promise is made, and its good things are bestowed: you are to receive the one, and apply the other, not with a full, but with an empty hand; not as a righteous person, but as an unworthy creature.

Make the trial: exercise yourself in this great secret of true godliness; I am satisfied it will be productive of the most beneficial effects. Look unto Jesus as dying in your stead, and purchasing both grace and glory for your enjoyment. Come unto God as a poor sinner, yet with a confident dependance; expecting all spiri tual blessings through Him that loved you, and gave himself for you. He that believeth,' with this appropriating faith, shall not be confounded,' nor frus trated in his expectations. He that believeth,' with this appropriating faith, shall have the witness in himself.'t Nothing will bring in such light and peace, such holiness and happiness to his soul. The Ephesians, thus believing, were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise.' The dispersed of Israel, thus believing, rejoiced with joy unspeakable.' Those were marked out as rightful heirs, these were blessed with some de lightful foretastes, and both were prepared for the complete fruition of life and immortality. O that we may be followers of their example, and sharers of their felicity!

As for these doubts which have given you so much perplexity, and cost us so long a disquisition, look upon them as some of your greatest enemies. Oppose them with all the resolution and all the vigour of your mind. Nay, look upon those unreasonable doubts as some of your greatest sins; confess them with the deepest shame, and pray against them with the utmost ardour. With equal assiduity and zeal, let us press after a steadfast, an immoveable, a triumphant faith. Faith is the vehicle and the instrument of every good all things

Η Eph. 1. 13. Πιστεύσαντες εσφραγίσθητε; not after that ye believed, ye were sealed,' but believing ye were sealed.' In the way of believing, ye became partakers of this sealing and sanctifying Spirit: conformably to the expostulation of the apostle on another occasion, received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?"

§ 1 Pet. i. 8.

are possible to him that believeth. Faith is the immediate and grand end of the whole gospel: these things are written, that ye might believe.'t Let us therefore covet, earnestly let us covet this best of gifts, and shew all diligence to the full assurance of hope.'

DIALOGUE XVII.

A River Voyage-The diversified prospect-Comparative Happi ness-Advantages of Peace-A Celebration of the Gospel and its blessings, in a kind of Rhapsody-Christ's Righteousness applied to every case of distress, and every time of need.

THE next morning, Theron ordered a cold collation to be prepared, and his pleasure-boat to hold itself in readiness. Breakfast being dispatched, and some necessary orders relating to the family given; now, says he to Aspasio, let me fulfil my promise, or rather let as execute our mutual engagement, and consign the remainder of this mild and charming day to a rural excursion.

We will take our route along one of the finest roads. in the world; a road incomparably more curious and durable, than the famous causeways raised by those puissaut hands which conquered the globe; a road which has subsisted from the beginning of time; and, though frequented by innumerable carriages, laden with the heaviest burdens, has never been gulled, never wanted repair, to this very hour. Upon this they step into the chariot, and are conveyed to a large navigable river, about three quarters of a mile distant from the house. Here they launch upon a new element, attended by two or three servants, expert at handling the oar and managing the nets.

Is this the road, replied Aspasio, on which my friend bestows his panegyric? It is indeed more curious in its structure, and more durable in its substance, than the celebrated Roman causeways; though I must assure Heb. vii. 11.

Mark ix. 23.

† John xx. 31.

you, the latter have a very distinguished share of my esteem. I admire them far beyond Trajan's pillar, or Caracalla's baths; far beyond the idle pomp of the pan. theon, or the worse than idle magnificence of the amphitheatre. They do the truest honour to the empire, because, while they were the glory of Rome, they were a general good; and not only a monument of her grandeur, but a benefit to mankind.

But more than all these works, I admire that excellent and divinely-gracious purpose, to which Providence made the empire itself subservient. It was a kind of road or causeway for the everlasting gospel, and afforded the word of life a free passage to the very ends of the earth. The evangelical dove mounted the wings of the Roman eagle, and flew, with surprising expedition, through all nations. Who would have thought that insatiable ambition and the most bloody wars, should be paving a way for the Prince of humility and peace? How remote from all human apprehension was such a design, and how contrary to the natural result of things was such an event! Most remarkably therefore was that observation of the psalmist verified: His ways are in the sea, and his paths in the great waters, and his footsteps are not known.'t

Conversing on such agreeable subjects, they were carried by the stream through no less agreeable scenes. They pass by hills clothed with hanging woods, and woods arrayed in varying green. Here, excluded from a sight of the outstretched plains, they are entertained with a group of unsubstantial images, and the wonders of a mimic creation. Another sun shines, but stripped of his blazing beams, in the watery concave; while clouds sail along the downward skies, and sometimes disclose, sometimes draw a veil over, the radiant orb. Trees, with their inverted tops, either flourish in the fair

These roads ran through all Italy, and stretched themselves into the territories of France. They were carried across the Alps, the Pyrenean mountains, and through the whole kingdom of Spain. Some of them towards the south, reached even to Ethiopia, and some of them towards the north, extended as far as Scotland. The remains of several of them continue in England to this day, though they were made, it is probable, above 1600 years ago.

