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his providence, means, otherwise the most proper, will be without avail. Unless the Spirit descend as showers upon the mown grass, the fiery trial will consume the christian. Pain and evil, murmuring, hardness of heart, and despair seem to be the immediate and natural consequences of afflictions. They are salutary only by remote consequence, and as a means appointed by the heavenly Father for the reformation of his children. This idea is evidently suggested in the text, by the phrase "them that are exercised thereby."For unless men are properly exercised under afflictions, and the influences of the spirit accompany them, they will never yield the peaceable fruit of righteousness. But, accompanied with this divine influence, they are the best means of improvement in holiness, which must be the ultimate object of the

of God.

government

1. Afflictions bring those who are exercised by them to serious reflection, and consequently to self communion, and a correction of their faults. Mankind are at all times averse from an examination of their own heart and conduct. Busily employed in the search for knowledge, wealth, honour and pleasure,

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every thing around them attracts their notice, but they will by no means turn their attention to themselves, or inquire into what passes within their own breast. This natural disposition of mankind exerts itself with full force when the candle of the Lord shines bright upon them. Levity, thoughtlessness and inattention are the almost necessary consequences of an uninterrupted course of prosperity. full possession of health and spirits, flushed with success, and elevated with farther hopes, men seldom bestow a serious thought upon their present state or their future destination. They pass on, amused with the noise and splendour that attend them, without once thinking whence they came, or whither they are going.

But when God chastens them with adversity, and removes the amusing and vain show which is such an enemy to thought, then reflection must take place. The sanguine hopes and flattering ideas, which prosperity cherished, disappear when the evil day comes.A thousand gay insects flutter in the summer's sun, which the blasts of winter sweep from the face of the earth. And when the storm howls around, and every thing external presents a

dreary picture, we must of necessity have recourse to reflection, and must fall into that thoughtful state of mind which is most favourable to improvement in knowledge and religion.

When our attention is thus roused, and our mind is brought to serious reflection, our heart and conduct are the first objects of our inquiry. Conscience is awakened and brings in review before us our former ways. We naturally ask, what sin we have committed, of which we have not repented; what vicious habit we have persisted in during the repose of conscience; what secret indulgence we have taken, at which reason, deluded by prosperity, winked, but for which God now chastizes us. This was the case with Joseph's brethren. In their prosperous days, their ill treatment of their brother did not once recur to their mind. But when famine and distress came upon them; when they were obliged to leave their country in quest of the necessaries of life; and when they were confined and threatened with death in a foreign land, then did better reflections arise; "and they "said one to another, we are verily guilty "concerning our brother, in that we saw the

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anguish of his soul, when he besought us, "and we would not hear; therefore is this "distress come upon us.'

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Afflictions, by thus awakening our attention, and quickening a sense of sin and a sorrow for it, yield the peaceable fruit of rightSloth and inactivity are peculiarly hurtful to a christian. While the man in the parable slept, the enemy came, and sowed tares among his wheat. Whatever, therefore, excites men to watchfulness and care must be highly useful to prevent the success of temptation, and the progress of sin, as well as to encourage the growth of the divine seed which is sown in the heart. An uninterrupted flow of ease and tranquillity lulls the mind into a fatal indolence and insensibility about religious concerns. Some judgment or mark of God's displeasure is, then, necessary to purge our dross, to rouse us to a serious sense of religion, and to make us discern and value the things that belong to our peace, ere they be for ever hid from our eyes just as when the atmosphere is full of noxious and pestilential vapours, some violent storm or thunder is necessary to disperse them, to clear the infected

air, and to restore the sickly sky to its former health and benignity.

Punish

It deserves to be remarked here, that, though men are led to an amendment of their ways by that connection, which exists in the divine administration, between sin and suffering, yet with respect to good men, afflictions cannot be considered as the punishment of that sin on account of which they are inflicted. ment is the execution of the divine law, but has not in view the reformation of the offender. The sorrow, and pain, and misfortune which befal the wicked, whose eyes are closed, and whose ears are dull of hearing, can be nothing but punishment. They are the foretastes of that bitter cup which is in the hand of the Lord, and the dregs whereof shall be wrung out and drunk by the wicked of the earth. The afflictions of the righteous, on the other hand, are but for the hour of this life; they are but as preparatory to the full enjoyment of the blessings of immortality. They are wholesome checks to keep the children of God in mind of their dependence, and of their engagement in the warfare of Christ. They are the bitter medicines which the divine Phy

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