the love and presence of God. Nothing else can afford you satisfaction: temptations, afflictions, discouragements, and delays increase the spiritual appetite, and make you pant the more for these living waters."

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SERMON VIII.

THE BELIEVER GLORYING IN GOD.

JEREMIAH ix. 23, 24.

Thus saith the Lord, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches: but let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the Lord which exercise lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth, for in these things I delight, saith the Lord.

WERE there no other reason than that of the shortlived nature of human distinctions, pleasures, and acquirements, to convict us of sinful folly when glorying in them, that reason alone would be final and irresistible. Even the man who is either so insane as to deny a future state of rewards and punishments, or so reckless as to despise it, can furnish no argument in justification of that folly, so long as all forethought fails to elude or avert the blow, which if not suddenly, must in the course of nature, eventually level with the dust

both the architect and the fabric of every human enjoyment. With his utmost wisdom, man cannot give perpetuity to himself or to his edifice time will soon efface both from the eye and the memory, and all that is left, after a very while, in record of the whole species of human glory, is a sepulchral inscription which itself rapidly decays and disappears.

To every healthy mind this reflection, though entirely free from gloom, is invested with solemnity and awe for however a false philosophy may succeed with him whose course of conduct makes it desirable there should be no hereafterhowever it may rejoice in a misrepresentation of facts so artful as to increase such a person's willingness to believe the doctrine of future accountableness delusion, and the fear of future judgment superstition-however and to whatever extent this may be the case on the one hand with the superficial and abandoned, with the man on the other who is, even if not decidedly religious, yet cautious in coming to conclusions and slow in rejecting evidence, a very different result will take place. To him there will be matter, at least, of grave deliberation, when remembering the brevity of this scene, and his own uncertain and fleeting existence in it. But in truth all see plainly enough that the fashion of this world passeth away, though comparatively few have or desire to have an inheritance laid up in another that will

I

never pass away; and there probably is not the man breathing, however lost in worldliness and sin, who, at intervals, has not at least a transient thought of the madness of his present course, and of the wretched termination of it to which he is hastening. That he stifles in their rising the monitions of a conscience which has been lulled to sleep by seductive and ruinous opiates, proves not that there is no danger approaching, but that he resolves to close his eyes against it. He finds life a vapour though he strives to forget it to be so, and experience tells him what it tells all, that he is hunting a shadow which he vainly tries to persuade himself is substantial, in whatever of life's pleasures or pursuits he reposes his exclusive hope, trust, or enjoyment. Of this wilful moral blindness, the Scriptures are full and frequent in their denunciation. The source of it they declare to be that confidence in the flesh which, in some form or other, it is the tendency of our fallen, wayward nature to indulge, and the remedy of it is that rejoicing in the Lord which it is the province of a vital faith to create and mature in the renewed soul. Into this twofold division of the subject, the words of our text directly fall, and it may therefore be with the Lord's permission useful, and with his blessing instructive, if we endeavour to review them in that order. The first branch contains then,

I. A direct prohibition of any and all glorying

in the mind, body, or estate of man: "Thus saith the Lord, let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might; let not the rich man glory in his riches.” And,

II. The next enforces the proper object of our glory and delight; "let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the Lord, which exercise loving-kindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth, for in these things I delight, saith the Lord."

I. The first kind then of prohibited confidence in the flesh is, that described under the wise man's glorying in his wisdom. Now it is quite certain that a spiritual understanding of the law of God, and a real abiding sense of the evil of sin cannot consist in the same mind with this false and unhallowed glorying, because the understanding, enlightened from above, discerns, that that only is true wisdom which both cometh from God, and pointeth to God, and that, being what the Scriptures characterise as directly tending to make wise unto salvation, it is conversant only about spiritual things. In this wisdom we may glory, that is, by ascribing all praise to the gracious and almighty Giver of it. But the wisdom we are forbidden to glory in is of a wholly different nature, for it is conversant about earthly things. It is that wisdom which the princes of this world knew, when