out your salvation Think of your spiritual mercies.
Have you any measure of light in your minds, of softness in your hearts, of holiness in your lives ? Have you any hopes in Christ as your Saviour ; any experience of the Spirit as your Comforter; any prospects of heaven, as your inheritance? Think of multitudes around you, or look at those who are gone beyond redemption, and say, whether it is within the power of language to express your obligations to your God. For who is it that has made you to differ ? Will you, or can you, trace these blessings to your own superior wisdom, or goodness, or strength ? Must you not of necessity acknowledge the hand of God in them, and say, " Hitherto hath the Lord helped us?" Surely in reference to every blessing, whether temporal or spiritual, j'-ou must say with David, " Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto thy name be the praise."]
3. That we should make our experience of past
mercies the ground of expecting all that we can
need from God in future —
[Doubtless the memorial raised by Samuel was parti- cularly intended to answer this end. And so should the memorials that are raised in our hearts : " Thou hast been my help ; therefore under the shadow of thy wings will I rejoice^:" " Because the Lord hath inclined his ear unto me, therefore will I call upon him as long as I live^." This was St. Paul's mode of improving past mercies: " God," says he, "delivered us from so great a death, and doth deliver; in whom we trust that he will yet deliver us^." From what we have received " hitherto" we know what to expect henceforth. O blessed effect of preserving memorials of past mercies in our minds ! What holy confidence will it introduce into the soul, and what a happy anticipation even of eternal blessedness ! Only let the "Eben-ezer" which Samuel erected teach us this, and we shall ourselves raise in due time a similar memorial in the realms of bliss.]
e Ps. Ixiii. 7. «■ Ps. cxvi. 2. s 2 Cor. i. 10.