healed, and cleansed from the impure fountain of sinful thoughts. Neither could all its righteousness avail any thing, till such time as the Saviour came himself, the true Physician, who healeth freely-who gave himself a ransom for the race of mankind. He alone wrought the great and saving redemption, and cure of the soul; he it was that set it free from the state of bondage, and brought it out of darkness, having glorified it with his own light. He hath dried up the fountain of unclean thoughts, for "behold," saith the Scripture," the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world!

Its own medicines out of the earth, that is, its own righteous actions, were not able to heal it of so great a plague. But by the heavenly and Divine nature, the gift of the Holy Spirit, was man capable of recovering health, being purified in his heart by the Holy Ghost. Let us, therefore, have faith in him, and come to him in truth, that he may speedily perform his healing operation within us for he hath promised to "give to them. that ask him, his Holy Spirit; and to open to them that knock; and to be found of them that seek him: and he that promised can not lie. To him be glory and might for ever! Amen.

:

And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.-Matt. xxiv. 31.

WHY now doth he call them by angels, if he come thus openly, for they shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory? To honor them in this way also. But Paul saith, that they shall be caught up in clouds. And he saith this also, when he was speaking concerning a resurrection. For the Lord himself, it is said, shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel. So that when risen again, the angels shall gather them together, when gathered together the clouds shall catch them up; and all these things are done in a moment, in an instant. For it is not that he abiding above calleth them, but he himself cometh with the sound of a trumpet. And what mean the trumpets and the sound? They are for arousing, for gladness, to set forth the

amazing nature of the things then doing, for grief to them that are left.

Woe is me for that fearful day! For though we ought to rejoice when we hear these things, we feel pain, and are dejected, and our countenance is sad. Or is it I only that feel thus, and do ye rejoice at hearing of these things? For upon me at least there comes a kind of shudder when these things are said, and I lament bitterly, and groan from the very depth of my heart. For I have no part in these things, but in those that are spoken afterwards, that are said unto the Virgins, unto him that buried the talents he had received, unto the wicked servant. For this cause I weep to think from what glory we are to be cast out, from what hope of blessings, and this perpetually, and for ever, to spare ourselves a little labor. For if indeed this were a great toil, and a grievous law, we ought even so to do all things; nevertheless many of the remiss would seem to have at least some pretext, a poor pretext indeed, yet would they seem to have some, that the toil was great, and the time endless, and the burden intolerable; but now we can put forward no such objection; which circumstance most of all will gnaw us no less than hell at that time, when for want of a slight endeavor, and a little toil, we shall have lost heaven, and the unspeakable blessings. For both the time is short, and the labor small, and yet we faint and are supine. Thou strivest on earth, and the crown is in heaven; thou art punished of men, and art honored of God; the race is for two days, and the reward for endless ages; the struggle is in a corruptible body, and the reward in an incorruptible.

"The trumpet sounds,-Awake!—

Ye dead to judgment come!-
The pillars of creation shake,

While hell receives her doom.

"Thrice happy morn for those

Who love the ways of peace;
No night of sorrow e'er shall close,
Or shade their perfect bliss."

While I was musing, the fire burned.-Psalm xxxix. 3.

He that means to meditate in the best order to the production of piety, must not be inquisitive for the highest mysteries; but the plainest propositions are to him of the greatest use and evidence. For meditation is the duty of all; and, therefore, God hath fitted such matter for it, which is proportioned to every understanding; and the greatest mysteries of Christianity are plainest, and yet most fruitful of meditation, and most useful to the production of piety. High speculations are as barren as the tops of cedars; but the fundamentals of Christianity are fruitful as the valleys or the creeping vine. For know, that it is no meditation, but it may be an illusion, when you consider mysteries to become more learned, without thoughts of improving piety. Let your affections be as high as they can climb towards God, so your considerations be humble, fruitful, and practically mysterious. "Oh that I had the wings of a dove, that I might fly away and be at rest," said David. The wings of an eagle would have carried him higher, but yet the innocent dove did furnish him with the better emblem to represent his humble design; and lower meditations might sooner bring him to rest in God. It was a saying of Ægidius, "that an old and a simple woman, if she loves Jesus, may be greater than was brother Bonaventure." Want of learning, and disability to consider great secrets of theology, do not at all retard our progress to spiritual perfections; love to Jesus may be better promoted by the plainer understandings of honest and unlettered people, than by the finer and more exalted speculations of great clerks, that have less devotion. For although the way of serving God by the understanding be the best and most lasting, yet it is not necessary the understanding should be dressed with troublesome and laborious notions: the reason that is in religion is the surest principle to engage our services, and more perpetual than the sweetness and the motives of affection. But every honest man's understanding is then best furnished with the discourses and the reasonable parts of religion upon which Christ and his apostles did build a holy life, and the superstructures of piety; those are the best materials of his meditation.