† Psal. lxxvii. 19.

serene below, or else paint, with a pleasing delusion, the pellucid flood. Even the mountains are there, but in a headlong posture; and, notwithstanding their pro. digious bulk, they quiver in this floating mirror, like the poplar leaves which adorn their sides.

Soon as the boat advances, and disturbs the placid surface, the waves, pushed hastily to the bank, bear off in broken fragments the liquid landscape. The spreading circles seemed to prophesy as they rolled, and pronounced the pleasures of this present state-the pomp of power, the charm of beauty, and the echo of famepronounced them transient as their speedy passage, empty as their unreal freight. Seemed to prophesy? It was more: imagination heard them utter, as they ran,

Thus pass the shadowy scenes of life away!

Emerging from this fluid alley, they dart amidst the level of a spacious meadow. The eye, lately immured, though in pleasurable confinement, now expands her delighted view into a space almost boundless, and amidst objects little short of innumerable. Transported for a while at the numberless variety of beauteous images, poured in sweet confusion all around, she hardly knows where to fix, or which to pursue. Recovering at length from the pleasing perplexity, she glances quick and instantaneous across all the interme diate plain, and marks the distant mountains: how cliffs climb over cliffs, till the huge ridges gain upon the sky; how their diminished tops are dressed in blue or wrapped in clouds; while all their leafy structures and all their fleecy tenants are lost in air.

Soon she quits these aerial summits, and ranges the russet heath; here, shagged with brakes or tufted withrushes; there, interspersed with straggling thickets or solitary trees, which seem, like disaffected partisans, to shun each other's shade. A spire, placed in a remote valley, peeps over the hills: sense is surprised at the amusive appearance; is ready to suspect that the column rises, like some enchanted edifice, from the rifted earth: but reason looks upon it as the earnest of a hidden vale, and the sure indication of an adjacent town; performing, in this respect, much the same of

fice to the eye, as faith executes with regard to the soul, when it is the evidence of things not seen."

Next she roves, with increasing pleasure, over spacious tracts of fertile glebe and cultured fields; where cattle of every graceful form, and every valuable quality crop the tender herb or drink the crystal rills. Anon, she dwells with the utmost complacency on towns of opulence and splendour, which spread the sacred dome and lift the social roof: towns no longer. surrounded with the stern forbidding majesty of unpassable intrenchments and impregnable ramparts, but encircled with the delicate, the inviting appendages of gardens and orchards: those, decked with all the soft graces of art and elegànce; these, blushing and pregnant with the more substantial treasures of fruitful nature. Wreaths of ascending smoke, intermingled with turrets and lofty pinnacles, seem to contend which shall get farthest from the earth, and nearest to the skies. Happy for the inhabitants if such was the habitual tendency of their desires,t if no other contention was known in their streets!

Heb. xi. 1.

+ This comparison, I think, cannot appear vulgar to those persons who have read, and who reverence the Book of Canticles. There the church, ascending continually in devout affections to her beloved Jesus, and to her beavenly home, is characterized by this very similitude: Who is this that cometh out of the wilderness like pillars of smoke? Cant. iii. 6. Though it must be confessed that this similitude, like many of the illus trations used in Scrip ure, might have a sort of local propriety, peculiar to the people of that age, couniry, and religion. It might probably refer to those columns of smoke which arose from the burnt-ofiering, or fumed from the altar of incense: if so, this circumstance minst give a solemnity and dignity to the idea, of which many readers are not at ali aware, and which indeed no modern reader cau fully conceive.

May I take leave to mention another comparison of this kind? 'The enemies of the Lord shall consume as the fat of lambs; yea, even as the smoke shall they consume away.' Psalm xxxvii. 20. As the fat of lambs,' is not to us a striking representation; but to those who atiended the altar, who saw the unctuous and most combustible parts of the victim blazing in the sacred fire, it presented a very lively image; which was still more apposite and significant, if this psalm was sung while the sacritice was burning. None, I believe, in such a case, could forbear either observing or admiring the beautiful gradation: They shall perish as yonder fat, which is so easy set on fire; and, when once in a flame, is so speedily consumed. Nay, they shall be as the smoke, which is still more transient; whose fight, unsubstantial wreaths, but just make their appearance to the eye, and in a moment vanish into empty air.'