and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever." AUG. 21.— With loving-kindness have I drawn thee. THE gospel has been exceedingly injured, as to its practical influence and results, by being reduced to a mere republication of the law of nature, or a mere moral code. And we would ask boldly whether a man who receives only a class of moral rules from God, accompanied with a declaration that the observance of them shall hereafter be recompensed,—can such a man have the same feelings towards the blessed God as the man who believes he is in mercy redeemed from the lowest hell by the sacrifice of God's own Son, that he is already blessed with all spiritual blessings in Christ? And to order us to deny ourselves, to sacrifice our beloved lusts and passions and wish their eternal destruction, even if reason and conscience acknowledge the rectitude of the requirement, will never attach us to a sovereign power, or cause us to love these declarations and these truths. To tell a man that every thing here is only in a state of probation and that every thing depends on his own prudence and his own fidelity,can we imagine that this will ever produce a childlike confidence in God, or delight in his service? Assuredly not. And nothing will, but a manifestation of goodness so great as to overpower the heart and gain it and such a manifestation of goodness there is. We have it in the manger, in the garden, on the cross, in the grave. "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and gave his Son to be a propitiation for our sins." "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?" It is here, and here alone, we can be drawn with the "cords of love and with the bands of a man," and effectually bound forever. And this, therefore, is the grand and only expedient the only wise God has devised and revealed to bring back the minds of his alienated creatures to himself. It is obvious that the first step in the return of the criminal must be confidence. "We are saved by hope." God knows this, and he provides for it, and he therefore banishes our fears, he expels from our minds all jealousies, and all unworthy conceptions of himself, and obtains the trust, the entire trust, of our poor hearts. He purges our consciences by the glorious gospel from dead works, that we may serve the living God. He enlarges the heart so that we can run in the way of his commandments. We have obtained not the spirit of bondage again to fear, but have received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, "Abba, Father." Hence the Apostle Jude says to Christians, "Keep yourselves in the love of God;" that is, love the commandments of his love to you, that you may live in the exercise of your love to God. And this is the meaning of Paul to the Ephesians, when he speaks of their being "rooted and grounded in love;" he means in the discovery of his love, in the producing their love to him, as is obvious from what follows:-"That ye may be able to comprehend, with all saints, what is the length, and breadth, and depth, and height, and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God." AUG. 22.-The living know that they shall die. Eccles. ix. 5. BUT there are limits to this knowledge: let us consider these. "The living know that they shall die," but they know not when. If there are persons who have seemed to have some kind of apprehensions or intimations previously of the time of their dissolution, these were casual and not prophetic; events alone rendered them predictions. "There is an appointed time to man upon the earth; his days also are like the days of an hireling;" God has appointed his bounds, which he cannot pass; it is he who has filled our glass, and he knows how many sands there are to run out. But he communicates not this knowledge to any man; and therefore every man must say, with Isaac, "I know not the day of my death," nor the week, nor the year. "The living know that they shall die," but they know not where, -whether at home in the bosom of the family, or among unconcerned strangers, in the garden, in the field, or on the road. Where have not persons died? Some have died in the house of God; some have died at the card-table; some have died in the playhouse. Ehud died in his summer parlour, and Pharaoh in the Red Sea. There seems hardly to be a place which has not, at one time or other, been a door of entrance into eternity. "The living know that they shall die," but they know not how, -whether suddenly or slowly, whether by fever or by dropsy, whether by accident or by the hands and device of wicked and unreasonable men. "One dieth," says Job, "in his full strength, being wholly at ease and quiet; his breasts are full of milk, and his bones are moistened with marrow. Another dieth in the bitterness of his soul, and never eateth with pleasure. They shall lie down alike in the dust, and the worms shall cover them.” "The living know that they shall die," but not what it is to die. Thus Joshua said to the Jews, "Ye are going a way that ye have not gone heretofore." It will be a new path to all of us. Here is a case in which no information can be derived from experience, -none from our own experience, none from the experience of others; for no one, however charged or importuned, ever returned to let "the fatal secret out, And tell us what it is to die." AUG. 23.