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existence ;—a fatal delusion, a soul-destroying mistake, which militates against the whole spirit of the gospel, and presumptuously impeaches the wisdom of that Saviour who exclaimed, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.

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(3.) Another class will perhaps reply, "We are convinced of the urgent obligation of the duty which has been recommended; but we have so long neglected it that we know not how to begin,--are ashamed at the prospect of the surprise, the curiosity it will occasion."

But there is much impiety in this shame; and if it be permitted to deter you from complying with the dictates of conscience and the commands of God, it will unquestionably class you with the fearful and unbelieving, who shall have their portion in the second death. To be ashamed of the service of Christ is to be ashamed of Christ and his cross; and you have heard the Divine denunciation of judgment on such characters: "Whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels." You are afraid of presenting yourself under a singular aspect to your domestics and acquaintance: have you not reflected on the awful and trying situation in which you will be placed by the infliction of the sentence, justly merited, "Of him will I be ashamed;" "Rise up, Lord, and let thine enemies be scattered; and let them that hate thee flee before thee?"

II. Hints on the practice. Best mode of performing it.

1. Let it ever be joined with reading the Scriptures.

2. Let it be constant.

3. Attend with a full decision of mind, with the utmost seriousness. 4. Seek the aid of the Spirit.

XXVII.

REFLECTIONS ON THE INEVITABLE LOT OF HUMAN LIFE.

ECCLES. xi. 8.-If a man live many years, and rejoice in them all, let him remember the days of darkness, for they shall be many.

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THERE is nothing better established by universal observation, than that the condition of man upon earth is, less or more, an afflicted condition: "Man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward."‡ As the sparks ascend by an immutable law in nature, so the sorrows to which we are exposed spring from necessity, from causes whose operation is unavoidable and universal. Look through all the genera

* Matt. vi. 33.

† Mark viii. 38

Job v. 7.

tions of man, throughout all times and places, and see if you can discover a single individual who has not, at one period or another, been exposed to the arrows of adversity. The roll or record of human destiny is written "within and without, with lamentation, and mourning, and wo.

We are naturally extremely and immoderately attached to worldly enjoyments and to temporal prospects. Our souls cleave to them with an eagerness extremely disproportioned to their real value, which is one of the maledictions incurred by the fall. The curse denounced upon the earth for man's sake has contracted the sum of earthly good within a narrow compass, and blasted it with much vanity, but has not had the effect of dispelling the charm by which it engages our affections. It is a part of the misery of man, in his fallen state, that he has become more attached than ever to the world, now that it has lost its value. Having swerved from God, and lost his true centre, he has fallen into an idolatry of the world, and makes it the exclusive object of his attachment, even at the very time that its beauty is marred and its satisfactions impaired.

"It is a pleasant thing for the eyes to behold the sun." While the sun of earthly prospects shines we are apt to feel the day of evil at a distance from our minds,-we are reluctant to admit the possibility of a change of scene,—we shut out the thought of calamity and distress, as an unwelcome intruder.

The young revel in the enjoyment of health, and exult in the gay hopes and enchanting gratifications suited to that delightful [season], as though they were never to know a period. Amused and transported with [their] situation and [their] prospects, it is with extreme difficulty they admit the conviction that the days are fast approaching when they shall confess they have no pleasure in them. "Let us enjoy the good things that are present." "Let us fill ourselves with costly wine and ointments, and let no flower of the spring pass by us." ourselves with rose-buds before they be withered."

"Let us crown

Experience, in most cases, soon alters their sentiments, and events arise which impress an indelible conviction of the short duration of earthly good. The bloom of health is blasted by disease; the seeds of some incurable malady begin to shoot up and make their appearance; or the agony of disappointed passions is impressed; or cares and anxieties begin to corrode the mind; or the hand of death [inflicts] some fatal stroke by which the object of the tenderest affection is snatched away.

If a long course of prosperity has been enjoyed, during which almost every thing has succeeded to the wish (which sometimes, though very rarely, occurs), the confidence in worldly hopes and prospects is mightily increased; the mind is more softened and enervated by an uninterrupted series of prosperity, and is the more unfitted to [go through] those scenes of distress which inevitably await him. He who is in this situation is tempted to say, "I shall surely die in my nest;" or, in the language of the rich man in the gospel, "Soul, eat, drink, and be merry,-thou hast goods laid up for many years."

