If Christ had not brought down heaven to us, we could never have raised ourselves up to it.

This world is the reign of darkness, pain, and sorrow; and we must not expect fully to find God here as a present portion. The Christian believes that he shall know him better, and enjoy him fully hereafter. O my soul hold fast and be very thankful for the sweet hope!

"Let us labour to enter into that rest."

We like the rest, better than the labour of attaining it; but cannot so much as have an idea of it, if we do not think it worth all the labour we can bestow on it.

It is a vain thing to think we can take any delight in being with Christ hereafter, if we care not how little we are in his company here.

The highest state of the greatest saint on earth is only a small taste or glimpse of heaven, in the firstfruits and earnest of the Spirit. The harvest is beyond the grave, and is not to be expected in this world.

When I can truly say, " Thy will be done on earth as it is heaven," I shall long to be in heaven that I may do it perfectly.

What is the reason that we do not keep our eyes steadily fixed on the light of scripture, and follow it as our guide to heaven, but because we do not really think of heaven, as the country we are bound to; have yet other designs in the world than to get thither, and whatever we pretend, do not desire to be there?

I long to know something and be something, that is, to die. I see the glory and beauty of perfect holiness, as Moses did the promised land from mount Pisgah; but, like him, must die without entering into possession of it.

"Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven;" that is, with angelical love and liking, and the full bent of our desire to it. A virtuous, pure, holy state,

is a strong tendency to all good, and only to good: and if we could suppose the mind to be in a state of suspense or indifference, and 'equally poised between good and evil, it would be a bad state. What then is man with a natural, and morally invincible, propensity to evil?

Unless I see something beyond the grave worth dying for, there is nothing on this side worth living for.

How welcome will death be to those who truly mourn for sin, feel the burden, taste the bitterness of it, and long for complete deliverance from it!

CHAPTER XVI.

MISCELLANEOUS.

THE Commandment is holy, and just, and good, not only in its precept but its curse. The first is evident and denied by none; the latter is never believed but by a work of the Spirit.

Let us talk no more of the constitution of this or that country, and the excellence of one above another; it is in every man's power, through grace, to live under the best government in the world.

We may put on different clothes and different looks, speak different words and do different actions, on a Sunday; but nature will be the same that it is all the rest of the week. Sunday, in our rest from bodily labour and employment, in the thoughts it suggests, the prospect it opens, the hope it confirms, is a day taken from time, and made a portion of eternity.

Dreams indicate the temper of the soul more certainly than they do the temperament of the body. Dreams have no dissimulation; they unmask the heart, and tell me honestly what I am when waking. A forced obedience will not make us happy in this world, but may not be lost as to another.

Hell is truth seen too late.

What is it to me whether the Americans are in a state of rebellion or not? Why do I not advert more

to the rebellion of my own heart and will against God?

A partial, half-religion is a state of terrible anxiety. Why is a man for ever seeking after pretences to wander from home; fixing the laws of motion; measuring the planets; prying with glasses into the minutest parts of nature; and either gazing with stupid wonder on what he can never understand, or, what is worse, circumscribing Omnipotence, and saying, Thus it must be;' when all the while the poor soul within him, buried in flesh and blood, wants its proper relief, begs his attention, and being known, would infinitely reward his curiosity?

If we do not live down error, I am sure we shall never dispute it down.

The eager reading even of religious books may be dangerous, and a hindrance to those who are aiming at the true spirit of religion, if they have recourse to them instead of to God.