reject it ? Ah ! who can make you amends for the loss of these privileges ; or console your minds, when they are irrecoverably placed beyond your reach ? Be wise, I pray you ; and seek these blessings, ere they are for ever hid from your eyes.]
3. How earnestly should we hold fast the blessings thus accorded to us !
[Great as these blessings were, the Galatian Christians were soon prevailed on to abandon the possession of them, and to go back again to the bondage in which they had formerly been held. And the same disposition remains in us. We all have a measure of servility in our minds ; and are ready to bind on ourselves burthens from which Christ has made us free. Legal hopes, legal fears, legal endeavours, are quite in consonance with our depraved hearts. But do not dishonour our blessed Lord by indulging such propensities as these : strive rather to get rid of them, and stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made you free. Then will you find the service of your God to be perfect freedom ; and the enjoyment of him, on earth, a foretaste of that complete fruition of him that awaits you.]
Gal. iv. 11. / am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you
labour in vain.
MINISTERS are, in the Scriptures, compared to husbandmen. Now, no one can doubt, for a moment, what the object is of those labours which the husbandman pursues. Whether he prosecute the initiatory work of manuring and plowing his ground, or cast upon it, and harrow in, the seed, every one knows that he looks to the harvest, as the compensation of his toil : and so far as the produce abounds, he considers himself as well repaid ; but so far as it fails, he regards himself as having laboured in vain. Thus a faithful minister rests not satisfied with having discharged his duty : he looks for the effects of his labours in the conversion of souls to God, and in the salvation of his fellow-men. If, in these respects, his ministrations are crowned with suc- cess, " he sees of all his travail, and is satisfied." But