So that meditation is nothing else but the using of all those arguments, motives, and irradiations, which God intended to be instrumental to piety. It is a composition of both ways; for it stirs up our affections by reason and the way of understanding, that the wise soul may be satisfied in the reasonableness of the thing, and the affectionate may be entertained with the sweetness of holy passion; that our judgment be determined by discourse, and our appetites made active by the caresses of a religious fancy. And, therefore, the use of meditation is, to consider any of the mysteries of religion with purposes to draw from it rules of life, or affections of virtue, or detestation of vice; and from hence the man rises to devotion, and mental prayer, and intercourse with God; and, after that he rests himself in the bosom of beatitude, and is swallowed up with the comprehensions of love and contemplation.

"O thou who camest from above,

The pure celestial fire t' impart,
Kindle a flame of sacred love

On the mean altar of my heart.

"There let it for thy glory burn,
With inextinguishable blaze,
And trembling to its source return,

In humble love, and fervent praise."

JULY 6.

DR. BATES.

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.-John xv. 13.

THERE is no kind of love that exceeds the affection which is expressed in dying for another. But there are divers degrees of it; and the highest is to die for our enemies. The apostle saith, Perhaps for a good man some would dare to die. It is possible, gratitude may prevail upon one who is under strong obligations, to die for his benefactor. Or some may from a generous principle be willing with the loss of their lives to preserve one, who is a general and a public good. But this is a rare, and almost incredible thing. It is recorded as a miraculous instance of the power of love, that the two Sicilian philosophers, Damon and

Pythias, each had courage to die for his friend. For one of them being condemned to die by the tyrant, and desiring to give the last farewell to his family, his friend entered into prison as his surety to die for him, if he did not return at the appointed time. And he came to the amazement of all, that expected the issue of such a hazardous caution. Yet in this example, there seems to be in the second, such a confidence of fidelity in the first, that he was assured he should not die in being a pledge for him; and in the first it was not mere friendship, or sense of the obligation, but the regard of his own honor that made him rescue his friend from death. And if love were the sole motive, yet the highest expression of it was to part with a short life, which in a little time must have been resigned by the order of nature. But the love of our Saviour was so pure and great, that there can be no resemblance, much less any parallel of it. For he was perfectly holy, and so the privilege of immortality was due to him, and his life was infinitely more precious than the lives of angels and men ; yet he laid it down, and submitted to a cursed death, and to that which was infinitely more bitter, the wrath of God. And all this for sinful men, who were under the just and heavy displeasure. of the Almighty. He loved us, and gave himself for us. If he had only interposed as an Advocate to speak for us, or only had acted for our recovery, his love had been admirable; but he suffered for us. He is not only our Mediator, but Redeemer; not only Redeemer, but Ransom.

It was excellent goodness in David, when he saw the destruction of his people, to offer himself and family as a sacrifice to avert the wrath of God from them. But his pride was the cause of the judgment, whereas our Redeemer was perfectly innocent. David interceded for his subjects, Christ for his enemies. He received the arrows of the Almighty into his breast to shelter us. He bore our griefs, and carried our sorrows; he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed. Among the Romans the despotic power was so terrible, that if a slave had attempted the life of his master, all the rest had been crucified with the guilty person. But our gracious Master died for his slaves, who had conspired against him ;—he shed his blood for those who spilt it.

And the readiness of our Lord to save us, though by the