to him whose veracity fulfils all the promi- It was that his goodness might have the ses which his goodness has made to Him precedency of his Omnipotence that he whose pity commiserates the afflicted, vouchsafed to give the law in the shape whose bounty supplies the indigent, whose of a covenant. He stooped to enter into long suffering bears with the rebellious, a sort of reciprocal engagement with his whose love absolves the guilty, whose mer-creatures,-he condescended to stipulate cy in Christ Jesus accepts the penitent. with the work of his hands! But the conSuch is the fulness of that attribute which summation of his goodness was reserved for we sum up in a single word, the goodness his work of Redemption. Here he not only of God. It is this goodness which influ- performed the office, but assumed the name ences his other attributes in our favour, at- of LOVE; a name with which, notwithtributes which would else necessarily act standing all his preceding wonders of Proviagainst creatures at once sinful and impo-dence and Grace, he was never invested till tent. It makes that wisdom which sees our after the completion of this last, greatest weakness strengthen us, and that power act an act towards his pardoned rebels, which might overwhelm us, act for our pre- not only of indemnity but promotion :—an servation. Without this goodness, all his act which the angels desire to scrutinize, other perfections would be to us as the and which man will never fully comprebeauties of his natural creation would be, if hend till he enters on that beatitude to the sun were blotted from the firmament- which it has introduced him. they might indeed exist, but without this ilJuminating and cherishing principle, as we should neither have seen nor felt them, so to us they could not be said to be.

CHAP. IV.

Thy will be done."

Some Christians seem to view the Almighty as encircled with no attribute but To desire to know the Divine will is the his sovereignty. God, in establishing his first duty of a being so ignorant as man; to moral government, might indeed have acted endeavour to obey it is the most indispensasolely by his sovereignty. He might have ble duty of a being at once so corrupt and pleaded no other reason for our allegiance so dependent. The Holy Scriptures frebut his absolute dominion. He might have quently comprise the essence of the Chrisgoverned arbitrarily, without explaining the tian temper in some short aphorism, aposnature of his requisitions. He might have trophe, or definition. The essential spirit of reigned over us as a king, without endear- the Christian life may be said to be included ing himself to us as a father. He might in this one brief petition of the Christian's have exacted fealty, without the offer of re- prayer, THY WILL BE DONE; just as the muneration. Instead of this, while he main-distinguishing characteristic of the irrelitains his entire title to our obedience, he gious may be said to consist in following his mitigates the austerity of the command by own will.

the invitations of his kindness, and softens There is a haughty spirit which, though the rigour of authority by the allurement of it will not complain, does not care to submit. his promises. In holding out menaces to It arrogates to itself the dignity of enduring, deter us from disobedience, he balances without any claim to the meekness of yieldthem with the offered plenitude of our own ing. Its silence is stubbornness, its fortifelicity, and thus instead of terrifying, at- tude is pride; its calmness is apathy withtracts us to obedience. If he threatens, it is out, and discontent within. In such chathat by intimidating he may be spared the racters, it is not so much the will of God necessity of punishing; if he promises-it is which is the rule of conduct, as the scorn of that we may perceive our happiness to be pusillanimity. Not seldom indeed the mind bound up with our obedience. Thus his puts in a claim for a merit to which the goodness invites us to a compliance, which nerves could make out a better title. Yet his sovereignty might have demanded on the the suffering which arises from acute feelsingle ground that it was his due. Where-ing is so far from deducting from the virtue as he seems almost to wave our duty as a of resignation, that, when it does not impede claim, as if to afford us the merit of a vo- the sacrifice, it enhances the value. True luntary obedience; though the very will to resignation is the hardest lesson in the whole obey is his gift, he promises to accept it as if it were our own act. He first inspires the desire and then rewards it. Thus his power, if we may hazard the expression, gives place to his goodness, and he presses us by tenderness almost more than he constrains us by authority. He even condescends to make our happiness no less a motive for our duty than his injunctions; hear his affectionate apostrophe-Oh that thou hadst hearkened to my commandments, then had thy peace been as a river !'

school of Christ, It is the oftenest taught and the latest learnt. It is not a task which, when once got over in some particular instance, leaves us master of the subject. The necessity of following up the lesson we have begun, presents itself almost every day in some new shape, occurs under some fresh modification. The submission of yesterday does not exonerate us from the resignation of to-day. The principle, indeed, once thoroughly wrought into the soul, gradually reconciles us to the frequent demand for its

exercise, and renders every successive call more easy.

