rance and dependence, and desires nothing but that he may be holy, will cheerfully leave them.

"If God indulge you," says Mr. Fletcher of Madeley, "with ecstacies and extraordinary revelations, be thankful for them; but be not exalted above measure by them. Take care, lest enthusiastic delusions mix themselves with them; and remember that your Christian perfection does not so much consist in building a tabernacle upon mount Tabor, to rest and enjoy rare SIGHTS THERE, as in resolutely taking up the cross, and following Christ to the palace of a proud Caiaphas, to the judgment hall of an unjust Pilate, and to the top of an ignominious Calvary. Ye never read in your Bibles, ‘Let that glory be upon you which was also upon Stephen, when he looked up stedfastly into heaven, and said, Behold! I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God.' But ye have frequently read there, 'Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who made himself of no reputation, but took upon him the form of a servant, and being found in fashion as a man, humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.'”

CHAPTER SEVENTEENTH.

On the Entire Subjection of the Will.

PERHAPS it is not well understood, but it is certainly true, that one of the greatest evils to which we can be exposed in our present fallen condition, is to have a WILL OF OUr own. It is not meant by this, that we may not have a will different from that of our fellow men, nor is it meant that we may not have a strong, energetic will; but that it is one of the greatest evils, perhaps the very greatest to which we can be subject, to have a will of our own, in distinction from, and at variance with the divine will. In this last sense, he who approaches nearest to an annihilation of his own will, approaches nearest to the state of perfect union with God.

The prostration of our own will, in such a sense that it shall not in any respect oppose itself to the will of God, seems to be the completion or consummation of those various interior processes, by which the heart is purified. The moment our faith in God wavers, that moment we begin to form our own plans and to set up our own wills. The moment we cease to hunger and thirst after righteousness, and to desire earnestly a conformity

to the divine image, that moment we begin to see the movements of a will operating in its own way, and throwing itself out of the line of God's blessed wisdom. So that we can have no hesitancy in saying, that a will perfectly coincident with the will of God, is at the same time the natural result and the highest evidence of a sanctified heart. When the will in its personal or self-interested operation is entirely prostrated, so that we can say with the Saviour, "Lo, I come to do thy will," then the wall of spiritual separation is taken away, and the soul may be said, through the open entrance, to find a passage, as it were, into God himself, and to become one with Him, in a mysterious but holy and glorious union. Then, and not till then, can it be truly said that the warfare against God has ceased, and a perfect reconciliation taken place, enabling those who have arrived at this blessed state to exclaim, with the Savior, (perhaps in a modified but still in a true and most important sense,) "I AND MY FATHER ARE ONE."

"and

"The highest mystery of a divine life here," says the learned and pious Dr. Cudworth,* “ of perfect happiness hereafter, consisteth in nothing but mere obedience to the divine will. Happiness is nothing but that inward sweet delight that will arise from the harmonious agreement between our wills and God's will. There is nothing contrary to God in the whole world, nothing that fights

* Cudworth's Criterion of the true knowledge of Christ; a sermon preached before the English House of Commons, March 31, 1647.

against him, but SELF-WILL. This is the strong castle that we all keep garrisoned against heaven in every one of our hearts, which God continually layeth siege unto; and it must be conquered and demolished before we can conquer heaven. It was by reason of this self-will that Adam fell in Paradise; that those glorious angels, those morning stars, kept not their first station, but dropped down from heaven like falling stars, and sunk into this condition of bitterness, anxiety, and wretchedness, in which they now are. They all entangled themselves with the length of their own wings; they would needs will more and otherwise, than God would will in them. And going about to make their wills wider, and to enlarge them into greater amplitude, the more they struggled they found themselves the faster pinioned, and crowded up into narrowness and servility, insomuch that now they are not able to use any wings at all; but inheriting the serpent's curse, can only creep with their bellies on the earth. Now our only way to recover God and happiness again, is, not to soar up with our understandings, but to destroy this selfwill of ours. And then we shall find our wings to grow again, our plumes fairly spread, and ourselves raised aloft into the free air of perfect liberty, which is perfect happiness."

Wherever there has been this entire prostration of the will, a great and effectual work has been accomplished in the soul. And it will show itself in a number of important particulars.

(1.) In the first place, the person whose will is

entirely subdued, so as to be one with the divine will, will discover an unruffled meekness and quietness of spirit, when called in the Divine Providence to endure the smaller and more frequent inconveniences and vexations of life. Nor is the evidence, which is thus presented of an entire subjection of the will, to be regarded as inconsiderable and unimportant. It is truly sad and humiliating to see many, who, in the comparative sense of the term, are good Christians, that are, nevertheless, uneasy, and are inwardly and outwardly vexed, on many trivial occasions. Some little disappointment in business, an unfavorable remark which is scarcely worth notice, some small and perhaps accidental inattention on the part of others, disturbs and agitates the soul, not only to its own injury, but to the pain and injury of beholders. A soul that is at rest in God by the real subjection of its will, easily surmounts these trials. Such an one moves spiritually in too high a sphere, is too much occupied with the infinitude of the great object of its love, to regard as an insult every small neglect of the forms of politeness. It has neither time nor disposition to require an explanation of every idle word that may admit of an unfavorable import; nor will it suffer itself to be thrown into peevishness and ill humor at the many little jarrings and frictions, on whatever occasions they may arise, which are almost inseparable from the machinery of human life.

(2.) The same meek and subdued temper of mind, the same subjection of the will, will show it