itself with God: and it will, at last, undoubtedly be conjoined with him; no dismal shades of darkness can possibly stop it in its course, or bear it back. Nay, we do but deceive ourselves with names. Hell is nothing but the orb of sin and wickedness, that hemisphere of darkness in which all evil moves; and heaven is the opposite hemisphere of light, the bright orb of truth, holiness, and goodness. And, in this life, we actually instate ourselves in the possession of one or other of them. Take sin and disobedience out of hell, and it will presently clear up into light, tranquillity, and serenity, and shine out into a heaven. Every true saint carries his heaven about with him, in his own heart; and hell, that is without, can have no power over him. He might safely wade through hell itself, and, like the three children, pass through the midst of that fiery furnace, and yet not at all be scorched with its flames, He might walk through the valley of the shadow of death, and yet fear no evil.

I wish it may not prove some of our cases, at the last day, to use such pleas as these unto Christ in our behalf; 'Lord, I have prophesied in thy name: I have preached many a zealous sermon for thee; I have kept many a long fast; I have been very active for thy cause in church, in state; nay, I never made any question, but that my name was written in the book of life:'when yet, alas! we shall receive no other return from Christ but this: "I know you not; depart from me, ye workers of iniquity."

TRUTH.

'THE first creature of God, in the works of the days, was the light of the sense; the last was the light of reason; and his Sabbath work, ever since, is the illumination of his spirit. First he breathed light upon the face of the matter, or chaos; then he breathed light into the face of man; and still he breatheth and inspireth light into the face of his chosen. Lucretius, who beautified the sect, that was otherwise inferior to the rest, saith yet excellently well, "It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore, and see ships tossed upon the sea: a pleasure to stand in the window of a castle, and to see a battle, and the adventures thereof below: but no pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage ground of truth, (a hill not to be commanded, and where the air is always clear and serene,) and to see the errors, and wanderings, and mists, and tempests, in the vale below:" so always that this prospect be with pity, and not with swelling or pride. Certainly, it is heaven upon earth to have a man's mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth.'

TRUE HAPPINESS.

GRACE is holiness militant; holiness, encumbered with many enemies and difficulties, which it ever fights against, and manfully acquits itself. And glory is nothing else but holiness triumphant; holiness, with a palm of victory in her hand, and a crown upon her head. God himself cannot make me happy, if he be only without me, and unless he vouchsafe a participation of him

self and his own likeness, into my soul.' Happiness is nothing but the releasing and unfettering of our souls from all narrow scant, and particular good things: and the espousing of them to the highest and most universal good, which is not this or that particular good, but goodness itself: and this is the same thing, which we call holiness. With which, because we ourselves are so little acquainted-for the most part ever courting its mere shadow-therefore, we have such low, abject, and beggarly conceits of it; whereas, it is, in itself, the most noble, heroical, and generous thing in the world. For I mean by holiness, nothing else but GoD stamped and printed on the soul. And we may please ourselves with what conceits we will; but, so long as we are void of this, we do but dream of heaven, and I know not what fond paradise; we do but blow up and down an airy bubble of our own fancies, which raises out of the froth of our vain hearts; we do but court a painted heaven and woo happiness in a picture, whilst, in the mean time, a true and real hell will absorb our souls into it, and will soon make us sensible of solid woe and substantial misery.

WHAT MAY BE KNOWN ONLY BY EXPERIENCE.

INK and paper can never make us Christians; can never beget a new nature, a living principle in us; can never form Christ, or any true notions of spiritual things, in our hearts. The Gospel, that new law which CHRIST delivered to the world, is not merely a dead letter without us, but a quickening spirit within us. Cold

theorems and maxims, dry and jejune disputes, lean syllogistical reasonings, could never yet, of themselves, beget the least glimpses of true heavenly light, the least sap of saving knowledge, in any heart. All this is but the groping of the poor dark spirit of man after truth; to find it out with his own endeavours, and feel it with his own cold and benumbed hands. Words and syllables, which are but dead things, cannot possibly convey the living notions of heavenly truth to us. The secret mysteries of divine life, of a new nature, of Christ formed in our hearts, cannot be written or spoken; language and expressions cannot reach them: neither can they be truly understood, except the soul itself be kindled from within, and awakened into the life which animates them. A painter that would draw a rose, though he may flourish some likeness of it in figure and colour, can yet never paint the scent and fragrancy; or, if he would draw a flame, he cannot put a constant heat into his colours; he cannot make his pencil drop a sound, as the echo in the epigram mocks at him. All the skill of cunning artisans and mechanics, cannot put a principle of life into a statue of their own making. Neither are we able to inclose in words and letters, the life, soul, and essence, of any spiritual truths, and, as it were, to incorporate it in them.

A GREAT DEAL DONE TO NO GOOD EFFECT. INDEED, we seem to do something: we are always moving and lifting at the stone of corruption which lies upon our hearts, but yet we never stir it, or at least never roll it off from us. are sometimes a little troubled with the guilt of

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our sins, and then, we think we must thrust our desires out of our hearts; but afterward, we sprinkle ourselves over with I know not what holy water, and so, are contented to let those desires still abide quietly within us. We every day truly confess the same sins, and pray against them; and yet, we still commit them as much as ever, and lie as deeply under the power of them. We have the same water to pump out, in every prayer; and still we let the same leak in again upon us. We make a great deal of noise, and raise a great deal of dust with our feet; but we do not move from off the ground on which we stood, we do not at all go forward. Or, if we do sometimes make a little progress, we quickly lose again the ground which we had gained; like those upper planets in the heaven, which, as the astronomers tell us, sometimes move forward, sometimes quite backward, and sometimes perfectly stand still; have their stations and retrogradations, as well as their direct motions. As if religion were nothing else but a dancing up and down upon the same piece of ground, and making several motions and friskings on it; and not a sober journeying, and travelling onward toward some certain place. We do and undo: we weave sometimes a web of holiness, but then we let our passions come and undo and unravel all again. Like Sisyphus in the fable, we roll up a mighty stone, with much ado, sweating and tugging, up the hill; and then we let it go, and tumble down again unto the bottom; and this is our constant work. Like those Danaides, whom the poets speak of, we are always, by our prayers, duties, and performances, filling water into a sieve, which still runs out as fast as we pour it in.