and solidity for the purposes of support. It wanted the only true basis, the assurance that God orders all things according to the purposes of his will for our final good; it wanted that only sure ground of faith by which the genuine Christian cheerfully submits in entire dependance on the promises

We read dissertations on this subject, not only with the most entire concurrence of the judgment, but with the most apparent acquiescence of the mind. We write essays upon it in the hour of peace and composure, and fancy that what we have discussed with of the gospel. so much ease and self-complacence, in fa- Nor let us fancy that we are to be languid vour of which we offer so many arguments and inactive recipients of the divine dispento convince, and so many motives to per-sations. Our own souls must be enlarged, suade, cannot be very difficult to practise. our own views must be ennobled, cur own But to convince the understanding and to spirit must be dilated. An inoperative accorrect the will is a very different underta- quiescence is not all that is required of us : king; and not less difficult when it comes to and if we must not slacken our zeal in doing our own case than it was in the case of those good, so we must not be remiss in opposing for whom we have been so coolly and dog- evil, on the flimsy ground that God has permatically prescribing. It is not till we mitted evil to infest the world. If it be his practically find how slowly our own argu- will to permit sin, it is an opposition to his ments produce any effect on ourselves that will when we do not labour to counteract it. we cease to marvel at their inefficacy on oth-This surrender therefore, of our will to that ers. The sick physician tastes with disgust of God, takes in a large sweep of actual duthe bitterness of the draught, to the swallow-ties, as well as the whole compass of passive ing of which he wondered the patient had obedience. It involves doing as well as suffelt so much repugnance; and the reader is sometimes convinced by the arguments which fail of their effect on the writer, when he is called, not to discuss, but to act, not to reason, but to suffer. The theory is so just and the duty so obvious, that even bad men assent to it; the exercise so trying that the best men find it more easy to cominend the rule than adopt it. But he who has once gotten engraved, not in his memory but in his heart, this divine precept, THY WILL BE DONE, has made a proficiency which will render all subsequent instruction comparatively easy.

fering, activity as well as acquiescence, zeal as well as forbearance. Yet the concise petition daily slips off the tongue without our reflecting on the weight of the obligation we are imposing on ourselves. We do not consider the extent and consequences of the prayer we are offering, the sacrifices, the trials, the privations it may involve, and the large indefinite obedience to all the known and unknown purposes of infinite wisdom to which we are pledging ourselves.

There is no case in which we more shelter ourselves in generalities. Verbal sacrifices cost little, cost nothing. The familiar habit Though sacrifices and oblations were of- of repeating the petition almost tempts us to fered to God under the law by his own ex-fancy that the duty is as easy as the request press appointment, yet he peremptorily re- is short. We are ready to think that a prayjected them by his prophets, when presented er rounded off in four monosyllables can as substitutes instead of signs. Will he, un- scarcely involve duties co-extensive with our der a more perfect dispensation, accept of whole course of being; that, in uttering any observances which are meant to super- them, we renounce all right in ourselves, sede internal dedication of any offerings un- that we acknowledge the universal indefeaaccompanied by complete desire of acquies- sible title of the blessed and only potentate; cence in his will? My son, give me thine that we make over to him the right to do in heart,' is his brief but imperative command. us, and with us, and by us, whatever he sees But before we can be brought to comply good for ourselves, whatever will promote with the spirit of this requisition, God must his glory, though by means sometimes as inenlighten our understanding that our devo- comprehensible to our understanding, as untion may be rational, he must rectify our acceptable to our will, because we neither will that it may be voluntary, he must puri- know the motive, nor perceive the end. fy our heart that it may be spiritual. These simple words express an act of faith Submission is a duty of such high and holy the most sublime, an act of allegiance the import that it can only be learnt of the Great most unqualified; and, while they make a Teacher. If it could have been acquired by declaration of entire submission to a Sovemere moral institution, the wise sayings of reign the most absolute, they are, at the the ancient philosophers would have taught same time, a recognition of love to a Father it. But their most elevated standard was the most beneficent. low: their strongest motives were the brevity of life, the instability of fortune, the dignity of suffering virtue, things within their narrow sphere of judging; things true indeed as far as they go, but a substratum by no means equal to the superstructure to be built on it. It wanted depth, and strength,

