for His enemy the Devil. The harvest of that mingled crop will be the end of the world, and the reapers will be the angels sent forth by the Son of Man to gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity. God grant that, when that awful hour shall come, the souls of all of us, rich and poor, young and old, may be found bound in the bundle of life."

1 Sam. xxv. 29.

SERMON IX.

PREACHED ON THE TWENTIETH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY, 1839.

2 COR. xii. 8, 9.

For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me. And He said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest on me.

My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord,a by His prophet Isaiah; and how true are those words in all respects! Most true they were shewn to be by all His dealings with that chosen but most stiffnecked people to whom they were first spoken, by His forbearance and longsuffering, while they went on provoking Him to anger with their own inventions. Most true they have ever been; and, blessed be His name, most true they are to

a Is. lv. 8.

this very hour. God's thoughts of love and ways of mercy are to all of us far beyond anything that we can ever find among the best and kindest of our fellow-men. His unwearied patience, His large and free forgiveness-how different are they from any not divine!

But God's thoughts are not our thoughts, nor our ways His ways, in more senses than this; and those words of Isaiah are found to be signally true in respect of God's mode of dealing with the prayers of His faithful people, one striking instance of which is brought before you in that part of the history of St. Paul as given in the beginning of the second lesson of this afternoon service.

Our thoughts and our way would be in all cases that we should ask and have,—have just what we ask, and have it all at once. If we feel or fancy that we want this or that, what can be better for us (we are always ready to think) than that we should pray to God to grant it, and that the blessing should be immediately bestowed? Are we groaning under some distressing visitation? Our way would be, if we could have it, in every case to lay our suffering, whether of mind, body, or estate, before the Lord, and to have relief, instant and entire relief, given us.

God is all powerful: therefore He can give us

whatever we ask: therefore He is able to relieve our necessities, be they what they may. God is all merciful: therefore He will withhold nothing that we crave. He doth not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men: therefore we need only to cry unto Him and have our pains assuaged and our sorrows soothed at once. This is our way of viewing the matter. How different

is God's way of dealing with us, and all that belongs to us! He constantly sees fit to delay, or even to deny, the fulfilment of our wishes. The blessing which we desire so intensely is perhaps withheld from us altogether; or it reaches us, it may be, after a long interval of time, and in some way very different indeed from that in which we should have looked for it. The burthen under which we groan and writhe is allowed to press and gall us, perhaps to the very end of our earthly pilgrimage; or at all events it is not withdrawn till long after we had wished it gone, and thought we could endure it no longer; and notwithstanding all this, though God's thoughts and ways are so very different from ours, the prayer of faith is always answered, fully answered, answered better and more fully than if it had been answered most exactly in the way of our own devising.

b Lam. iii. 33.

In the case of St. Paul, and the trouble for the removal of which he had besought the Lord thrice that it might depart from him, he had been suffering under it for fourteen years at the time of writing this Epistle; and, for all we know, he continued to suffer under it to the end of his days. What the nature of that trial was we are not expressly told, as doubtless we should have been, if it had really concerned us to know exactly. And one great advantage there plainly is in any doubt or obscurity which we may feel about it, that every sincere Christian may now, without any hesitation or difficulty, apply the case of the Apostle to any trial of his own. Whereas, if we had been plainly told what his thorn in the flesh was, we might, many of us, have been tempted to think that this part of the history of St. Paul could speak no comfort, could administer no support to us, because we never could expect to be placed in circumstances exactly like those in which he was, when Christ gave him that answer to his prayer which has been read to you in the

text.

There is good reason to believe, indeed, that the thorn in the flesh was a bodily infirmity: not one of those to which we are all of us liable in the ordinary course of God's providence, but something of a strange and unusual kind, as we

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