ever done for the salvation of the world : and if we did but call to mind the mercies with which we have been daily loaded from our youth up to this present moment, we never should want memorials of God's love to us, or grounds for encouragement under the most afflictive dispensations.]
2. That we should make them the grounds and measure of our future expectations —
[I well know, that, strictly speaking, we have no ground of expectation, but from the promises of God. But, in a more lax sense, we may say, that his past mercies are earnests and pledges of future blessings. It is a legitimate inference which the Psalmist draws : " Thou hast delivered my soul from death : wilt thou not deliver my feet from falling, that I may walk before God in the light of the living6?' Yes; if we can say of God, " Thou hast delivered ;" we may reasonably add, " In whom I trust that he will yet deliver11."
But we may go further, and consider God's past mercies as the measure of our future expectations. It is in this particular view that the Church reminds him of the wonders he had wrought for them in Egypt and at the sea : and, with a special view to this, may we also recapitulate all the wonders of redeeming love. In truth, we have in this respect a great advantage over the Jewish Church : for they might need, yes, and do need, mercies fully equal to those which were wrought for their forefathers in Egypt : but we never can need another Saviour to die for us, another Spirit to instruct us. God, if I may so say, has gone to the utmost possible extent of love and grace for us : and all that we can ever need to have done for us, in future, falls infinitely short of what he has already done : " For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life V The blessings vouchsafed to Israel fell infinitely short of those which have been vouchsafed to us, even as shadows do of the substance which they repre- sent. Yet, if we needed the sea to open us a passage, and the clouds to supply our daily food, and water to issue from a rock, we should account them great things to ask : but, after what we have received, nothing is great; not even heaven with all its glory : for " if God spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, hoiv shall he not with him also freely give us all things k?"]
Address —
1. Those who are humbled under a sense of sin-
g Ps. lvi. 13. h 2 Cor. i. 10.
1 Rom. v. 10. k Rom. viii. 32.