work of God's almighty power upon you, making you willing even to put your mouth in the dust, in order to obtain hope. You now know, that what you called morality was no such thing. Why? Because all the time we are under the law, we are under the reigning power of sin; so Paul declares; "Sin shall not have dominion over you, because you are not under the law, but under grace." Then it is plain that all the time we are under the law sin reigns. The standard of morality is the law of God. It requires perfection; and, as all are sinners, there can be no moral living in any that are under it. All the works of such are sinful; wherefore it is said to be a bringing forth fruit unto death. Indeed, morality springs not from the moral law, but from the grace and Spirit of God in the heart, which is the root of all good living, and of all acceptable obedience, and nothing else. Where grace reigns sin is subdued; and those that walk in the Spirit do not fulfil the lusts of the flesh. You know more of morality now, since you have been a happy partaker of the Spirit and grace of God, than ever you could while under the law; as then you could do nothing but sin, which, now has not dominion over you, because you are delivered from the law, and under that grace which shall reign through the righteousness of Christ unto eternal life.

You say,

"And I prayed for temporal things, but for no spiritual blessing, for a whole year, for

that appeared out of the question." I believe you

prayed for temporal blessings only, with your lips; but that you prayed for no spiritual blessing with your heart I do not believe. Had you not in your heart a feeling sense of your wants? Yes, you'll say, I was a sensible sinner, and groaned and sighed under my burden and wretchedness all the day long. Very well; then those wants, groans, and sighs, were as prevalent prayers as ever you put up to God in your life with words from your mouth, nay probably more so, for God will never hear the mouth without the heart; but he often hears the heart without the mouth. And observe, when Israel was in Egypt, in their worst bondage, by reason of their task-masters, they groaned under their misery and cruel treatment; and when the Lord appeared to Moses he told him, "I have heard the groanings of the children of Israel, and am come down to deliver them; and now, behold, I will send thee," Exodus ii. 23-25, and vi. 5. Acts vii. 34. And Paul says of the blessed Spirit, that he maketh intercession for the saints with groanings which cannot be uttered, Rom. viii. 26. Again, "Let the sighing of the prisoner come before thee." And the Lord declares that it shall come before him, and prevail too; For the oppression of the poor, for the sighing of the needy, now will I arise, saith the Lord; I will set him in safety from him that puffeth at him," Psalm lxxix. 11, and xii. 5. Thus you see both groaning and sighing are prevalent prayers to God, though the mouth is un

fruitful. And therefore that whole year you prayed more or less all the day long, I believe in my soul; and, if you look back and examine, you will acknowledge that you certainly did. All the time you were in motion God would not suffer you to find any rest rest for your soul, nor for the sole of your feet; but you were kept travelling on in search after something, though you could not tell what. There was a vacancy and a space within which nothing beneath the sun could fill, and a restlessness which no created good could satisfy; this is plain by what you say " About this time I went forty miles on foot to hear a Calvinist minister preach, and staid with him two days, though in his preaching and private conversation he could not describe my case." No, Sir, God's writing upon a convinced sinner's heart is not to be read by any but those who are ministers of the Spirit, and such ministers are scarce and rare; and so they were in Job's days; but Elihu was one of them to him, and the only scribe well instructed unto the kingdom of heaven that Job met with; and the Lord confirmed all that that good man said. He gives a wonderful account of a work of grace upon the soul, beginning under the experience of severe bodily afflictions; observe it well, as recorded in the 33d chapter of Job. Such workmen as Elihu are compared to one among a thousand; and in our days they are more precious than the golden wedge of Ophir. We may go with our burdens to whom and where we please

when in soul troubles; but, as God himself brings us sensibly to feel their weight, so none but himself can remove them; and he will suffer us to try every means, and be disappointed in them all, until we are led to Christ Jesus; for "to him shall the gathering of the people be," who removes both our burden from the conscience, and the yoke of the moral law from our neck; and that because of the anointing, or unction of the Holy Spirit, working faith to believe in him as our Saviour. Read Isai. x. 27.

It is an unspeakable blessing to be favoured with the gift of a minister of the Spirit, who can go through the gates, clearly cast up the highway, gather out the stones, or stumbling blocks, and explain and make clear the seemingly contradictory parts of scripture to the poor, dark, sensible sinner, and lift up Christ crucified as a standard before him, Isai. lxii. 10; where gifts for meu, yea, for the rebellious also, are received, that the Lord God may dwell among them, Psalm Ixviii. 18. For the want of such an one you laboured long in confusion, and wandered from one place to an other, seeking rest, but finding none; till the Lord, in his own good time, fulfilled his promise to you without the means of preaching. "When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue faileth for thirst, I the Lord will hear them, I the God of Israel will not forsake them; I will open rivers in high places, and fountains in the midst of the valleys; I will make the

wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water. I will plant in the wilderness the cedar, the shittah tree, and the myrtle, and the oil tree; I will set in the desert the fir tree, and the pine, and the box tree together; that they may see, and know, and consider, and understand together, that the hand of the Lord hath done. this, and the Holy One of Israel hath created it," Isai. xli. 17-20. What a glorious description is this of poor sinners being delivered from their sin and barrenness under the law, where they are pierced by the curse it reveals, burdened by the sin it stirs up, and exercised by the wrath of God which it administers; and of their being brought into union with Christ Jesus, and sensibly into Mount Zion, or the church of the living God, where all his springs of grace and mercy, and the unction of the Spirit, the river of the water of life, flows! When here, they are compared to oil trees, because the Holy Spirit is in them, and gives them the experience of the oil of joy for mourning; to those other ever-green trees they are compared, because they have eternal life in them, and so shall never perish nor finally wither. And sinners being thus translated, and thus ingrafted into the Saviour, and planted in the house of the Lord, is all God's own work; and such must and shall give him all the glory, and ever declare that "the hand of Jehovah hath done this."

When you were in your distress, you say that you found none to instruct you; "In this dis

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