we have begun to execute our intention of conforming to his will, and we do not find that it demands the sacrifice of friends or wealth, or usual gratifications; and while we walk in the ways of pleasantness, the fervour and sincerity with which we think we can say "thy will be done," seems to us a pledge that our opposition to his will is at end. But we are only loving his will, because it seems to be our will; and this we learn, or may learn, when affliction comes; then, that which we would have is far off, what we love is denied us, and our will is baffled and opposed by the events his will controls. At such times, we may learn, and they occur that we may learn, how much we love his will because it is his will, and how much we love it only because it seems one with our will. As in these states of grief and internal conflict, we are enabled to see that our wills are evil, so we are also enabled to see in what manner we may subdue and put aside this evil. If there are any principles of truth, or any feelings of piety, they certainly suggest that we must endeavour to submit wholly and unrepiningly; that this is what we ought to do, and is the best thing we can do. Such endeavours gradually teach us and vivify in us, the truth, that his will is not our will, and that the need of saying with the lips and with the heart and in the life, "thy will be done," arises from the fact, that our will is in distinct opposition to his will.

There is another error against which we should be on our guard. We should not forget, when we say "thy will be done," that it is our duty to do his will. He is omnipotent; but his will is love, and it grants to all and guards and preserves for all perfect freedom. When we are satisfied that it is in vain to contend, we may sullenly yield, and say that his will may be done upon us; but we are little better for this. The perpetual effort of his will is, for us to do it. It is a small thing for us to desire, earnestly, that his will should be done in matters which are beyond our reach; we should do better to leave them to him; and not, in idly gazing on the wastes that may spread far around us, neglect the fields it is our business to cultivate. How liable are all to this mistake, or rather to this sin! We may pray fervently and loudly and unremitingly, that the whole world may be made better; that the truth may dawn in strength and brightness upon the distant isles, or even that his will may be done better upon or by our neighbours, who have been regardless of it. But we do not

apply, with half so much force, or frequency or boldness," thy will be done," to our own favourite indulgences, to our daily and hourly selfishness and self-complacency, to our small, customary overlookings of our neighbour, for there we should have at once to bring the sincerity of our prayer, "thy will be done," to the test of our readiness and desire to do his will. How important is

it to learn and remember, that the utterance of the prayer, "thy will be done," is of good and for good, only as it includes an effort to do his will.

There is a sabbath of the soul; and to establish it is the only end of divine Providence in his action upon every creature and upon all creatures-in every moment of each one's life, and in all the ages of time. In this hallowed state, "thy will be done," is the expression, the essence and form of every hope and every desire. And his will is done, for in this state it flows through our will and meets with no opposition. He has led us, by fire and cloud, to a land of blessing; he has worked within us; and by cooperating with him through the strength given us, we have worked out our salvation; and now because the work is accomplished and his labour is over, he hallows and blesses this day. Henceforth there is peace, for the elements of strife are powerless; there is truth, for the sources of error are closed; there is love, for he is love, and he is in us and we are in him. Hitherto temptations accompanied us; for by them, by resisting our evils in and under them, we were delivered from evil; but now they have left us, and we are delivered from evil without being led into temptation, because his is now the kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever.

For the New Jerusalem Magazine.

MIRACLES.

THE most ancient church, represented by Adam, enjoyed an uninterrupted intercourse with the spiritual world. Inhabitants at once of the spiritual world and the natural, and conscious of their union with God, their residence on earth was simply the commencement of that course of life, in the progress of which, according to the divine order, at a certain period their internals divested themselves of that which was earthly, and they became as the angels of heaven. In the development of their powers, there was nothing of violence; and death was regarded as a necessary consequence of this development. They were conscious of the presence of a divine power working within them, unloosing the cords which would confine them to a stifled sense of the use for which they were created, and pushing them on to a full and perfect evolution. Instead of shuddering at the thought of annihilation and a new creation, they attained to such a clear perception of the inward endeavours of the soul, that no longer fearing death, they actually co-operated with the Lord in this great event of their spiritual progress. They were not afraid to die; for they were not afraid to be more fully what they were already.

Like a child, who has not yet left his father's house, they were strangers to the ills and the fears which have attended the wanderings of their posterity.

In process of time, this church degenerated. The love of self and of the world took the place of the love of the Lord and the neighbour; and a knowledge of the means to obtain selfish and worldly ends was substituted for a knowledge of the laws of divine order and of the things of the spiritual world The communication of the Lord with man, became necessarily miraculous; for the cause and the ground of miracles is to be found in the aversion of man to that which is concealed within the miracle. God remained, as he must, unchangeably the same; but man no longer continued to behold him in his works, in the order, the beauty, and the harmony of creation, because he had ceased to love him. As divine things became less and less familiar to the human mind, there was more and more a feeling of something strange and incongruous when they were presented. Mankind were as one who has been stolen in his childhood by a band of robbers, and made familiar to all their scenes of violence: to whom the recollections of his infancy appear like a strange dream, by which he is terrified far more than by crimes. It is a necessary consequence of the laws of divine order, that, to a certain extent, the absence of love should be supplied by fear. The Lord, however, so wonderfully veils his presence as to preserve the free agency of man inviolate. The miraculous is the measure of our alienation from God; it represents the opposition of revealed truth to human depravity, and its want of coincidence with merely natural reason. There is something of the nature of a miracle in the relation between the word of God and the human mind, precisely to that degree that we have not followed the Lord in the regeneration, and become conformed to his spirit. Miracles are not, strictly speaking, confined to those particular acts recorded in the sacred scriptures, to which the term is usually applied. The whole word is to the natural man a living miracle. "Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called wonderful, counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the prince of peace."