We must remember, that in. offering this prayer, we may by our own request, be offering to resign what we most dread to lose, to give up what is dear to us as our own soul; we may be calling on our heavenly Father to withhold what we are most anxiously labouring to attain, and to withdraw what we

are most sedulously endeavousing to keep. I ved,' but 'What shall I do to be saved? We are solemnly renouncing our property The first symptom St. Paul gave of his conin ourselves, we are distinctly making our- version, was a practical symptom: Lord, selves over again to Him whose we already what wilt thou have me to do? He entered are. We specifically entreat him to do with on his new course with a total renunciation us what he pleases, to mould us to a confor- of his own will. It seemed to this great mity to his image, without which we shall Apostle, to be the turning point between innever be resigned to his will. In short, to fidelity and piety, whether he should follow dispose of us as his infinite wisdom sees best, his own will or the will of God. He did not however contrary to the scheme which our amuse his curiosity with speculative quesblindness has laid down as the path to un- tions. His own immediate and grand conquestionable happiness. cern engrossed his whole soul. Nor was his question a mere hasty effusion, an interrogative springing out of that mixed feeling of awe and wonder which accompanied his first overwhelming convictions. It became the abiding principle which governed his future life, which made him in labours more abundant. Every successive act of duty, every future sacrifice of ease, sprung from it, was influenced by it. His own will, his ardent, impetuous, fiery will, was not merely subdued, it was extinguished. His powerful mind indeed lost none of its energy but his proud heart relinquished all its indepen

To render this trying petition easy to us, is one great reason why God, by such a variety of providences, afflicts and brings us low. He knows that we want incentives to humility, even more than incitements to virtuous actions. He shows us in many ways, that self-sufficiency and happiness are incompatible, that pride and peace are irreconcilable; that, following our own way, and doing our own will, which we consider to be of the very essence of felicity, is in direct opposition to it.

Christianity,' says bishop Horseley, 'involves many paradoxes, but no contradic-dence. tions.' To be able to say with entire surrender of the heart, 'Thy will be done,' is the true liberty of the children of God, that liberty with which Christ has made them free. It is a liberty, not which delivers us from restraint, but which, freeing us from our subjection to the senses, makes us find no pleasure but in order, no safety but in the obedience of an intelligent being to his rightful Lord. In delivering us from the heavy bondage of sin, it transfers us to the 'easy yoke of Christ, from the galling slavery of the world to the 'light burden' of him who overcame it.

This liberty in giving a true direction to the affections, gives them amplitude as well as elevation. The more unconstrained the will becomes, the more it fixes on the object; once fixed on the highest, it does not use its liberty for versatility, but for constancy, not for change, but for fidelity, not for wavering, but adherence.

It is, therefore, no less our interest, than our duty, to keep the mind in an habitual posture of submission. Adam,' says Dr. Hammond, after his expulsion, was a greater slave in the wilderness than he had been in the inclosure.' If the barbarian ambassador came express to the Romans to negociate from his country for permission to be their servants, declaring, that a voluntary snbmission even to a foreign power, was preferable to a wild and disorderly freedom, well may the Christian triumph in the peace and security to be attained by a complete subjugation to Him who is emphatically called the God of order.

A vital faith manifests itself in vital acts. "Thy will be done,' is eminently a practical petition. The first indication of the gaoler's change of heart was a practical indication. He did not ask, 'Are there few that be sa

We allow and adopt the term devotion as an indispensable part of religion, because it is supposed to be limited to the act; but devotedness, from which it is derived, does not meet with such ready acceptation, because this is a habit, and an habit involves more than an act; it pledges us to consistency, it implies fixedness of character, a general confirmed state of mind, a giving up what we are, and have, and do, to God. Devotedness does not consist in the length of our prayers, nor in the number of our good works, for, though these are the surest evidences of piety, they are not its essence. Devotedness consists in doing and suffering, bearing and forbearing in the way which God prescribes The most inconsiderable duty performed with alacrity, if it oppose our own inclination; the most ordinary trial met with a right spirit, is more acceptable to him than a greater effort of our own devising. We do not commend a servant for his activity, if ever so fervently exercised, in doing whatever gratifies his own fancy: we do not consider his performance as obedience, unless his activity has been exercised in doing what we required of him. Now, how can we insist on his doing what contradicts his own humour, while we allow ourselves to feel repugnance in serving our heavenly Master, when his commands do not exactly fall in with our own inclination?

