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may be forcibly pressed on every desponding mind,Ought we to be hopeless of the extension to ourselves of a mercy in which we know that God

delighteth," because we are in that very condition which alone can give Him occasion to display it most admirably, to reveal it most divinely? Los

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I have have thus attempted to bring under your view and my own, reasons, which appear unanswerable by any one that believes the Bible, why the extent of Divine forgivenesses" must needs transcend our largest necessities and largest hopes. Here then, could we but feel as we reason, are sovereign antidotes against despair. Here is the unbounded and unfathomed ocean of God's mercies, into which should be ever aiming to steer and impel our feeble bark of hope, away from those rocky shallows of our own narrow apprehensions, where else it must presently be wrecked or stranded. Give it this ocean-room, the immeasurable "breadth and length, and depth" of the divine compassions, and then though every "stormy wind" of terror beat upon it with increasing fierceness, none shall finally overwhelm or utterly destroy.

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**But I am quite conscious that, in order to the happy and prevailing application of such arguments, we need far more than the mere statement of them, or even meditation on them; we need an answer to more fervent prayer; that we may be strengthened with

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might by His Spirit," and thus enabled to apprehend" more effectually these boundless and inspiring consolations. Still must we implore, without ceasing, the aid of that Eternal Spirit, that Communicative Love," (as an old divine has styled the heavenly Comforter,) to touch our spirits with the feeling, though our reason cannot grasp the thought. For it must needs be with this attribute of mercy as with every attribute of Him who is in all things infinite: when it is presented to the intellect, we labour as it were to grasp a globe upheld by the enthroned King of Kings, and we discover only, as we gaze and reach forth towards it, that it is incomprehensible; that "the measure thereof is longer than the earth, and broader than the sea:" yet let Him who bears it deign, with condescending sovereignty, to incline his sceptre gently towards us, and a quick radiation from all that orb of mercy shall flow into the heart, and we shall feel with transport, binsour child-like littleness, what angels in their elder greatness cannot comprehend.

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We may, as professed believers, have contemplated this doctrine of superabounding mercy, or at least have had it presented to us, in modes and at times →unnumbered. But yet is it now, through its own augImented agency and power, poured into our souls with ~a new and healing vividness? Surely so divine an infusion, if we quench it not, will mightily enlarge

and gladden them, will animate and impel every pulse of spiritual life, will prompt us to that growing forbearance and sympathy, without which we can never advance in his resemblance who "multiplieth pardons," and will quicken every aspiration towards that realm of love where the redeemed must eternally outvie each other in the praise of his surpassing grace.

VIII.

ON THE PAIN ENDURED IN THE WANT OR LOSS OF SOCIAL BLESSINGS WHICH WOULD BE PECULIARLY DEAR TO US.

SOLITUDE is but a comparative and indefinite term. The isolated Selkirk, as his complaint is pathetically imagined by Cowper, felt himself in loneliness, though "lord of the fowl and the brute." Yet, had his islet been even by these unpeopled, void of all other life, or only of the larger animals, that "monarch of all he surveyed" must have been much more desolate still. "Their tameness" was

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shocking," but their disappearance would have been doubly so; especially as he had found means to induce in some a sort of attachment to himself, and thus to indulge, however inadequately, the social and benevolent affections*. Where solitude has

* See the account of Selkirk given by Captain Woodes Rogers in Harris's Voyages.

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been meant and deemed to be cruelly complete, the discovery of but one living inmate of the cell, even ta mouse or spider, has afforded solace. Something to feed and to welcome, something to be aided or attracted by the captive's care, has been a matter of soothing interest. To have sentient creatures round us, which though we may fastidiously decline to name them fellow-creatures show an instinctive sense that they are the better for our présence, is a relief which must needs make the penalty of solitude less rigorous and less absolute. But even to witness animation and enjoyment, to watch the sea-birds wheeling round the cliff, or the herd resting in the shade, though they may see our form with indifference;" and though it may, in one sense, aggravate solitude to feel that they all have the kindred society which to us is wanting, is yet a source of pensive pleasure. It must have been so, one would think, to our first parent, before his Eve was formed; a pleasure felt indeed to be exceedingly defective, but which he would not have lost without regret. On the other hand, the mere presence of human beings, without any intercourse, as when we pass through crowded streets, and meet perhaps through the hour or day no one with whom to in terchange a thought or feeling,-this, it has often been observed, if not solitude, is as surely not so

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