-So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. Ps. xc. 12. A KNOWLEDGE of the frailty of life and the certainty of death, one would imagine, would be very powerful, very efficient, and very operative. But what is the fact? We do not find any thing that is really less impressive and less influential than death! How was it in the days of Job? Eliphaz says, "They are destroyed from morning to night; they perish forever." And it is the same now. Sometimes the sudden dissolution, the sight of a dying bed, or the passage of a funeral, will produce a temporary impression: but it is little more than a momentary one; men soon go on again as before; one returns to his farm, and another to his merchandise; one is mad after honour, another after money, and another after the dissipations of the world. Men do not live as those who know they must die. They do know it; and yet what a slight influence it has over them! Here we see the inefficacy of mere knowledge. Some people seem to think that knowledge is to do every thing. Why, this, like any other truth, may lie in the mind uninfluential. Some imagine that all truth must necessarily be influential according to the nature and importance of the thing believed. It ought to be so, and it would be so if we were in a proper state of mind. We are fallen creatures, and much of the effect of the fall is apparent in the derangement of the operation of the powers of the mind, so that it is now an undeniable fact, that the clearest convictions can be counteracted, that men may see and approve better things and follow the worse. But is it not strange that such knowledge, so immediately and eternally interesting to man, should be uninfluential? Is it not a proof of the depravity of human nature that he can be insensible and indifferent here? But why is it so desirable to consider our latter end, and what influence should the knowledge we have of our mortality have over us? It should lead us to abhor and forsake sin, which has "brought death into the world, and all our woe." How should this knowledge loosen our hold of the earthly things which we must certainly, and which we may so soon, be deprived of! It was a good reflection of Esau, so far, when he said, "Behold, I am at the point to die, and what profit shall this birthright do to me?" And so we may say with regard to various things which would entice us and engross our supreme attention. The ancients made use of this fact when they were accustomed to place before their guests at their feasts a skeleton, in order to excite them to the more mirth while they could enjoy it, for they could not enjoy it long. But how much better use does the apostle make of it, when, writing to the Corinthians, he says, "Brethren, the time is short it remaineth that both they that have wives should be as those that have none." So it should lead us immediately and earnestly to say, with Paul, "That I may win Christ, and be found in him." He has destroyed death as to its sting now, and will as to its state hereafter; and the voice from heaven cries, "Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord," and only such; that is, all who die in a state of union and communion with him, having his righteousness to justify them and to give them a title. to heaven, and his Spirit to sanctify them and make them "meet for the inheritance of the saints in light." It is important for us to know that we must shortly die, in order that we may turn this knowledge to the most advantageous account. We shall, therefore, be concerned to do with our might whatsoever our hand findeth to do, "for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave whither we are going." Let us then pray with Moses, "Lord, make me to know mine end and the measure of my days, what it is, that I may know how frail I am." "So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom." AUG. 24.-Not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life. 2 Cor. v. 4. WE here see what Christians do desire, and what they do not desire. What we really desire, and what we must desire, if we are Christians, is here called life. Life is one of the common representations given of the heavenly state in the Scriptures. Skin for skin-" yea, all that a man hath-will he give for his life." Now, because men are so attached to life, and because life is the foundation of every enjoyment, therefore it comes to be used by the sacred writers for happiness itself; and hence our Saviour says, "A man's life [that is, his happiness] consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth." Such blessedness is reserved for the Christian, therefore: "eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him." Dr. Watts expresses himself very boldly when he says,— "Could I command the spacious land, And the more boundless sea, For one blest hour at thy right hand What, then, will be an eternity of such bliss,-an eternity of health, an eternity of wealth, an eternity of honour, an eternity of friendship! And life, too, is often called "eternal," and "eternal in the heavens." He will have "a crown of glory that fadeth not away." Eternity will only be the commencement of his blessedness. But observe, Secondly, What they do not desire. We groan, being burdened, "not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life." The apostle expresses the same thing with a little variation in the preceding verse:"In this we groan, earnestly desiring," (what?)-earnestly desiring "to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven, if so be that, being clothed, we shall not be found naked." They wish to be adorned, but not previously stripped; they wish to be clothed, but not to be found naked; they wish this corruptible to put on incorruption, |