We must also give God leave, not only to take his own way, but his own time. The appointment of seasons, as well as of events, is his. He waits to be gracious.' If he delays, it is because we are not yet brought to that state which fits us for the grant of our request. It is not he who must be brought about, but we ourselves. Or, perhaps, he refuses the thing we ask, in order to give us a better. We implore success in an under

which our actions were intended to produce.

taking, instead of which, he gives us content | chiefs they bring upon us; and acknowledges under the disappointment. We ask for the our blindness by extracting from it conse-. removal of pain; he gives us patience under quences diametrically opposite to those it. We desire deliverance from our enemies; he sees that we have not yet turned their enmity to our improvement, and he will bring us to a better temper by further exercise. We desire him to avert some impending trial, instead of averting it, he takes away its bitterness; he mitigates what we believed would be intolerable, by giving us a right temper under it. How, then, can we say he has failed of his promise, if he gives something more truly valuable than we had requested at his hands?

Our love to God is stamped with the same imperfection with all our other graces. If we love him at all, it is as it were traditionally, hereditary, professionally; it is a love of form and not of feeling, of education and not of sentiment, of sense and not of faith. It is at best a submission to authority, and not an effusion of voluntary gratitude, a conviction of the understanding, and not a cordiality of the affections. We rather assume we have this grace than actually possess it, we rather take it for granted on unexamined grounds, than cherish it as a principle from which whatever good we have must proceed, and from which, if it does not proceed, the principle does not exist.

being made humble, or happy, without being made holy, or holy without trials? Unant scholars indeed we are in learning the lessons taught! But the teacher is not the less perfect because of the imbecility of his children.

Some virtues are more called out in one condition of life, and some in another. The exercise of certain qualities has its time and place; but an endeavour after conformity to the image of God, which is best attained by submission to his will, is of perpetual obliga- Surely, says the oppugners of divine Protion. If he does not require all virtues un-vidence, in considering the calamities inflictder all circumstances, there is no state or ed on good men, if God loved virtue, he condition in which he does not require that would not oppress the virtuous. Surely Omto which our church perpetually calls us, nipotence may find a way to make his chil'an humble, lowly, penitent, and obedient dren good, without making them miserable. heart.' We may have no time, no capacity, But have these casuists ever devised a means no special call for deeds of notorious useful- by which men may be made good without ness; but whatever be our pursuits, engagements, or abilities, it will intrench on no time, require no specific call, interfere with no duty, to subdue our perverse will. Though the most severe of all duties, it infringes on no other, but will be the more effectually fulfilled by the very difficulties at- If it be the design of Infinite Goodness to tending on other pursuits and engagements. disengage us from the world, to detach us We are so fond of having our own will, from ourselves, and to purify us to himself, that it is astonishing we do not oftener em- the purification by sufferings seems the most ploy it for our own good; for our inward obvious method. The same effect could peace is augmented in exact proportion as not be any otherwise produced, except by our repugnance to the Divine will diminishes. miracles, and God is an economist of his Were the conquest over the one complete, means in grace as well as in nature. He the enjoyment of the other would be perfect. deals out all gifts by measure. His operaBut the Holy Spirit does not assume his tion in both is progressive. Successive emphatical title, the COMFORTER, till his events operate in one case as time and age previous offices have operated on the heart, in the other. As suns and showers so gratill he has reproved us of sin, of righteous-dually mature the fruits of the earth, that the ness, of judgment.' growth is rather perpetual than perceptible, God makes use of methods inconceivable so God commonly carries on the work of to us, to bring us to the submission which we renovation in the heart silently and slowly, are more ready to request with our lips, by means suitable and simple, though to us than to desire with our hearts. By an im-imperceptible, and sometimes unintelligible. perceptible operation he is ever at work for Were the plans more obvious, and the proour good; he promotes it by objects the most cess, ostensible, there would be no room unlikely. He employs means to our shallow left for the operations of faith, no call for views the most improbable to effect his own the exercise of patience, no demand for gracious purposes. In every thing he evin- the grace of humility. The road to perfecces that his thoughts are not as our thoughts. tion is tedious and suffering, steep and rugHe overrules the opposition of our enemies, ged; our impatience would leap over all the the defection of our friends, the faults of our intervening space which keeps us from it, children the loss of our fortune as well as rather than climb it by slow and painful the disappointments attending its possession steps. We would fain be spared the sorrow -the unsatisfactoriness of pleasures as well and shame of our own errors, of all their as the privation-the contradiction of our vexatious obstructions, all their dishonourdesires the failure of plans which we able impediments. We would be comthought we had concerted, not only with pletely good and happy at once without passgood judgment but pure intentions. He ing through the stages and gradations which makes us sensible of our faults by the mis-lead to goodness and happiness. We re

