conflicts with sin are preferable to the carnal security of those who dream that they have overcome all ; especially as such conflicts do not shake our confidence in the grace of God.”
u Good works are such as a believer practises in the order of God ” (our will being in harmony with the will of God). “It becomes us to present ourselves before God as empty vessels, that require to be continually replenished, and put to use by the indwelling power of Christ. A soul, possessed of true faith, learns to care so supremely for j Him, as to be ever secretly longing to depart and be with Him.” “ To pray is to be engaged in a kind of audience , as well as con- verse with God, 1 John v. 15. It is more than an utterance of our requests ; it includes a waiting for His answers. Let us be inwardly retired, self-observant, and waiting upon Him ; and though we hear no voice, we shall experience a plain, certain, and consoling reply. God makes this reply not vocally, but by those acts of His provid- ence and influences of His grace, whereby He relieves our necessities. When we listen to the petitions of the needy, we do it, not for the sake of hearing them talk, but for the sake of rendering them some help.” “I consider it to be more than a mere permission that a pastor should i be the husband of one wife to me it seems all but a matter of necessity. God often teaches us more by our domestic experiences, family illnesses, deaths of children, and the like, than we can learn by any independent speculations, however spiritual they seem. A pious family may be compared to a cheerful hive of bees ; but a monastery or nunnery full of unmarried persons, to a gloomy nest of wasps.”
“ Worship more consists in affiance than affection. Affiance in uncertain riches, rather than in the living God, characterizes the lover of money. He who commits other sins, commits them chiefly in single acts ; but covetousness engages the whole man. Therefore covetousness is peculiarly called idolatry .”
“ Friendship is not a topic of practical divinity, but brotherly love is ; which both includes friendship and gives it additional charms.”
“ Traces of sacred history occurring in pagan writers as to the Deluge, Joshua, and other incidents, are far less pure than the ac- counts of the inspired historians. Otherwise it might have been suggested, that these pagan writers had borrowed from Scripture ; whereas now it is plain, that the facts reached them by independent and very ancient traditions, which in process of time had become more corrupt and fabulous.”
u The day of atonement was not a festival. It was a day for call- ing sin to remembrance, and was perhaps the anniversary of the fall of man ; for no particular national sin of Israel is expressly named upon it : it was therefore a day of solemn remembrance for sin in general, the sin of mankind.”
“ God’s general treatment of His people was that of a Father, lie led them step by step. lie might have announced to them the manna before they fell a murmuring, but that their heart was to be