your fearful hearts. Be strong, fear not, your God will come and save you ! " Ye, " afflicted and tossed with tempest, and not comforted," whatever your distresses were, surely ye have lost a brother, " a friend that sticketh closer than a brother." But though his benevolent heart can no more expand towards you, ^' has your Lord forgotten to be gra- cious ? Has Jesus shut up his tender mercies ?" No : to him you may still carry your complaints : he bids the weary and heavy-laden to come unto him : he " has received gifts," not for the indigent only, but " for the rebelhous :" nor shall one of you be " sent empty away." Whom did he ever dismiss, in the days of his flesh, without granting to him the bless- ing he desired ? So now, if ye will go unto him, he " will satiate every weary soul, and replenish every sorrowful soul :" he " will give you beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness, that God may be glorified."
V. The last observation we proposed to make, was that Christ is the same in his fidelity to his promises —
We have before shewn, that he led his people through the wilderness : he had promised to cast out all their enemies, and to give them " a land flowing with milk and honey." And behold, Joshua, at the close of a long life, and after an experience of many years, could make this appeal to all Israel : " Ye know in all your hearts™, and in all your souls, that not one thing hath failed of all the good things which the Lord your God spake concerning you ; all are come to pass unto you, and not one thing hath failed thereof." The same fidelity did Jesus manifest, whilst he sojourned upon earth : the Father had committed to him a chosen people to keep : and Jesus with his dying breath could say, " Those whom thou gavest me I have kept, and
"" Josh, xxiii. 14.