moment of danger we may be reduced to such straits that nothing but a miracle can save us. We must therefore make God our friend long before, and provide against the evil day while it is yet afar off, and all seems peace and security around us. His Holy Spirit is not to be made subservient to a present purpose, to be invoked in our necessity, and slighted in time of safety; he must either abide constantly with us, or for ever remain a stranger to us. It is not an occasional ejaculation, vented by accident, or extorted by fear, that will bring him down from heaven; it is only upon repeated solicitations, and a due preparation for his reception, that this Divine guest will condescend to take up his abode with us. We are, as the Apostle expresses it in his strong manner of speaking, "to pray always with "all prayer and supplication, and watch "thereunto with all perseverance."* And this will not only draw down upon us a plentiful effusion of Divine grace, but improve and confirm our own internal strength; will engage our attention, excite our industry, increase our caution, and even suggest to us * Eph. vi. 18.

every human means of deliverance. For prayer has of itself a natural tendency to obtain its own purposes, and we grow insensibly better whilst we wish to be so.

It is, in short, on our own vigilance, circumspection, and self-discipline, added to our most earnest prayers for the Divine assistance, that all our virtue here, and all our happiness hereafter, through the merits of our Redeemer, entirely depend. If a man will throw himself in the way of danger, and venture to the very brink of vice; if he will suffer his thoughts to wander, or dwell upon improper objects; if he knows his weak parts, and yet leaves them without defence; if he sees a growing appetite, and instead of checking, seeks every opportunity to feed and to inflame it; if he confines his views to present enjoyments, nor ever spends a thought upon futurity; if, in fine, he lives without God in the world, without any awe of his presence, any trust in his assistance, or any fear of his judgments, he must expect that the slightest temptations will get the better of his virtue, already half subdued.

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seriously and in earnest to search out and to correct his infirmities; if he flies at the first approach of temptation, and takes alarm at the most distant intimation of danger; if he curbs that busy dangerous power, the imagination; "if he keeps his heart with all diligence," and guards the issues of life; if, as the Apostle advises, he takes unto him. THE SHIELD OF FAITH, opposing the joys of heaven to the pleasures of sin, and having less regard to a present gratification than the future recompense of reward; of reward; above all, if he never ceases importuning the throne of Grace for the assistance of God's Holy Spirit to purify his soul, invigorate his resolutions, and support him under all the difficulties and discouragements of his Christian warfare; he may depend upon it, that whatever may be his constitution, whatever the nature or degree of the temptations he is exposed to, not all the powers of darkness shall be able to prevail against him. Though he may perhaps accidently fall, yet he shall "never be cast away; for the Lord up"holdeth him with his hand." t

*Prov. iv. 23.

+ Psalm xxxvii. 24.

sages in Holy Writ, in which a future judgment, and an eternal state of existence hereafter, are clearly and positively announced to us; and it is from these declarations of the Gospel, and these only, that we derive the certain expectation of immortal life. To pretend, therefore, as some have done, that we had already sufficient notices of this împortant truth from the light of nature, and

notices, is so complete as to supersede the necessity of any further information, is to give nature a degree of merit to which she is far from having any just pretensions, and to make a very ungrateful return for the invaluable advantages we have received, in this and many other respects, from the Revelation made by Christ. But yet to assert, on the other hand, that natural religion gives us not the smallest ground to hope that we shall survive the grave, and that every argument for it, except those which Scripture supplies, is perfectly vain and nugatory, and unworthy of the least regard, is surely running into another extreme, no less destitute of foundation, and no less hurtful in its consequences, than the former. The natural and moral

evidences of another life after this, though confessedly inferior, very greatly inferior in authority and force to those of Revelation, vet undoubtedly have their proper weight and use; and to depreciate their just value,

*It has been very justly observed, that some writers, by exalting the powers of reason, in matters of religion, too high, have destroyed the necessity of Revelation; and others, by degrading them too low, have risked the reasonableness of it. Div. Leg, vol. ii. p. 26.