After viewing this subject, we shall be at no loss to
1. Whence it is that saints are often dejected in their minds —
[None are at all times alike joyful. St. Paul says, that " they who have the first-fruits of the Spirit," no less than others, sometimes "groan within themselves, being burthenedi." And so it ought to be. In the review of their past lives they should be humbled, even as Paul was, when he designated him- self as " a blasphemer, and injurious, and a persecutor, and the very chief of sinners'"." And under a sense of their re- maining infirmities, it becomes them to lie low before God. Behold St. Paul, when he had preached the Gospel above twenty years, yet felt so inuch corruption within him, that he cried out, " O wretched man that I am ! who shall deliver me^?" The image which he here uses is that which has often been realized. He refers to a punishment sometimes inflicted on criminals, by chaining them to a dead corpse, and constraining them to bear it about with them, till they died through the offensive- ness of its noxious odours. Such was his in-dwelling corrup- tion to him, even at that advanced period of his life : and such it should be felt by every saint on earth. In truth, there should not enter so much as a ray of comfort into the soul, but from a view of the Sun of Righteousness. It is He alone that can, or ought, to " arise upon us with healing in his wings.'
1 Rom. viii. 23. 2 Cor. v. 4. r i xim. i. 13, 15.
s Rom. vii. 24.