luted a creature can please thee or be kept from sinning against thee, suffer me not either to harden my heart by despising thy chastening, or to faint when rebuked of thee. Give me grace to look stedfastly unto the Lord Jesus, who, made perfect through suffering, is now seated at thy right hand, and may I in his spirit of patience, submission and rejoicing in the happy issue of sufferings, go through my far less sorrows, seeking only in all to glorify, as he did, thy holy Hear me for his sake. Amen.

name.

4. THE HEALING OF AFFLICTIONS.

How may we most effectually have the stroke of affliction removed, and the wound of affliction healed? Simply by returning to the Lord. This is made very plain in many directions of scriptures.

There may be a false healing, founded on false principles, very dangerous and very delusive. Jeremiah speaks thus against the prophets and priests of his day, they have healed the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, peace, peace, when there is no peace. Jer. vi. 14. Ezekiel calls this building a wall, and daubing it with untempered mortar, so that it falls down when the showers come. Ezek. xiii. 10-12. Our Lord also compares it to a building a house on the sand, that cannot abide the storm.

All mere palliatives of human invention are of this character. When the blame is laid by us on others, rather than on ourselves; when our fancied amendment is made the ground of our hopes; when our attention to the external decencies of religion is only made a cover for our real alienation of heart from God, all this is false healing. When good is

expected merely from man, and relief looked for only from an arm of flesh, however promising or flattering the prospect be, it is a false healing: Thy prophets have seen vain and foolish things for thee; and they have not discovered thine iniquity, to turn away thy captivity, but have seen for thee false burdens and causes of banishment. Lam. ii. 14.

All such false healing will only in the result occasion deeper wounds and sorrows. These palliatives may be delightful for the moment to the natural heart, but in the result they are very prejudicial and ruinous.

REAL HEALING comes in quite another way; in the discovery of our deep sinfulness and wickedness; in humbling ourselves on this account before God, and in returning to him with the whole heart. His gracious invitation, putting the very words of return into our mouth is, Come let us return unto the Lord, for he hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind us up; after two days will he revive us; in the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight. Hosea vi. 1, 2.

The Lord Jesus Christ is the only effectual Physician who heals every wound. Our sorrows are caused by our sins, and we are too proud to see and acknowledge the painful truth. To meet this extreme corruption of human nature one altogether without sin, one so exalted as to be above all involuntary suffering, came from heaven. He is the only-begotten Son of God, and one with God, and yet he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. This amazing expression of divine love melts our corrupt hearts entirely by its exceeding grace and loving-kindness, and discovers to us the cause and the evil of our disease, without

arming against our real interests, our prejudices. It shews us, in the sufferings of another, what sin really is, and so opens the way for our truly seeing our own character, and God's character, and loathing and abhorring ourselves for our vileness. Thus by his stripes we are healed. We are healed, not only as he atoned for all our guilt, and has procured the free remission of all our sins, but as our mind is brought to a right state. We are thus enabled to view God's dealings with us in their just light, as the dealings of paternal love; and the way is prepared, either for the removal of afflictions, by their having answered their designed end, or, if it be to our profit that they should be continued, for their becoming both greater and fuller blessings. They become such by present sanctification, and by preparing for us a richer crown of glory hereafter-working now so as to produce peaceable fruits of righteousness, and also working out for us hereafter a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.

This is the true healing of affliction; when we can feel that we are in the hands of a skilful physician, whose remedies, if painful, are wise and healing, and who prefers our future and established health to any merely transient and temporary revival that leaves us only the more weak and disabled afterwards. Such a skilful Physician, Christian reader, is that blessed Saviour, to whom we would recommend you to apply in every sorrow, from a personal experience of his ability to save. It is not a vain thing; it is a reality; it is an incalculable blessing. He can, he really does accomplish his appointed office, to comfort all that mourn, to appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give them beauty for ashes, the oil of

joy for mourning, and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. Isaiah Ixi. 2, 3.

Prayer for the Healing of Afflictions.

O Lord Jesus, thou Son of David, who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil, and who never rejected any that came to thee, heal my soul, for I have sinned against thee; help me so to contemplate thy wounds and bruises, thy sufferings and death for my sins, that I may see sin the worst of all evils, and look to thee for complete deliverance and sanctification; hear me for thy name's sake. Amen.

SCRIPTURES.

Job. Psalms. Ecclesiastes and Lamentations generally. Lev. x. Numb. xii. xxi. Deut. viii. xxxii. 1 Sam. i. ii. iii. Isa. ii. iii. xxix. xxxvii. liii. lxi. lxiii. Hosea vi. Micah vii. Malachi iii. Matt. viii. ix. John xiv. Rom. v. 2 Cor. iv. vi. xi. Phil. i. 2 Thess. i. Heb. xii. James i. v.

CHAPTER XV.

ON THE CHRISTIAN CONFLICT.

1. Conviction of Sin.-2. The Inward Warfare.-3. The Benefit of it. 4. The Victory of the Soul.

1. CONVICTION OF SIN.

THERE are deeper afflictions, however, than those which merely affect the body or relate only to this world, and to our present state; I mean conviction of our sinfulness before God, and of our spiritual danger through sin.

This heavy trouble which so little affects the worldly mind, that it can hardly be understood; or if understood is only known as a temporary and groundless alarm, is to the Christian a constant source of humiliation and affliction. The Psalms, especially those called penitential; and such as vi. xxxii. xxxviii. xxxix. xli. xlii. li. lxxiv. lxxvii. lxxix. lxxxv. cii. cxxx. cxliii. sufficiently prove this. It is a real knowledge of the plague of our own heart. 1 Kings viii. 38. David compares it to broken bones. Psalm li. 8. He says, trouble and anguish have taken