"wrought with labour and travail night and day, that he might not be chargeable unto any not because he had not power, (authority,) but to make himself an example unto them that followed him?”. It was thus that he sanctified, in his own character, the habits of secular diligence,-enforcing the command, that "if any did not work, neither should he eat;" and "again exhorting and commanding the disorderly, and idle, and busy-bodies, by our Lord Jesus Christ, that with quietness they should work, and eat their own bread."

Nor was this a solitary instance. It was his frequent, though not invariable practice. "I have coveted no man's silver, or gold, or apparel; yea, ye yourselves know that these hands have ministered to my necessities, and to them that were with me: I have showed you all things; how that, so labouring, ye ought to support the weak, and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, 'It is more blessed to give than to receive.""

How warmly does the spirit of genuine religion breathe in the prayer of Agur:-"Two things have I desired of thee; deny me not before (or even unti!) I die!" And what are these two things which summed up the whole of his desires? "Remove from me vanity and lies," every thing pernicious to the purity and safety of his soul;-"give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me, lest I be full, and deny thee, and say, Who is the Lord? or lest I be poor and steal, and take the name of my God in vain!" To think that this prayer is not suited to your condition, is self-delusion: to use the prayer while your conduct is not animated by the same spirit, is hypocrisy.

Secondly. The principle which is brought into lawful exercise by the application of diligence, must be fortified against the evils arising from disappointments and failures;-and this can be ensured only by enlightened acquiescence in the appointments of God.

"I returned and saw under the sun," says Solomon, "that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all." Failures, therefore, cannot always be eluded by the most skilful and laborious application to the pursuits of life. They are often produced by events over which a man has no control; by changes which he could not anticipate; and by causes so remote from ordinary grounds of calculation, as to defy the most eager scrutiny. Any incident, of which a man has no previous knowledge, or for which he is unable to account, is "chance" to him,-whatever be its connexion with the arrangements of our omniscient Father, by whom "the hairs of our head are all numbered."

The effect of such failures is frequently most distressing. The fairest hopes are blighted; the best concerted schemes are baffled; the most strenuous efforts are lost; the tenderest feelings, too, are pierced. The man sinks into hopeless apathy, or plunges into the fatal oblivion of intoxication,-or else, desperate through urging impulses and mortified passions, he determines, at every hazard, to retrieve his loss; and you must have seen the consequences of such an unprincipled determination in the plotting, -the shifting,-the circumventing and undermining, -the thousand tricks of cringing and of falsehood,the supplanting, the impiety, the many foldings of dishonesty, through which he winds his way to the attainment of his object.

These appear to be the natural effects of worldly disappointments. In the one case, the spring of activity is depressed beyond the point of vigorous recoil; in the next, it is totally unbraced; while in the last, it bursts forth with tremendous resiliency and uncontrolled force.

Whatever be the particular impression at first resulting from "reverses of fortune," it is easy to

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perceive the influence of a belief in a superintending Providence, to modify or to counteract that impression, an influence more or less powerful in proportion to the enlargement of views accompanying our faith; and happy or otherwise, as the mind acquiesces in the designs of Providence, or rises up against them.

It is therefore requisite, as men are every moment liable to disastrous vicissitudes, to cultivate a serious belief on this subject; to familiarize our minds with the proofs which support it; to be frequently adverting to those considerations, supplied by Scripture or experience, which illustrate the facts of a providential dispensation; and to carry forward our thoughts to the period, when the goodness and justice of God, as well as his power and wisdom, will be displayed in them all, and all shall issue in the happiness of those "who love God, and are the called according to his purpose."

Such a belief, connected with such exercises, may have been acquired in early life; it must be strengthened by personal observation and inquiry.

The more minutely you inspect the delicate adaptations to particular ends in all the departments of creation, from the elements of nutrition and functions of life in the smallest animalcule, to the noblest efforts of intellect in the highest gradations of reflecting agents, the more powerful will be your conviction that there is one grand and comprehensive plan in which all are embraced, which links them all together in their several dependencies, and by virtue of which, the events of your brief history are as really arranged by unerring wisdom, and as truly conducive to the ultimate designs of God, as the fall of states, or the motions of the heavenly bodies.

These convictions will be confirmed as you ascend from the studies of nature to the revelations of the Bible. There you hear David, "full of riches and honour," thus addressing that God who had made his cup to run over: "Both riches and honour come

of thee, and thou reignest over all; and in thine hand it is to make great and to give strength unto all."

There, too, you hear Job, sitting amidst the ruins of a magnificent estate: "Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord." The "rich in this world" are charged "that they be not highminded, nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy." The poor are exhorted,-"Trust in the Lord and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land and verily thou shalt be fed. Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in him, and he shall bring it to pass.' With the anxious the Saviour thus tenderly expostulates: "Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of these things." To the distressed Christian the Apostle Paul thus triumphantly appeals: "If God be for us, who can be against us?" To the dying, he who "knoweth our frame" has said; "Leave thy fatherless children: I will preserve them alive; and let thy widows trust in me."

It is very possible, however, that, satisfactory as are the evidences of a divine government, universal in its extent and particular in its administrations,consolatory and practical as are the tendencies of the belief sustained by these evidences,-a man may be dissatisfied with a scheme whose existence he cannot deny, and dislike arrangements, even though marked with the visible characters of wisdom and benevolence, which thwart his inclinations, or oppose his apparent interests.

Here we feel the necessity, not only of acknowledging the appointments of God, but of acquiescing in them. And this must be preceded by a humble consciousness of our being entirely and justly at his disposal; by an affecting remembrance of our real

unworthiness; by the submission of our minds in genuine contrition for sin; by a hearty reception of forgiveness, and all the peace, and joy, and hope resulting from it, as the gift of Him who might righteously have punished us; by the surrender of our affections to the guidance of his Holy Spirit; and by a lively confidence in the kindness that inflicts the severest chastisements,-in the mercy that has promised to illumine the darkest season, and to sustain us in our utmost need. The man who lives under such impressions as these will not, on this account, be less assiduous in his secular duties: but there will be a chastening influence acting on his fervour; there will be deductions from his calculations of success; there will be a sober contemplation of possible contingencies; there will be a principle of resistance opposed to the natural effects of disappointment; there will be a habit of meek submission to the will of God,-a habit of which, but for such impressions, he would have been incapable.

Nothing can be more apparent than that the reverse of this enlightened acquiescence in the allotments of Providence, is the cause of those unnerving, degrading, or destructive feelings which the failures of worldly schemes are so constantly exciting; and consequently, that the honouring or the rejection of this commandment, in its true spirit, will usually be according to the state of our belief and submission in this particular.

Thirdly. The number and the force of the temptations by which the selfish principle is commonly seduced must be lessened; and this is done by moderation in our views, expectations, and indulgences.

There is required a sober estimate of your wants and means of gratification. Vigorous restraints must be imposed on every tendency to overrate your own consequence, or capabilities, or claims,-on the disposition to attach a disproportionate importance to a world which you are so soon to leave, and in which your grand concern is to become ready for another,