As the conception and growth of the Lord was miraculous, so is there something wonderful in the commencement and progress of regeneration. Natural reason undergoes a complete inversion. In the exercise of reason, a subject is presented in such relations to others, with us of acknowledged truth, as to preserve the harmony, the order and the unity of the whole. Reason is the power of arrangement and organization; but that by which arrangement is effected, is always to be found within and above that which is arranged. In minerals, the cause of crystallization is to

be found in the peculiar nature of a substance, which determines its particles to a particular form, in a manner altogether above the ordinary laws of attraction. In vegetables, the general form of the plant is wonderfully determined by the seed from which it is produced. In animals, the form and parts are precisely adapted to answer the end of that affection by which they are instinctively governed. In the human body, all the arrangement of the parts is effected from, and in relation to, one grand centre, the heart; and this, in its turn, acknowledges the supremacy of the brain; and the whole material man is precisely adapted to subserve the purposes of the soul, of which it is truly the effect. Thus, in all organized matter, there exists, as the cause of its organization, a power above the general laws by which matter is governed. The causes of decay and decomposition act equally while vegetable or animal life remains, as after it has ceased. But in the former case, these causes only co-operate with the life in removing the useless or noxious particles; that all which is without may be the servant of that which is within. The spiritual man is not exempted from this universal law. The actual cause of the arrangement of our thoughts, is to be found above the thoughts themselves, in that wherein they originate, the ruling love, or the will; and the understanding is considered the seat of reason, not because it creates this arrangement, but simply because it sees and points it out. A man's thoughts are arranged with a view to the accomplishment of his peculiar ends; and the character of his reason depends essentially on the fact whether these ends are good or bad; whether they regard self, or the Lord. Revelation, therefore, if obeyed, in gradually changing the ends from which we act, is undermining the very foundation of natural reason, by creating a new organization of our affections and thoughts. During this process, from our own want of conformity to the word, it cannot but appear to us as something" wonderful."

The introduction of any new truth to the mind, is like the introduction of a stranger into one's family, and giving him a situation and dress by which he becomes an acknowledged inmate, subject to the laws of the household. But if the master of the "house discern, in this stranger, evidences of a character and of intelligence far above his own, the change that is effected is on his own part; his own understanding is enlightened; his own affections are exalted; his own manners are improved by the intercourse. If every moral and intellectual advancement he makes, only opens his eyes to the still more exalted character of the stranger, the influence on himself and his family will continue to be more and more visible. If finally he discern, in this stranger, the person of his rightful sovereign, who has laid aside the outward trappings of royalty, that his subjects might shew him simply

the homage of the affections,-how will his heart burn within him as he recalls the scenes that have past; even from the time that he "was an hungered, and he gave him meat; was thirsty, and he gave him drink; a stranger, and he took him in."

There exist, at the present day, two prevailing opinions in respect to reason, to our apprehension equally at variance with the truth. By one class, the supremacy of natural reason is boldly asserted, and its entire competence to judge on matters of faith. By another class, faith and reason are kept entirely distinct, from a kind of implied acknowledgment that they cannot co-exist. They are unhappily involved in the same delusion, that there is no necessity of a change on their own part. The first falsify divine truth, by reducing it into harmony with the existing condition of their own minds; the last keep that which they call truth dis tinct from their minds, without suffering themselves to be transformed into its image. But "now also is the axe laid at the root of the trees: every tree, therefore, that bringeth not forth good fruit, is hewn down and cast into the fire." Nothing but obedience to the word of God, from grounds more and more interior, can teach the former the extent of their presumption, folly and danger; or impart unity to the minds of the latter, by removing that which is irrational from their faith, and that which is immoral from their reason.

If we examine the general character of the miracles recorded in the old and new testaments, the rational mind cannot but be convinced that these partake fully of the peculiarities of the two dispensations. They were not a mere arbitrary exhibition of divine power, but the necessary result of the presence of divine truth, and consequently varied with the degree in which it was presented. There is really no more ground of surprise, that the Jews were not convinced by the miracles of our Lord, than that they misapplied the prophecies concerning him. Both proceeded from the same source, and both were separated, by their selflove, from the source from which they proceeded. The same cause which prevented their looking through the letter into the spirit of prophecy, prevented their looking beyond the exhibition of mere physical power, to the divine love and wisdom which produced it. Their language at the crucifixion, in that they called upon the Lord both for a prophecy and a miracle, is an illustration of their total insensibility to the spirit of both.

Who shall predict the character of the miracles which shall accompany a still further manifestation of divine truth? Who shall demand a thing impossible in itself, the same effects from the revelation of one order of truth, which have previously attended that of another? When "the veil of the temple was rent in twain, from the top to the bottom, and the earth did quake, and the rocks