structed to draw from our afflictions an incentive to the correction of depraved habits, the attainment of Christian virtues, the pursuit of a future and eternal good-to attain a moral elevation from defeated projects and our decaying hopes, and on the scarred and dreary ruins of an earth-built edifice, to command a wider prospect, and breathe a purer life.

On this subject, we cannot forbear adverting to that wretched and deplorable insensibility to the teaching and discipline of Divine Providence, which those evince who are reduced by their afflictions to utter and hopeless despondency; and instead of bearing with patience the rod of the Almighty, and profiting by his paternal chastisement, are goaded by it to despair and self-destruction. We should shrink from asserting the act of suicide to be impossible to a Christian in a state of salvation; and thus applying to the destroyer of himself the awful and withering judgment which the Apostle pronounced upon the murderer of his fellow :-"Ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him."* But not attempting to compute the heinousness of suicide as a crime-not forgetting that it is often perpetrated under stunned or

* 1 John iii. 15.

debilitated faculties-not forgetting the mercy of God, who "knoweth our frame," the fact is surely most lamentable, and prior to experience might well appear incredible, that any should be driven to such a state of hopelessness and desperation as impels to self-destruction-any who have been made acquainted with the Gospel, and have not rejected the record of our redemption by Jesus Christ as an imposture or a fable. The jailor at Philippi, when he thought that his prisoners, Paul and Silas, had escaped from his custody, was alarmed to desperation-" he drew out his sword, and would have killed himself;" but when arrested by the signals of a preternatural interposition,-when the ideas of God, of His searching judgment, and his own everlasting destiny, rushed and crowded upon him, the fright which had seized him on the supposed escape of his prisoners-his dread of human punishment, was sunk and lost in the terror which then overwhelmed him-the peril that threatened his immortal spirit.

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What," he exclaimed " 'trembling". "what Ishall I do to be saved?" The answer of the Apostles was-"Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy

*Acts xvi. 27.

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house." The self-destroyer in a Christian land has heard those words a thousand times— words so fraught with consolation to the troubled mind! inspiring a faith and hope for which multitudes have even "borne with cheerfulness the loss of all things;" have even "gloried in tribulation ;" and triumphed in death itself. Yes, the self-destroyer has heard the words of eternal life, he has been taught to seek, "by patient continuance in well-doing, glory, honour, and immortality,"* and to be "a follower of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises;" yet, when assailed by calamity-in the loss of his property, a wound in his affections, or a stain upon his honour-he is broken down and crushed in the conflict. Despair seizes him though God is not implacable—though eternity is yet to come-though heaven itself may still be his," the fulness of joy which is at God's right hand," the "pleasures" that are "for evermore," - nay, though the "Lord our God" is, pre-eminently and to the last,

a merciful God," and has promised to those who in tribulation "turn unto him, and are obedient unto his voice," that he will "never forsake them!" We need not longer dwell on this + Heb. vi. 12.

* Rom. ii. 7.

deep forgetfulness, this reckless abandonment of all that is most worthy and enduring in our nature this utter incongruity with the knowledge and privileges of persons who bear the name of Christians-the name of Him who "hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows," and "by whose stripes we are healed.”

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But, reverting to what was offered at the outset of this discourse, we would urge the necessity of providing against the troubles and perplexities which may await us by abstracted meditation, and a preparatory discipline of the mind; so that when the storm shall come, may find us already anchored in the faith of the Gospel, and an habitual confidence towards God. This is the wisdom taught us in the Scriptures, and the use which they forewarn us to make of this troubled and perishable life" Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them"*... This is the only sure method of profiting by the afflictions to which we are subject in this fallen world: for though, doubtless, the actual experience of suffering affects us more powerfully than the prospect of it; yet it should be well consi

*Eccles. xii. 1.

dered that it is under the prospective discipline of affliction - it is in the habitual sense of exposure to it, and preparation to meet it, that we extend the instruction which it is designed to impart, throughout the whole of our lives, and derive from it a constant and uniform motive to amend the character, "perfecting holiness in the fear of God."* Whereas it is too often seen that those who are heedless of disease or calamity, till it actually comes upon them, and startles them from a dream of

peace and security, obtain from it no lasting impressions, or effectual improvement; but relapse into what they were before, the abject slaves of circumstances, rather than the intelligent pupils of Divine Providence and-so contrasted is the external condition of the same individuals at different times-that such are not unfrequently driven from one extreme in religion to another; from indifference and recklessness to terror and consternation; from presumption to despondency; from torpor to perturbations of enthusiasm and fanaticism :reminding us of those latitudes where the winds afford no equable and continued breeze, and never break their death-like silence but in the rage of hurricanes; where the ocean * 2 Cor. vii. 7.