quire an instantaneous transformation which were equally powerful in these cases as in costs us nothing; the Spirit of God works by the others. We may, indeed plead an apoa gradual process which costs us much. logy that the command we resist is of less We would combine his favour with our self-portance than that with which we comindulgence; we would be spared the trials ply; but this is a false excuse, for the autho he has appointed without losing the felicity rity which enjoins the least, is the same with he has promised. We complain of the that which commands the greatest; and it severity of the operation, but the operation is the authority by which we are to submit, would not be so severe, if the disease did not as much as to the command. lie so deep. There is a passage in St. Luke which Besides, the afflictions which God ap-does not seem to be always brought to bear points, are not seldom sent to save us from on this point as fully as it ought: unless a those we should bring on ourselves, and man forsake all that he hath, he cannot be which might have added guilt to misery.my disciple.' This does not seem to be He threatens, but it is that he may finally quite identical with the command in another save. If punishment is his strange,' it is place, that a man should sell all that he has,' also his necessary works.' Even in the &c. When the Christian world indeed was sorest affliction, the loss of those we love, in its infancy, the literal requisition in both there may be a mercy impenetrable to us. — cases was absolutely necessary. But it apGod has, perhaps, laid up for us in heaven pears to be a more liberal interpretation of that friend whom he might have lost in eter-the command, as 'forsaking,' all that we nity, had he been restored to our prayers have, extends to a full and entire consecrahere. But if the affliction be not improved, it is, indeed unspeakably heavy. If the loss of our friend does not help to detach us from the world, we have the calamity without the indemnification; we are deprived of our treasure without any advantage to ourselves. If the loss of him we loved does not make us more earnest to secure our salvation, we may lose at once our friend and our soul.To endure the penalty and lose the profit, is to be emphatically miserable.

Sufferings are the only reiics of the true cross, and when Divine grace turns them to our spiritual good, they almost perform the miracles which blind superstition ascribes to the false one. God mercifully takes from us what we have not courage to offer him; but if, when he resumes it, he sanctifies the loss, let us not repine. It was his while it was ours. He was the proprietor while we were the possessors.

tion of ourselves to God, a dedication without reserve, not of fortune only, but of every desire, every faculty, every inclination, every talent; a resignation of the whole will, a surrender of the whole soul. It is this surrender which alone sanctifies our best actions. It is this pure oblation, this offering of unshared affection, this unmaimed sacrifice, which is alone acceptable to God, through that full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, made for the sins of the whole world. Our money he will not accept without our good will, our devotions without our affections, our services without our hearts. Like the prevaricating pair, whose duplicity was punished by instant death, whatever we keep back will annihilate the value of what we bring. It will be nothing if it be not all,*

CHAP. V.

On Parable.

Though we profess a general readiness to submit to the Divine will, there is nothing in which we are more liable to illusion. Self-love is a subtle casuist. We invent dis- IT is obvious, that the reason why mankind, tinctions. We too critically discriminate in general, are so much delighted with allebetween afflictions which proceed more im-gory and metaphor, is, because they are so mediately from God, and disappointments proportioned to our senses, those first inlets which come from the world. To the former of ideas. Ideas gained by the senses quickly we acknowledge, in words at least, our will-pass into the region of the imagination; and ingness to submit. In the latter, though from thence, more particularly the illiterate equally his dispensation, we seem to feet and uninformed, fetch materials for the emjustified in refusing to acquiesce. God does ployment of their reason.

not desire us to inflict punishments on our- Little reaches the understanding of the selves, he only expects us to bear with ap-mass but through this medium. Their tience those he inflicts on us, whether they minds are not fitted for the reception of abcome more immediately from himself or through the medium of his creatures.

stract truth. Dry argumentative instruction, therefore, is not proportioned to their Love being the root of obedience, it is no capacity; the faculty by which a right contest of that obedience, if we obey God only clusion is drawn, is, in them the most defecin things which do not cross our inclinations, tive; they rather feel strongly than judge while we disobey him in things that are re-accurately: and their feelings are awakened pugnant to them. Not to obey except when by the impression made on their senses, it costs us nothing is rather to please ourselves than God, for it is evident we should disobey him in these also if the allurement

The connexion of these remarks with the subject of instruction by parable, is obvious, • Acis, chap. v.