hold out this needful and useful lesson to us: that it is a duty of most special concernment for every one of us to hold serious communication and clear intelligence and acquaintance with his own heart. I may well repeat it, for it had need be inculcated again and again; and as that golden saying, "Brethren, let us love one another," is reported to have been ever in the mouth of John the Evangelist, so had this as golden a saying, "Brethren, commune with your own hearts," as much need to be ever in the mouth of the ministers, and this truth ever in the hearts of the people.

That it is possible for a man to hold a conference and communication with his own heart, I should not need to prove it if you would but put it to proof within your own selves. And as he ingeniously proved that there is motion, against one that denied it, by rising out of his chair and walking up and down, so your hearts, without me, would make this assertion clear if you would but seriously and soundly put them to it, that they and you might confer together. I doubt not but many in this great congregation have done this already, and have had many a holy and solemn discourse with their own hearts, and conclude the truth of this matter by their own experience as soon as I name it. But as for such as have not had this practice nor cannot conclude this by experience, that never hear nor feel their conscience speak a word to them, should there come over them some dreadful judgment, or should there come before them some horrid apparitions, or should there come unto them a sure message of an instant death, as there did to Hezekiah, then, if they will but turn their face a little to the wall, retire their thoughts a little to their hearts they may chance hear their hearts speak something to them, which, it may be, they will like but ill, and there, it may be, they would feel by experience that there is something in them that would have talked with them heretofore, if they would have talked with it.

There are three parts of the soul, as I may so express it, of distinct and several notion and consideration; as there are three things in the sun, light, heat, and motion, so in the soul, the understanding, the will, and the conscience. The conscience lies, as it were, in the midst of the other two, as the centre of the soul, or "The midst of the heart," (as Prov. iv., 21,) whither there is conflux of whatsoever is good or evil in either of the other faculties.

Now either of those hath its discourse with itself, and conscience, if it act aright, hath its conference with them both.

The intellective faculty of the soul, or the understanding, doth, in a manner, talk to the will, when it offers it good or evil things to its choice or refusal; and it doth, in manner, talk to itself, in every reflex it exerciseth, when it doth not only attain to the knowledge of things, but is also able to say to itself, "I know, I know them;" as 1 John ii., 3, "Hereby we know that we know Him."

The elective faculty of the soul, or the will, doth confer and debate with and within itself, upon every election or refusal, when it doth either entertain or lay aside what is presented to it by the understanding, choosing or refusing upon such a discourse and argumentation with itself as this, "I choose it because it is good, and I refuse it because it is evil."

But "The participle faculty" of the soul, as I may so call it, or the conscience, as it is lodged between the two other, so it receives something from both, and returns something to both; from the intellective faculty it receives knowledge and memory, and it is told by them that such and such things ought to be done, or they ought not to be done; and then it makes an answer back to them by conviction, and saith, "I have done such things," or, "I have not done them." From the other faculty, or the will, it receives movedness and affecting; and when that faculty of the soul is moved or affected with the grievous or fearful

case of another, the conscience answers, "Why, this case is mine own," and makes a return to the affections by compunction, and says, "Alas! what have I done in thus doing?"

It appeareth that our conference with our own hearts had need to be serious, because the things that we can confer with them about are only of a most serious and weighty nature, viz., the things of the soul only.

The needfulness of such a serious conference will appear, also, upon the consideration of the deceitfulness of our own hearts. Talk close and home, and have clear intelligence with them, or else they will deceive us, they will tell us a thousand lies. As he in story, who hearing a man talk to himself as he walked along the highway, and questioning whom he talked withal, was answered, "I talk to myself; why, then, saith he, Cave ne cum malo loquaris, "Take heed thou talk not with one that is naught." You may resolve upon this, whensoever you come to commune with your own hearts, that you have to deal with a very cheat and a Jesuit, a Proteus, a juggler; that, if you put it not home to it, will not tell you one true story amongst a thousand. I speak this by the sad experience of a base, false, cozening, and deceitful heart of mine own; and I believe other men's hearts are of the same metal. O, wretched heart, thou hast deceived me, and I have been deceived; thou hast been too strong for me, and hast prevailed. But I speak this also upon the warrant of Him that knoweth all hearts, even the Spirit of God that discerneth the things of the Spirit. (Jer. xvii., 9.) "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?" Ah, sad climax! deceitful, and deceitful above all things; wicked, and desperately wicked, and so bad of both, that who can know it! Such another miserable gradation ye have expressed concerning the very same subject in Gen. vi., 5, "The frame of the thoughts of man's heart was wholly evil, was only evil, and was evil continually."

There are four things especially that cause this strange and senseless strangeness and unacquaintance betwixt a man and himself, and they are these:

1st. Idleness; when men will not take the pains to put their heart to it to discourse with them. Heart-communication is not an easy work, and few there be that, for idleness, will undertake it.

2nd. Carelessness of their own souls; and so they are not careful to discuss with them the things that concern them.

3rd. Worldliness; which takes up all the time and thoughts that should be laid out upon the heart, as Hos. iv., 11; and as it was with him, 1 Kings xx., 40.

And 4th. Readiness to be deceived; Decipi vult populus, men love leasing, as verse two of this psalm; and as, by our fall, Et bonum perdidimus et voluntatem, we not only lost good, but also the will to do it, so, in our first deception by Satan, we had not only a deceit put upon us, but a deceiveableness, nay, a readiness to be deceived put into us.

And thus, as Tempora quædam surripiuntur, quædam eripiuntur, quædam excidunt; so it is with the care of and converse with our own hearts. What the palmer-worm of idleness leaves the locust of carelessness eateth; and what the locust leaveth the canker-worm of worldliness devours; and what that canker-worm leaveth the caterpillar of readiness to be deceived hath consumed; and thus hath all converse and communication with our own hearts been eaten up.

It is recorded of Job's friends that when they came to him, and knew him not, he was so changed, that they wept and rent their garments. I would this might be the conclusion of this first use or application, or the fruit of all that I have spoken hitherto. Look upon your own hearts; do you know them? when had you and they any talk together?

how much of your time have you spent in communication with them? have you not been strangers? have you not been unacquainted? have you not forgotten them? Be humbled, bemoan, be affected that you have been such strangers, and lay your hands upon your hearts, and resolve to be so no more.

The Blessing of a Long Life.

JOHN LIGHTFOOT, D.D.

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YE have holy men in Scripture praying for prolonging of their lives, and that upon this warrant, that God promised long life as a blessing, Psalm xxi., 4, "He asked life of Thee, and Thou gavest it him, even length of days for ever and ever." And, Psalm xxxix., 13, "O spare me, that I may recover strength." And Psalm cii., 24, I said, "O my God, take me not away in the midst of my days." And so in the case of Hezekiah, how bitterly did he take the tidings of the cutting off of his days! Whether it were that it went sadly with him to die of the plague, or that he saw not Jerusalem delivered from Sennacherib, yet certainly it cost some tears to think he was to be taken away, even in his prime, and his life prolonged no farther.

To this may be added, that God promised it for a peculiar blessing, "Thou shalt come to thy grave in a good old age." (Job v., 26.) And how feeling a promise is that, Zech. viii., 4, "Thus saith the Lord of Hosts, there shall yet old men and old women dwell in the streets of Jerusalem, and every man with his staff in his hand for very age." Methinks I see the streets full of such venerable heads and gravity; every one crowned with grey hairs and old age, a crown of blessing.