he that increases knowledge, increases sorrow1." Even those dear relations of life which God has given for our richest con- solation, the wife of our bosom, or the fruit of our body, are not without their attendant troubles ; which are designed to teach us, that "tins is not our rest"1," and that God alone is the proper portion of the soul.
But notwithstanding all our disappointments, we are prone to seek our happiness in the creature ; on which account God is necessitated, as it were, to deprive us of things, which, if, con- tinued to us, would rob him of our hearts. Hence it is that the dearest of God's children are often most heavily afflicted. He sees perhaps that our health, our riches, our friends, have drawn us aside from him, or impeded our progress in the divine life, or that they will prove disadvantageous to us in the issue ; and therefore he lays us on a bed of languishing, or causes our " riches to fly away," or " cuts off the desire of our eyes with a stroke." But his design in all this is, to weaken our idolatrous regard for created enjoyments, and to make us seek our happi- ness in him alone. And thousands have had more reason to bless him for the bereavements they have experienced, than for all the bounties he ever bestowed upon them".
Nothing however will finally destroy our attachment to earthly things, till we have learned how much more suitable provision God has made for the souls of his people. When therefore God, by his providence, has embittered or with- drawn our comforts, he leads us, by his grace, to that fountain of consolation, the sacred Oracles. There he proposes himself to us as a reconciled God and Father in Christ. He sets before our eyes " the unsearchable riches of Christ," the " honour that cometh of God," and the " pleasures that are at his right hand for evermore ;" and, having enabled us to taste of these, he makes us to despise every thing in comparison of them, and willingly to relinquish the husks of this world, for the bread that is in our Father's house.]
But that we may not form a wrong opinion of our state, we shall declare,
III. When our souls may be said to be as a weaned child—
[The whole world, with respect to earthly enjoyments, are like a child either before it is weaned, or while it is weaning, or when it is altogether iveaned.
The generality are like a child at the breast, minding nothing but their carnal gratifications. The world, in its pleasures, riches, or honours, is the one object of their desire, the one source of their comfort : they feed upon it all the day long;
1 Ecci. i. 18. and xii. 12. m Mic. ii. 10. » Ps. cxix. 71, 75.