Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth; for ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.

God is all-sufficient; get him for your portion and you have all; then you have infinite wisdom to direct you, infinite knowledge to teach you, infinite mercy to pity and save you, infinite love to care for and comfort you, and infinite power to protect and keep you. If God be yours, all his attributes are yours; all his creatures, all his works of Providence, shall do you good, as you have need of them. He is an eternal, full, satisfactory portion. He is an ever-living, ever-loving, ever-present friend; and without him you are a cursed creature in every condition, and all things will work against you.

Consider, that by nature you are dead in trespasses and sin; a child of wrath, a stranger and enemy to God; and while such, the thoughts of God are terrible to you: you can expect nothing from him but wrath and everlasting burnings. God is ever angry with the wicked: his holiness hates all sin; his all-seeing eye beholds it, and his justice will punish it.

While you are in a state of nature, you can do nothing but sin. Every thing is a snare, and a wicked heart is apt to be taken. Labour to be sensible of this, and let the sinfulness of your nature be your greatest burden. Strive and labour against this principally. Get purity of heart, and a holy life will follow upon it; but if you strive only against outward acts of sin, while your heart is let alone, your labour will be in vain, your heart will tire you out; or if it doth not, yet remember, that God's eye is in the heart, and he hath pro

vided a hell for hypocrites. Nothing more damnable than a wicked unrenewed heart.

Consider, that Christ alone is your way to God. Justification, pardon, and acceptance with God, are by faith in him alone. Sanctification, and a new nature, are by the power of his spirit alone. Let Christ therefore be precious to your souls. Labour for true faith in him. Take him for your Lord and Saviour; submit to his commands in all things; and rest your soul upon him alone for reconciliation, and peace with God. Open your heart to the motions of his spirit; welcome that principle of a holy and divine life, and be sure to improve his motions, follow his drawings, and by no means grieve him.

Be speedy in your repentance, and diligent in your endeavours after holiness. Know the time of God's gracious visitation. While God is calling, Christ inviting, the gate of heaven set open, the ministers of the word exhorting, and the spirit drawing, make haste and delay not.

Consider your life is but short, and altogether uncertain. To defer one day may be to your everlasting undoing. When your life is once gone, it will be in vain to think of repenting. You shall then have no more sermons, no more offers of Christ and grace. God will be patient no more. And if God should take away your life to-morrow, you would perish inexcusably for refusing his grace to-day. One offer of grace refused, renders a sinner inexcusable, though God should never offer his mercy more. O, trifle not with your soul! be not careless of eternal happiness. You have heaven and hell, life and death before you, and it depends upon your own hearty choice, which shall be your portion: and

they are chosen by the choice of the way which leads to them. Choose life, and choose it speedily. And remember once again, that you have but one life to choose in. Trifle not away this moment, upon which depends eternity: mispend not your short time to your eternal loss.

Stand not upon a short labour, difficulty, selfdenial, or suffering, for your eternal happiness. God would have you saved: Christ hath died for you to reconcile you to God: he is ascended into heaven to open a door for your soul to enter in at, and he is interceding with the Father for all grace and mercy for you, if you refuse him not.

"He came into the world to seek and to save that which is lost." Be sensible of your sinful, lost, damnable condition without him. O! make haste to your Saviour, yield to all his demands, and take him as offered in the gospel, in all his offices.

PROPER REFLECTIONS FOR AFFLICTED

SAINTS.

OUTWARD good things are no sign of God's special love. The sun of prosperity shines upon the brambles of the wilderness, as well as upon the flowers of the garden; and the snow of affliction falls upon the garden as well as upon the wilderness.

What though the streams of creature goodness run low with thee, so thou hast the more from the spring-head? There is more comfort in one drop that distils immediately from God, than from ten thousand rivers that flow from creature' delights.

God doth sometimes on purpose show us the creature's emptiness, that we may go to his full

cisterns, that we may know him to be the fountain: and that we may feed more largely upon spiritual dainties, he does deny us carnal ones.

What though God deny thee the earthly jewel, if he gives thee the heavenly crown?-if thou hast no portion here, thou shalt have a kingdom hereafter; and God is thy portion here, and so long thou shalt not want any good thing. Creature comforts at the best, and to the best, are only delightful, not satisfying; pleasant, not gainful!

What if thy friends forsake thee, so long as God (who is better than all) stand by thee?— Whatever enjoyment friends afford, that God does much more. Do they love thee? He died for thee. Do they pity thee in affliction? In all thy affliction he is afflicted. What wouldst thou have a friend for? For converse; O. taste and see how good and pleasant a thing it is to have communion with God! Hear (if thou canst, and not be ravished) the sweet voice, I am thine and thou art mine. O! feel the pantings of his heart, and hear the soundings of his bowels! Wouldst thou have a friend to pour out thy breast into? O! who is so fit for that as God? He will bear part of thy burden if thou art laden, or he will add new strength to sustain it—his love, his converse, his society, his life itself; and such a life is made up of nothing but sweetness and delight.

THE SEED-TIME OF SUPERSTITION.

THIS day (Childermas or Innocents' day,) puts me in mind of the great perplexity and uneasiness which I have perceived in many people, occasioned by the superstitious impressions made upon

their minds, by the tales of weak and ignorant people, in their infancy-a period when the tender mind is more apt to receive the impressions of error and vice, as well as those of truth and virtue; and, having once received either the one or the other, is likely to retain them, as long as it subsists in the body. How charitable a care is it, therefore, and how much the duty of every parent whom it hath pleased God to bless with a right understanding, with whatever improvement he can, to his children! To have at least as much care of them as a gardener has of a nice and delicate plant that he values, when he diligently shelters and defends it, from the pernicious assaults of storms and tempests and blasting winds, till a milder season and warmer sun puts it out of danger! With no less industry ought a kind parent to guard the tender mind of his child, from the hurtful notions, and superstitious conceits, of foolish, ignorant people; who, by senseless and impertinent tales, begin to plant errors and evil in the innocent soul, even from the cradle. It is in the nursery where miserably deluded and deluding wretches first sow those tares in the child, which it is ten to one if the grown-up man is ever able to root out. There, every simple creature, if not prevented, will be blotting the yet clear and unspotted soul, and sullying it with false lines, and foul characters; besmearing it, after their awkward manner, with horrid images of frightful sprites and hobgoblins, and painting upon it a thousand monstrous and terrific shapes of death, to make their future life miserably wretched. Thus with a barbarous folly they create, betimes, the most abhorring aversion in the mind, to that which Providence has ordained; and with a detestable