token of his love which he will not vouchsafe to those who cultivate a loving spirit, and seek all their happiness in him. " He will set his love upon them ; and will hear and answer all their petitions : he will be with them in trouble : he will deliver them and honour them : with long life also will he satisfy them, and will shew them his full and complete salvation™."]
2. Is approved of men —
[Those who spend their zeal on the externals of religion may be commended by partisans, but they will never be re- spected by those who differ from them, nor indeed by their own party. The dispositions exercised by such persons are unamiable, and therefore they can never generate love in the breasts of any. But the holy man of God, who labours to fulfil all righteousness, and to promote the happiness of all around him, and to live in the constant enjoyment of his God, he, I say, has a testimony in the breasts of all, even of those who differ from him in things of less importance : and though from circumstances they may keep at a distance from him, they honour him in their hearts, and have an inward persua- sion " that God is with him of a truth." The ungodly world indeed may hate him, just as they hated the Apostles and our Lord himself: but yet even they will feel an awe in his pre- sence, and, at the very time that they revile and persecute him, have oftentimes the secret thought in their hearts, " If I were dying, I should be glad to be found in your state."]
We must not however overlook that which gives
to these services their chief excellence —
[It is supposed that the person who performs these ser- vices is already Christ's subject, and servant, having through Divine grace been converted to God, and " translated out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God's dear Son :" and that, in performing them, he is not attempting to establish a righteousness of his own, but to " serve and glorify the Lord Jesus Christ." It is necessary that he keep this end in view ; and that all that he does be done for Christ, that is, from a regard to his authority, and with a view to his glory. Indeed faith in Christ, and love to his name, are the only principles that will operate to the production of the dispo- sitions before mentioned. A man may have the semblance of them without faith in Christ ; but the reality he cannot have. In the mind of the unbeliever, the circumstantials of religion will have an undue weight : in the believer only will the essentials have their full scope and paramount ascendency.
'" Ps. xci. 14 — 16. M M 2