Christian consolations; that the promises of "forgiveness of sins" through faith in Jesus Christ, of the purifying and consoling influences of the Holy Spirit, and of a heavenly life to come, have appeared to you "worthy of all acceptation," and have called forth sincere prayers that you may truly apprehend and enjoy them. At the same time, I suppose your views of these great things to be not distinct and unwavering, but mingled with much of unbelief, or of personal distrust and fear; yet with a growing desire to understand and embrace them in such a manner, as may lead you to " all joy and peace in believing." I shall conjecture also that this desire may be now deepened by the experience of severe afflictions, of declining earthly hopes, or of undisclosed anxieties; so that any thoughts which may tend to corroborate the importance, reality, and value of Gospel blessings, and present them to your mind as clear in their import and freely attainable, will be now, far more than at some former seasons, opportune and welcome. You are suffering, it may be, from disease; more acutely than any who have not been assailed by similar affliction can estimate; and this, while your period of life and previous flow of health seemed to promise long exemption. If the skill and soothing care around you sustain the hope of relief and restoration, yet is it not without mis

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givings, for while the uncertainties of continuance in life are always great, those which attend the issue of actual maladies must ever be far greater; but, should you regain that health which is itself enjoy ment, still may its present interruption bring im pressively before you a time not far remote, when the efforts of art, the resources of nature, and the aids of watchful affection will not so avail. haps also that prospect acquires a threatening vividness and awful nearness from the recent or actual ravages of epidemic disease, which, by the sudden 'violence of its assaults and dreadfulness of its effects, array's death with new terrors; whose existence for probable recurrence must therefore fasten on the thoughtful mind an afflictive sense of those calamities which may soon be, personally or relatively, permitted to invade us. Or, without adverting to such possibilities, you feel that at least your life is waning to its close-sensations as well as dates assure you of its swift decline-you are painfully admonished by growing infirmities you feel that the evil days draw nigh," if not already come, in which you must be conscious," I have no pleasure in them: the excitements and hopes of this world are over and gone;" its prospects are become brief and cloudy, and the last shades of its evening are near. Or you have encountered, what the quod plotu bar loron oxitas obutilo to 750 £

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world often describe, in a phrase borrowed from mythology, as reverses of fortune; disappointments and adversities have cast or led you down from a station of competence, perhaps of affluent enjoyments, to experience the diversified trial of reduced and straitened resources, to anticipate a struggle amidst pénúry through your remaining days, or to taste already the bitterness and humiliation of dependence. Or you have felt the sharpness of a bereavement, which, if it deject the heart less than pining sickness, and chill it less than poverty and the world's neglect, may wound and agonize it yet more, It has been torn by the rending of the dearest ties; your spirit is left in solitude; or, if some objects of its tenderness remain, they are such as must shortly be resigned, or such as must lean on you for that support and guidance, which you feel as if too enfeebled and disconsolate to give.

That mind must be indeed inert or insusceptible, which, by such evils, or by some others, that may [equal or surpass them, would not be impelled onward to muse on the final term of earthly sorrows, and look with expectation or with anxious doubt into the great unknown beyond. To have no such views even transiently, would seem, in any of those circumstances, scarcely possible. I could not, therefore, conceive myself to excite in any of the afflicted a sort of solicitude entirely novel and unfelt, though

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-would bendoth, had he the power, to draw terrific flashes from the clouds that overhang and confront you. Conscience has given warning that such are shrouded in the gloom and let its voices suffice. Most gladly would I be the happier înstrument of rendering your mind more accessible to each intertovening gleam of a true and heavenly sunshine; and with this aim I proceed to those sources of Christianshope, whither multitudes of the "weary and heavy laden "have earnestly resorted, and have there felt the sole relief of sorrows not less grievous than byour own. You will perhaps, indeed, observe, that what I shall advance is often more adapted to the doubting than the afflicted mind. But it will be found, that although mere human knowledge is often oquite barren of comfort to the sufferer, Christian knowledge is the essential basis of Christian consoolation, without which it cannot subsist, and insproportion to which, if rightly used, it will commonly be satisfying and abundant. Do not suspect, therefore, that by inviting you to a fuller appreciation of the value, credibility, and suitableness of Christian doctrines, I take a too circuitous path for conducting you to the fuller participation of Christian comforts. No doubt this path should be at all times! pursued, with a profound dependence, both for light and consolation, on the good Spirit of God. But knowledge is the appointed medium of consolation and

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peace. It is remarkable, and has been often ono

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ticed that the title "Paraclete," given by our Saviour to the Holy Spirit, signifies not only Comforter and Advocate, but Monitor or Teacher. The to comfort of the Holy Ghost" is to be attained by his guiding us into all truth;" no otherbwise, therefore, than by a right apprehension of divine truth; though our comprehension of it be nebcessarily imperfect, and in some who apprehend its >most essential points with strong and clear discernment, remains very limited and partial. The comforts which will endure the test of sharp distress and abide in fiery trial, must be not of that slight and shadowy class which men of the world may offer: they must be direct and scriptural, built on that

knowledge of the truth," which is the portion of -the docile, the earnest, and the humble, who are taught of God," and have "received the loves of the truth that they might be saved;" comforts flowing from the revealed grace of God in Christ Jesus, sought and implored, discovered and embraced. Such, it is our "heart's desire" that you and we should amply and unalterably partake. Though the writer possess them but intermittingly, and even dubiously, he has at least this claim to press them on your regard, that he perceives their incomparable and exclusive worth.

buts On the more preliminary of those truths which