moment God resumes his place in the heart of man, for God becomes his all, by becoming his hope. From that moment his rebellion against God ceases, because the heart cannot be in rebellion against him in whom it ts. Thus are explained and justified the blessings promised to him who trusts in the Lord, and the maledictions denounced against the man who puts his confidence in any other than him.

We have said that trust in the Lord is our happi, ness as well as our duty. Is it possible to be happy while we trust not in God, while we depend on the strength or wisdom of man and make flesh our arm? If you saw a place full of sharp spikes where there was only a spot here and there on which you might with great circumspection tread without being wounded, would you feel easy if you saw a weak and ignorant child obliged to walk in that dangerous path ? And would you not tremble for him if you saw him enter, ing on such a perilous expedition in dependance on his own wisdom and strength ? Alas! we are like that feeble child; we walk in a path, where we meet at every step innumerable dangers both to the body and to the soul. How then can we have a heart at ease if we walk in it, trusting to ourselves ?

Shall we be at peace while we imagine that our tem. poral interest depends upon the elements, the seasons, on public or private events, on the good or ill-will of others whose interest may be connected with or, opposed to our own; while we make our own exists ence, or that of beings who are dear to us, our lot or theirs, to depend upon a thousand circumstances independent of our will, in the midst of which we are of necessity obliged to walk ? Can we, unless we be the deluded victims of pride or of improvidence, have a moment's peace, while we travel the difficult path of life

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in reliance on ourselves? Isit surprising that some persons have lost their reason on seeing their plans in a moment destroyed, their enterprises disconcerted, and the beings whom they cherished snatched from them by death; seeing their human supports fail, and the future presenting them with the prospect of a thousand misfortunes which they were unable to ward off? And to take a particular example, what peace can a father or mother enjoy when they see their beloved child, the son of their fondest affections, laid upon a bed of suffering, and struggling with disease, if they make his life depend upon the skill and penetration, more or less, of a physician, or upon a possible error in a medicine, or in the time of administering it; if they are constrained to watch the eye of the physician, and await his answers as the decisions of life or death ? that child be taken from them, how will it increase their agony to think that' his death depended upon such an error or such an oversight which might have been prevented. No, there can be no peace except for him who trusts in that God who holds in his hand the thread of all events, who makes them all work together for good to them that love God, and who was pleased to tell us in his love, “ The very hairs of your head are numbered : fear ye not therefore.”

With regard to spiritual things, ean we be happy confiding in ourselves, in a world where we meet with continual objects of temptation, where Satan inces: santly roams about our path with the subtilty of a serpent, and the rage of a lion, and where we continually carry with us a beart wbich is a world of iniquity ? And where is the peace, where is the repose of that man who trusts in himself, and places not his confidence in the Lord ? He goes round a continual and wearying circle of resolutions, and falls. A fall leads

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to a new resolution, which he hopes will be more lasting than the preceding, and this is followed by new falls as great as the former. If it seems, sometimes, that shame for his continual relapses gives him ą. degree of energy which enables him to carry off a momentary victory, he soon succumbs again, and is plunged as deep as ever in the mire where he finds no footing. His punishment resembles that of the unhappy man whom the pagan fable represents as condemned to roll to the top of a mountain a ponderous stone, which, every time he approaches the summit, escapes from his hands, and rolls back to the point from which he had started, thus continually renewing his toilsome and ineffectual labour. So long as we place not our confidence in the Lord; so long as we commit not our heart into the hands of Him who “is greater than our heart,” who alone can change it, and turn it as he pleases ; our heart being the same, will continually lead us into the same errors, for “ out of it are the issues of life.” My will is not master of my will, and until, by a dependance upon God, I have obtained that “ his strength should be perfected in my weakness,” until his irresistible voice has calmed and subdued my passions, I shall be like “the troubled sea which cannot rest,” and “whose waters cast up mire and dirt.” If wearied by so many unavailing efforts, a man receive not a lesson of confidence in God, he must end either in despair or in a hardness of heart similar to that of the Jews, who, in the time of Jeremiah, answered the prophet, “ There is no hope, but we will walk after our own devices, and we will every one do the imagination of his evil heart.” Jer. xviii. 12.

We have rather described the misery of the man who trusts not in the Lord, than the happiness of the man who puts his confidence in him, because the

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happiness of confiding in the Lord appears in a manner self-evident. To say of a man that he trusts in the Lord, seems to say without any need of proving it, that he is a happy man. Hence the Scripture contents itself with frequently repeating : “ Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is.” To trust is to repose, to trust in the Lord is to repose upon the wisest, the most powerful, the most tender, the most faithful of friends. Can you then doubt the happiness of the man who trusts in the Lord ? Must not that man be happy, who, to every anxious thought about the future that rises in his mind, can answer : “My heavenly Father knoweth what things I have need of;" who, to every difficulty which he meets can say, while he looks to Jesus crucified on Calvary; “In the mount, the Lord shall be found.” “He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things ?" You may see the Christian “in heaviness for a season, if need be, through manifold temptations ;" but you will find him, like Paul, “ sorrowful, yet always rejoicing ; perplexed, yet not in despair ; cast down, yet not destroyed.” When the Christian finds himself in situations apparently the most hopeless ; when every thing within him and without him appears dark and stormy; his trust in the promises of God shall be to him like “the bow in the cloud, a sign between him and his God,” that he need not fear to be overwhelmed by the flood. It shall be 66 an anchor to his soul both sure and stedfast which is cast within the vail, whither our forerunner even Jesus is entered for us.” When the eye of sense can see no way of escapes the eye of faith and of hope shall find one in the glorious promise which assures the child of God that his Father “will not suffer him to be tempted above what

escape, that he

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be able to hear it.” 2 Cor. x. 13. Oh, happy children of God, who are partakers of this confidence and rejoicing of hope! In traversing this earth, where “man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward,” it cannot be, but that you shall have your

, share of those sorrows which are common to the posterity of Adam, and of those afflictions which are pecaliar to the people of God; it cannot be but that you shall weep with other men. But thanks be to God, you sorrow not as those that have no hope.” your affliction aboundeth, your consolation doth much more abound.” You can be patient in tribulation,” because you are rejoicing in hope.” Instead of giv.

“ ing yourselves up to those continual lamentations over the miseries of life in which the worldly indulge when they are unhappy, and which they cannot silence by levity and vain dissipation, you can

66 comfort one another by your mutual faith;" you can stir up one another to “ lift up your heads because your redemption draweth nigh.” When the world says, in the accents of despair, All is lost, you can say with the apostle, “ We faint not; we are always confident; for we walk by faith, not by sight.” Where the man of the world is ready to become distracted from the num. her and weight of the afflictions which press upon him or threaten him, the Lord places on your head the “ helmet of salvation,” and you can say with David, * The Lord hath covered my head in the day of battle." In fine, when you have come to the moment when the hopes of the worldling “go down with him to the bars of the pit, and rest together with him in the dust;" instead of losing your hope, it is then you realize it; it is, then your hope increases and kindles_you lay hold on eternal life, and closing your eyes upon the