* Ezek. ii. 10. † Eccles. xi. 7. + Wisdom of Solomon ii. 8.

Job xxix. 18. || Luke xii. 19

The whole system of worldly amusement is adapted to make us forget the real condition of human life, to disguise every object, and to invest the present state with a sort of theatrical glow. It is contrived,

in every part of it, to banish reflection, to hide the future from the view, and to make us overlook the evils of life, and the realities of eternity. But still, as the nature of things remains the same, as the course of human events can no more be arrested than the tide, the only effect of this voluntary infatuation is, to render the stroke of calamity, when it does fall, doubly heavy, by leaving the soul without preparation and without resources. "Their fear cometh as desolation, and their destruction as a whirlwind."* The lot of mankind is, sooner or later, a state of suffering, from which no past successes, no seeming stability in our station, can possibly secure. "Though a man live many years, and rejoice in them all; yet let him remember the days of darkness; for they shall be many. All that cometh is vanity."t

It is wisdom, then, to form a just estimate of human life; to correct the illusions of our passions; and to regulate our expectations respecting the good and evil of the present, by the result of universal observation and experience. It is Solomon, that model of a great and prosperous prince, whose [mental] attainments, exalted station, and extraordinary prosperity combined to confer upon him, as far as possible, an exemption from suffering, who, under the dictate of the Holy Spirit, penned these words, "If a man live many years, and rejoice in them all, yet let him remember the days of darkness; for they shall be many."

Let us proceed briefly to consider what improvement should be made of this view of human life, of this universal exposure to affliction.

I. The first lesson it should teach us is, that we are not in the situation in which man was first formed. The original destination of man was not a state of suffering. When God first formed the world, on surveying all that he had created, he pronounced it to be "very good." If it now be very evil, there must be a change in the state and condition of mankind, since the Supreme Being is immutable. It would be utterly repugnant to his perfections to doom an innocent creature to so much suffering; and the Word of God expressly declares "he does not willingly afflict or grieve the children of men."§ Hence calamities are styled chastisements throughout the Scriptures, and are invariably spoken of as expressions of the Divine anger. Under the administration of a wise and holy Being, had there been no sin, there would have been no suffering. Tyrants may delight in displaying their power over their vassals, by inflicting upon them unmerited punishments; but far be it from us to suspect such conduct in "the Holy One of Israel," in Him who "delighteth in mercy."

The unspeakable calamities to which we are exposed, in our passage through life, announce our fallen state; nor is it possible to give any consistent account of them, without referring them, as the word of God uniformly does, to our original defection and departure from

* Prov. i. 27:

Lam. iii. 33.

Eccles. xi. 8.
Ezek. xxxix. 7.

Gen. i. 31.
Mic. vii. 18.

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God. In this light his conduct in inflicting them appears unexceptionably just and proper. We "have forsaken the fountain of living water," and it is just that the "cisterns" to which we repair should be "broken." We have served and loved "the creature more than the Creator;" and it is just that created comforts should be imbittered. We have virtually declared, by our conduct, that there is no happiness to be found in God: how fitting is it that he should declare, “You shall find it nowhere else;" how equitable is it that he who leans upon an arm of flesh," instead of trusting in the living God, should often [find] it to be a broken reed, which wounds him who stays himself upon it, instead of affording him support! When we consider what a scene of indescribable distress the state of the world presents at this moment ;-the devastation of [nations]; the sudden reverses of fortune in the highest ranks; and the penury, embarrassment, and distress in the lower;-who does not see [in these] the tokens of the [Divine] displeasure; who can fail to perceive the marks of a fallen state, and that the Lord has a controversy, by which he pleads with all flesh?

