, very few, when thus called on, know how to set about the work, which they are then ready to allow to be most urgent and most necessary. Even they, whose former faith and

former conduct have been such, as on the whole to give no cause for peculiar terrors, are often so confused in their recollections, so stunned by the suddenness of the warning, and so agitated by the various regrets, and hopes, and doubts, and confidence, and sense of former guilt, and trust of present acceptance, and knowledge of their own vileness, and reliance on the Redeemer's mercy, and all mixed up with the sense of bodily pain, and with the love of those worldly objects which have been most dear to them, and from which they must now depart— to meet, perhaps, no more, that even Religion itself is not able, as they apply it, to tranquillise them; or to instruct them in making such an use of their present condition as may be most likely, if they live, to make their lives, thenceforth, more pure and holy; or, if they die, to rob death of his sting, and turn the king of terrors into a messenger of peace and of rest and of immortality. I am anxious, therefore, to employ the present opportunity in giving to those, who are yet in health, such hints for their behaviour under sickness, as may turn the severest dispensations of God, as God intends they should be turned, into means of improvement and of blessing. I am anxious to teach those, who may be visited with the solemn warnings of mortality, in what manner they may best set themselves and their affairs in order; how they

may best trim their lamps when the bridegroom cometh; and may take their leave of the present life, and may enter on the life to come, in the temper, and with the hopes and the humility, of a Christian.

The first act of the mind on being attacked by sickness, or on receiving any other warning of our mortal and most frail condition, should be always an act of recollection; a solemn, that is, a sober meditation on the power and wisdom and goodness of the Most High; in whose hands alone we are; who can kill, and make alive; from whose will this accident or distemper has, most certainly, proceeded; and who may even now, according to our behaviour under it, convert it either to our happiness or to our destruction. The effect of these considerations will be, not (as one ignorant of the human heart might fancy) to increase our terrors and uneasiness; but, by drawing off our attention from those bodily pains and dangers, which surround us, to that All-perfect Being by whom they are inflicted, and in whose absolute disposal we are, - to enable us to repress the impatience of pain and alarm, and to awe us into a kind of tranquillity. Where struggling is vain, patience becomes a more easy lesson: and that "God wills it, and who can stand against His will?”— is a consideration, which will lead us, both to submit with more temper and mildness to what

ever means are prescribed for our recovery; and also to wait their event with less querulous eagerness, than if we bounded our thoughts by the pangs which we endure, or by the earthly succours whereby we hope to escape or lessen them. There is something soothing, as well as sublime, in the contemplation of greatness and power. We feel it when we gaze on the great works of nature. He whose heart expatiates in the prospect of the ocean, or of the starry heaven, is for a time insensible to his own resentments or misfortunes; and is identified, as it were, with the glorious and tranquil scene before him. One of the principal joys of Heaven, we are told, is the delight of gazing upon God; and, even in this state of mortal darkness and misery, if we can, for a time, so forsake the thoughts of earthly things, as in faith and fancy to behold Him; to call up to our mind whatever images of greatness and power and perfection the Scripture has, however darkly, revealed to us concerning Him; our heart will be filled, as by necessity, with love and admiration for an object so glorious; and our resignation to His decree will become a matter, not only of necessity, but, in some respects, of choice.

Nor is this all; for when we turn our thoughts from the infinite power and majesty of God, to his infinite goodness and mercy; when we recollect that this Almighty Being has humbled himself to behold and to pity the meanest and