sudden and violent blasts, which threaten its extinction.

3. Sometimes this deadness arises from guilt lying unpardoned on the conscience.

If you have either deliberately done what God forbids, or left undone what he commands, and the guilt remains, no wonder you have lost the freedom and comfort you once enjoyed in religious services. The child, who is conscious of having disobeyed his father's will, approaches him with reluctance and constraint; his cheerfulness is changed to gloom, and he no longer speaks with that unembarrassed liberty and endearing familiarity, which he was wont to evince. The direct and natural tendency of guilt, is to weigh down, enslave, and stupify the soul, to banish its best comforts, and bring upon it accumulated distress. After David had so grievously sinned, in the matter of Uriah, to what deadness and insensibility in the beginning, and what desolation and wretchedness in the issue, was he reduced! Both his heart and his mouth, for a time, were shut up and sealed, and his sacred intercourse with heaven was at an end. He was indeed renewed unto repentance, and from the dust of self-abasement, cried unto God, Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy Holy Spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation, and uphold me with thy free Spirit. O Lord, open

66

thou my lips, and my mouth shall shew forth thy praise." If the conscience is not preserved clear, the current of devout affection will not flow in a full and fertilizing stream. The tear of penitence, and the prayer of faith, spring from the same source; and when the one is dried up, the other will run low. And hence Paul said, "Herein do I exercise myself, to have always a conscience void of offence, toward God and toward men." Acts xxiv. 16.*

* Deadness of spirit, arising from any or all of these causes, has been found in some of the best of men. The following extract, taken from a letter addressed to a friend, by the pious Bishop Hall, may serve as a specimen of what is here meant, and may afford some encouragement to the Christian, who is apt to think his case singular.

"But then again, the world thrusts itself betwixt me and heaven; and by its dark and indigested parts, eclipses that light which shined to my soul. Now a senseless dulness overtakes me and besets me; my lust to devotion is little, my joy none at all: God's face is hid, and I am troubled. Then I begin to compare myself with others, and think, are all men thus blockish and earthen? or am I alone worse than the rest, and singular in my wickedness? Now I carry my carcase up and down carelessly, and as dead bodies are rubbed without heat, I do in vain force upon myself delights which others laugh at. I endeavour my wonted work, but without a heart. There is nothing is not tedious to me, no, not myself.

"Thus I am, till I single myself out alone to Him that alone can revive me. I reason with myself, and confess with him: I chide myself, and entreat him; and after some spiritual speeches interchanged, I renew my familiarity with him, and he the tokens of love to me. Lo, then I live again, and applaud

II. But it may be worth while to examine how this deadness of spirit may be removed. This is an enquiry of the utmost importance, and I may be permitted to ask, whether it is one in which the reader feels interested. Are you not only sensible of your mental languor in God's worship, but also distressed on account of it? Does it draw many a sigh from the bottom of your heart? Is it a grief and a pain to you? It may be, this very heaviness in prayer, at times, raises a fearful apprehension as to the reality of your personal religion. It must, however, be always recollected, that there is a great difference between the partial deplored deadness of a saint, and the total deadness of an unregenerate sinner. The following remarks of that profound and experienced divine, Dr. Owen, are worthy of a place here. "Who, among the saints, find not what life, what light, what strength, sometimes; and again, how

myself in this happiness; and wish it might ever continue; and think basely of the world in comparison to it.

“Thus I hold on, rising and falling, neither know whether I should more praise God for thus much fruition of him, or blame myself for my inconstancy in good: more rejoice that sometimes I am well, or grieve that I am not always so. I strive and wish, rather than hope for better.

"This is our warfare: we may not look to triumph always; we must smart sometimes and complain; and then again rejoice that we can complain, and grieve that we can rejoice no more, and grieve no more; Our hope is, if we be patient we shall once be constant."

dead, how dark, how weak, as God is pleased to let out, or restrain the fruits of his love? Our love to God is ebbing and flowing, waning and increasing: we lose our first love, and we grow again in love, scarce a day at a stand. What poor creatures are we! How unlike the Lord and his love! Whenever was the time, wherever was the place, that our love was one day equal towards God? Not to have God as a Father, is not to have him at all; and he is known as a Father only, as he is love, and full of pardoning mercy in Christ. Whenever Christ is absent, it is night with a believer. Dull in prayer, wandering in meditation, rare in thoughts of him!-whatever way God hath appointed, I will in his strength, vigorously pursue, until this frame be altered, and I find my Beloved." To revive the exercises of piety, we must keep up an attention to the grand fundamental principles of the Gospel. "Quicken thou me according to thy word, and thy loving-kindness," is a most appropriate prayer, and it is grounded on a principle which ought not to be lost sight of even for a moment. The sure mercies of David are revealed in the everlasting covenant, and dispensed by a supernatural agency, in a way which exalts all the Divine perfections, and harmonizes all the moral powers, as well as heightens and completes all the spiritual pri

66

vileges of redeemed men. "The last Adam was made a quickening spirit;" that is, Christ, as a public Person, as the federal Head of the new covenant, is partaker of the divine nature, and endued with the Holy Spirit, whereby he becomes the Fountain of heavenly life to all his members. We can, therefore, only expect a revival of our religious feelings, from the same cause and the same power, which first imparted a vital impulse to the soul. But we must not be too anxious about animated and ecstatic feelings. "If our frames are comfortable," says one, Iwe may make them the matter of our praise, but not of our pride; we may make them our pleasure, but not our portion; we make them the matter of our encouragement, but not the ground of our security. Are our frames dark and uncomfortable? they should humble us, but not discourage us; they should quicken us, but not obstruct us in our application for necessary and suitable grace; they should make us see our own emptiness, but not make us suspect the fulness of Christ; they should make us see our own weakness, but not make us suspect the strength of Christ; they should make us suspect our own hearts, but not the firmness and freeness of the promises." But, perhaps, you still complain of your distance from God, and your deadness in his service. Enquire whether there is not much to be done

may

Ꮮ