We have all been guilty of spiritual idolatry, and the Lord in his justice spreads our carcasses before the objects of our guilty attachment. "At that time, saith the Lord, they shall bring out the bones of the kings of Judah, the bones of his princes, and the bones of the priests, and the bones of the prophets, and the bones of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, out of their graves: and they shall spread them before the sun, and the moon, and all the hosts of heaven, whom they have loved, and whom they have served, and after whom they have walked, and whom they have sought, and whom they have worshipped." Let us no longer regard the calamities of life as the offspring of chance, or the product of blind necessity, but, agreeably to the oracles of God, as the judgments of the Lord.

II. Let the consideration of the universal exposure of man to calamities and sufferings prevent our being surprised or astonished when it becomes our own lot. When we are unexpectedly led into scenes of trial, we are apt to be filled with emotion, "as though some strange thing had happened unto us ;" and perhaps we are tempted to suspect that we are treated with an unjustifiable rigour. We are ready too often to draw invidious comparisons between ourselves and those who, we suppose, are dealt with in a more favourable manner; and secretly to say, Why am I thus afflicted and distressed; why am I set as a mark for his arrows? It might be sufficient, in order to repress such emotions, to remember that the Lord is a sovereign, who gives no account of his matters: shall the thing formed say to him that formed him, "Why hast thou made me thus ?" "Who art thou that repliest against God?" "Shall a living man complain, a man for the punishment of his sins?"** We must be strangely acquainted with ourselves, if we are not aware that he has not corrected us less than our iniquities deserve. These considerations, however, though not slight, are not the only ones which are fitted to calm the tumult of the breast. may, with advantage to ourselves, and unitedly with the most per

We

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fect benevolence, cast our eyes abroad, to contemplate the universality of distress. We are not the only or the greatest sufferers: we have innumerable companions in tribulation. Without giving scope to imagination, or quitting the realities of life, we may easily find among our fellow-creatures instances of deeper wo, and more complicated distresses, than those which we feel. Here we may see a person, like Job, flourishing in affluence, and reduced, by a sudden and unexpected stroke, to the depth of penury. There we may behold another, like the same illustrious sufferer, deprived in a very short season of all his offspring by death. There we see the widowed mother of a numerous family at a loss to still the cries of her children, who are clamorous for bread. If we turn in another quarter, we may find a poor unhappy creature wasting away under an incurable and painful disorder, where the only vigorous principle seems to be the living cancer which corrodes him. Hear the bitter lamentation of Job: "Even to-day is my complaint bitter, and my stroke heavier than my groaning." "When I lie down I say, When shall I arise, and the night be gone? I am full of tossings to and fro." "Oh that my grief were thoroughly weighed, and my calamity laid in the balances together!" "therefore my words are swallowed up." "For the arrows of the Almighty are within me, the poison whereof drinketh up my spirit." Hear the man after God's own heart exclaim, "I water my couch with my tears, and mingle my drink with weeping." "By reason of grief my flesh is dried up, and my heart is withered as grass." Look at the history, not of the enemies only, but of the most eminent servants of God, and you will generally find their trials as conspicuous as their piety so true is it that the high road to heaven is through suffering; and that "through much tribulation we must enter into the kingdom.”**

If we are tempted to repine at seeing others in peace and prosperity, while we are harassed and distressed, we form a most inadequate and premature judgment. Their period of trial will arrive; their day of calamity is also approaching; the mildew that blights their enjoyments is prepared; and from the evil omen of adversity it will be impossible for them to escape, more than ourselves. "If a man live many years, and rejoice in them all; yet let him remember the days of darkness; for they shall be many."

III. Here we learn the propriety of not looking for happiness on earth. "This is not our rest: it is polluted." A state exposed to so much calamity can never have been designed as the scene of enjoyment; it must have been calculated for the purpose of trial. It is not Canaan; it is the wilderness through which the chosen tribes were destined to pass in their way to it; it is a vale of tears, [along] which the Christian pilgrim toils and struggles in his passage to the heavenly kingdom. Let us understand the real nature of our present condition; let us learn that nothing belonging to it is merely or principally intended for our gratification; that it is well suited to be the abode of a sinful creature upon trial, under a dispensation of mercy; where there

↑ Job vii. 4.

* Job xxiii. 2
Psalm cii. 9.

¶ Psalm cii. 4.

Job vi. 2, 3, 4. **Acts xiv. 22.

Psalm vi. 6. f1 Micah ii. 10.

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