not, the consequence must necessarily be despondency, vexation, and fretfulness at the ways of Providence.

The will of God is my pole-star, and, with my eye constantly on it, I shall be carried safely through all storms and tempests.

I am not sure of the present hour. I am sure that I have nothing to do with any thing else.

Bearing with thyself in the want of spiritual strength, or absence of spiritual comfort, is neither more nor less than bearing with God, and the effect of no common grace.

Without the enjoyment of conscience I can have no other.

The Spirit in the children of God, is like an organ; one man is one stop; another, another; the sound is different, the instrument the same, but music in all.

Whatever opposes God in my heart, or keeps him out of it, must be abhorred and cast out. The opposition is strong, and the work difficult, and we see at once that it can only be done with divine help. It is the excellence of Scripture to offer this help, and call us to make use of it.

Head-knowledge is our own, and can polish only the outside; heart-knowledge is the Spirit's work, and makes all glorious within. Nothing is well done in our spiritual building, but what is done with prayer and God's help. Fight and pray. Fly and pray. Thank God for laying his command on my heart, and for disposing my heart to delight in it.

When we feel no burden, and complain of no want but that of entire sanctification, life will be a continual dying, and death welcome.

When we obey the will of God from the heart, we stand before him, as the angels do, in the original glory and full blessing of our natures; and so far as we come short of this, we come short of happiness. Is this a dying thought?

All think they mean well: and by an egregious

piece of self-flattery they take it for granted that our defect of good lies not in the will but the ability. Just the reverse: if the will is good, we are good.

Purity of heart, mind, and conscience, does not consist in freedom from temptation or total insensibility, but in abstinence from the outward act of sin, and suppression of all inward motions and tendencies to it, in the fear of God, and with a steady choice of his will. I shall be a happy man, and possess consciousness of help from above in answer to prayer, when I am determined at all events for the will of God. Show me where the will of God is, I know where pleasure is. Sensuality will not do, gross or refined. Nothing can support my spirits, or enable me to pass through the world with any degree of constant satisfaction, but walking with God, in the faith of Christ, as a reconciled Father, doing his will, under his eye, with his help, acquiescing in this state of mind, looking no farther, desiring no other riches, living for no other end.

If we long truly for God, he has given us a great deal in that longing! and if he makes us wait now, he will make us full amends hereafter. O Jesus, call me to God by thy cross, thy love, thy Spirit, and then call me home!

O for a steady will to think and do all with a sole regard to the eye of God, and with great indifference for the esteem or censure of any man living.

In case of sin allowed or weakly resisted, the conscience will not be quieted with hopes and promises; no, nor with the blood of Christ.

The more faith, the less conscience of sin and less servile fear; the less conscience of sin, the more consciousness and lively sensibility of its odious cursed nature.

Time flies fast, but conscience should keep pace with it.

Press on, in the name and strength of God, to an assured victory.

The heart is due to God. Oh what joy, ease, and freedom, when I can say it is God's, for his love, for Christ's sake, by the Spirit's power! No enjoyment but in God, or God's work. Oh for the pure heart and the single eye?

It is a hard thing for a real Christian, fearing and striving against all sin, to be patient with it, in submission to the divine will; but what can we do, if God is pleased to suffer it in us, as he does for wise purposes, to humble us, to convince us of our dependence, to keep us close to Christ? So St. Paul exulted in the grace of God, and could defy remaining corruption to condemn him, Rom. vii. The moment we think that we have no sin, we shall desert Christ.

We may know by our affection to the Sabbath, whether eternity will be forced on us.

If it pleases God to endue me with spiritual wisdom, I shall from henceforth pay a greater regard to the teaching of my Lord, and have no treasure but in heaven, no heart but for heaven.

The great mistake of life is self-pleasing, or looking for a state of rest and satisfaction here, not only in sensual gratification, but even in the way of religion, instead of taking up the cross, labour in duty, and submission to the will of heaven, with a renunciation of all worldly schemes of happiness, and patient waiting for death to put us in possession of it. The only happiness of this world is preparing in it for another, and being content without it till death.

To think and act, to be as much disengaged in respect of N. N. and as necessarily drawn to seek happiness elsewhere, as if there were no such person in the world-the work is great, and the time is short, but what cannot God do?

I never was happy till I knew that I could not be happy in this world, and consented to wait for it till God's time and place. This thought will keep me from all self-pleasing in forbidden ways; reconcile

me to sufferings, crosses, injuries, mortifications; and put a smile on the face of death.

Religion does not consist in a point. The soul that has entered into the true spirit of it, is never satisfied with its attainments, but continually presses on to greater heights, and notwithstanding the greatest abundance of graces received, is still craving, thinks itself poor, and utterly unworthy of any reward. This is humility and poverty of spirit. Pride will carry a man to heaven's gate, but nothing but humility will find admission.

"He that is not with me," says our Saviour, "is against me." Mere indifference to good is evil.

The truest mortification, and the surest tests of a real disposition to be mortified, are those which we receive from others and from God. Self-mortification, or crosses of our own choosing, are often only a more refined species of pride and self-will.

The world slides into our hearts by the avenues of sense, in cases we little think of. There may be danger in giving ourselves up fully to a warm sunshine, or the pleasures of a beautiful landscape. This may be thought morose indeed; but let the militant soul be on its guard.

I may cheat myself and others with a counterfeit appearance of virtue, or rather keep under the contrary appearance by continual acts of violence; but the reality of it and of all our graces, can only spring from a nature. Consciousness of our want of this nature, and sensible concern for it, is the beginning of religion or repentance; patient waiting on God for it, according to Christ, is the progress of religion, or faith and hope; and the actual receiving of it is the end of religion, or charity. The man who has the Spirit of God and of Christ, is spiritual, redeemed, a Christian, the child of God, and has in him the nature and life of heaven and eternity. The man who has no other spirit than his own, though ever so learned, rational and regular in his behaviour, is carnal,

sensual, earthly, the child of death, and stands in the kingdom of darkness: the tree is corrupt, and the fruit corrupt, though they appear ever so beautiful. This doctrine is of the very essence and life-blood of Christianity, and nothing can be plainer, or more full to the purpose, than St. Paul's assertion, Rom. viii. 9. But it is a terrible mystery to fleshly wisdom, and will for ever be the subject of debate and contradiction.

Sanctification is a gift; and the business of man is to desire, receive, and use it. But he can by no act or effort of his own, produce it in himself. Grace can do every thing; nature nothing.

When my appetite is weak, squeamish, or vitiated, I know it is a symptom of decay and bodily disorder; and is not the want or deprivation of spiritual appetite, the same indication of debility and great disorder in the soul?

In temporals, riches is power; in spirituals, poverty.

It is a terrible mortification to a serious man, to find the evil spirit still in possession, after he had thought it entirely gone. But withal it affords a happy conviction of our impotence, as well as inbred corruption, and will lead in time, with hearty repentance and true faith, to that friendly power from whence cometh our help.

It is with the soul as with the stomach; there must be a healthy constitution of both, to digest and assimilate their respective food.

Meekness of wisdom compels, where reason cannot persuade.

When we quit our hold of the creature and of earthly enjoyments, what is there left for us to stay on? What can make us amends for the want of them? Is there any thing beside that we can feel, relish, and feed on with delight? Yes; faith, hope, and charity. These are a blessed resource to the soul; and it is the choice and possession of these