chief employment of his life,—should be to imitate, both in his dispositions and in his actions, the goodness of the Almighty. This is the most acceptable service that he can offer to his Maker ;-the sincerest obedience and most grateful acknowledgment he can pay to his blessed Saviour who as "the express image" of his heavenly Father's person, went about doing good.

The best ground for a man's improvement are his own thought and experience. These will convince him that he cannot attain to any religious excellence by his natural strength or exertion. He must not only study the divine law, but must be assisted by the divine grace and that grace is to be procured by humble prayer to God, and with a heart sensible of his loving kindness. St. Paul makes the goodness of the Almighty the leading motive to that penitential sorrow which is necessary in order to attain Christian obedience. 66 Despisest thou" says he "the riches of his goodness and forbearance and long suffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?" If such, therefore, was also the excitement of the Psalmist's piety, how much more ought it to be of ours! With how much more ardent a spirit ought we, who are not, like him, acquainted with the legal dispensation only, but with the additional more benignant dispensation of the gospel, to adopt his prayer, and to say often to our heavenly Father"Thou art good and doest good:-teach me thy statutes." Thou art good to all thy creatures ;

but especially to us. Thou hast given us to know that on thy providential wisdom dependeth the stability of all things. To thee we owe our life and preservation, our earthly possessions and enjoyments, our faculties both of body and soul. Who can recount thy mercies or tell forth all thy praise? In the exercise of that goodness which thou hast laid up for them that fear Thee, teach us, we beseech Thee, thy heavenly law and the life-giving knowledge of thy will; that, reposing our hope and confidence on Thee, we may enjoy thy paternal, thy redeeming, thy sanctifying love,-may drink of the eternal river of thy pleasures, and may rejoice in the radiance of Thy uncreated light.

SERMON XXVI.

GOD'S WISDOM IN AFFLICTING MANKIND.

JOB ix, 22.

This is one thing; therefore I said it, He destroyeth the perfect and the wicked.

THE sorrows and trials with which men are visited in the present life, and which happen alike to the wicked and to the righteous, are not only permitted by the regulations of God's providence, but are reconcileable also to his goodness. This doctrine may be gathered from the words of the text; for though Job speaks expressly of the power, and justice, and purity, of the Almighty, his object is to shew the defect of those qualities in man:-the divine goodness is implied, as connected with the other attributes.

"This is one thing; therefore I said it, He destroyeth the perfect and the wicked." Job is not the only person who is recorded in Scripture as maintaining this opinion. We find that Solomon, after

studying the works of nature, and tracing, from experience, the varieties of pleasure and of pain, arrives at a similar conclusion. He declares, not as the passing sentiment of a moment, but as the result of cool and deliberate thought, that "all things come alike to all; there is one event to the righteous and to the wicked; to the clean and to the unclean; to the good and to the sinner."

An infidel might, upon these authorities, assert, that vice and virtue are things indifferent; since God does not regard the moral qualifications of men. Such a notion, however, cannot take possession of the mind, unless the heart is depraved by perverted habits of thought. Yet, without going to so pernicious a length,-without calling in question the providence, the justice, or the goodness of the Deity,— men are liable to misapprehensions and errors, because they estimate His moral perfections by the narrow standard of their own faculties. They are, therefore, imposed upon by false conclusions ;-they suffer their judgment to be deceived; they are unable to perceive the harmonious workings of His providence, or to trace their consistency. At the same time, not daring to impeach His goodness, and yet blind to the deficiency of their own conceptions, they are led to cast false imputations and unjust censures on their brethren.

Of this, the history of Job supplies a remarkable instance. It had pleased the Almighty to reduce him, for the trial of his integrity, from a state of

affluence and splendour to the most abject poverty. He was despoiled, in a moment, of all his comforts,— deprived of all his children,—and writhing under the agonies of bodily disease. In this forlorn condition, he was visited by three of his friends, who met for the purpose of consoling him. Finding him seated on the ground, and disfigured with ashes, they bewailed his deep calamity. "They rent every one his mantle, and sprinkled dust upon their heads toward heaven. They sat down with him upon the ground seven days and seven nights; and none spake a word unto him: for they saw that his grief was very great." Job, at length, broke silence; but it was in words that denoted the extremity of his woe. He cursed, with much bitterness, the day of his birth. He declared himself to be one of those who " long for death, and dig for it more than for hid treasures," and who "rejoice exceedingly, and are glad, when they can find the grave." Upon this, his friend Eliphaz expostulated with him, for his want of that fortitude, which he had often, by advice and instruction, excited in others. He insinuated, that Job's sufferings must have arisen from his crimes; that he had 66 ploughed iniquity, and sown wickedness," and that he was now, by the righteous judgment of God, "reaping the same." In answer to these and other remarks, Job complained anew of his sufferings, repeated his wish that the Almighty would be pleased to release him from a life that had become burdensome,-protested against the unjust insinua