killed, whatever be done it is the Lord's doing; only, Lord, save my soul at last.-We glorify God in the fire, when in the midst of the fire we can sing God's high praises. Thus the children of Israel glorified the Lord; the song of the three children in the fiery furnace is a sweet song, as are all that are made in the fire: "O all the works of the Lord, praise and magnify him for ever!"'-Then we glorify God in the fire, when we rejoice in him, when we not only think, but know it best, and can thank God for striking us; can thank God for whipping us; can bless God for not letting us alone; thank God for not saying, "Let him alone" this is to glorify God in the fire. "Not only so," saith the apostle, "but we glory in tribulation, knowing that tribulation worketh patience.'

In a word, we glorify the Lord in the fire, when we have in exercise, patience, meekness, humility; learning more to distrust ourselves, having a deeper knowledge of our own weakness, and of God's omnipotence and grace. Happy when we can look back and say, Thus have I been enabled to glorify God in the fire: who can put his hand to his heart, and say, I have glorified God in the fire as I ought? instead, of that, I am afraid the soul must say, that instead of being thankful and resigned, I have been fretful; and because I will not find fault with myself, nor let the world know I find fault with God, I find fault with all about me. Did you never find yourself in such a humour when your spirits were low? I heard a good man once speak on those words, "They shall bring forth fruit in old age:" O, the fruit, said he, is peevishness; I thought it was the infirmity of old age, the fruit of which ought to be heavenly-mindedness, deadness to the world, and a liveliness to God.

My brethren, let us humble ourselves to-night, and let us be ashamed and abashed before God, and wonder he hath not struck us into hell when we have been complaining the fire was too hot, that God sent us not to the devil. Let us weep, let us weep, let us weep for our stubbornness. Happy they who are used to be put into the fire betimes! "It is good for a man to bear the yoke in his youth." Some years ago, when I was at the Ophanhouse, they told me they were going to yoke two steers together, one sturdy and old, the other a little one; on which they no sooner put the yoke, but he kicked once or twice, and then bore it very well: O, thought I, it is a good thing to have the yoke betimes.

Are any of you now in the furnace, are any of you troubled, or can any of you say, I have no trouble? A calm is sometimes the forerunner of a storm; thank God, you are not in the fire; surely you have been in the fire. There is the devil's fire, the fires of the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life;" God help you to come out of these fires, lest they dania your souls for ever. You must be put either in the devil's fire or God's fire, and the devil's fires are hottest, because there is no God to support under the trouble they bring upon the soul. O what a dreadful thing it is to be in the devil's fire continu

ally, and to go out of the fire of the devil here to burn with the devil in hell hereafter! If there are any of you in this case, Lord Jesus Christ shorten them, Lord Jesus Christ sanctify his afflictions to his people, as he did to one of the prisoners last Wednesday: how sweetly he behaved! while the others were cursing and swearing, tossing up who should sit on the right hand in the cart, he was glorifying God, thanking God he was sent there, and going to be executed: God, saith he, hath stopt me, I might have gone on in sin to ruin. O send to my father, go to him, warn him to "flee from the wrath to come:" somebody went to his parent, and the father sent back this loving message, Tell him to mind his own soul, and be damned! 0 dear Lord, what lengths has man gone! never was such a message sent to a son before; he bid him mind his own soul, and be damned! God grant none of you may ever have such a frame of mind as that! O remember, fire hardens as well as softens; and if you are not better by afflictions, you will be worse and indeed you will know you cannot come out of the furnace as you went in, you will either be hardened or else be purified; and if this be the case, the Lord Jesus Christ help you to bear the fire now, that you may never be cast into the fire of hell. God haste you; hasten, you that are out of the devil's fire, to flee; flee, ye weary souls, to Jesus Christ; fly to the Lamb of God, from hell to heaven, as far as you can from these hellish fires, to the fire of his blessed merit and love.

Happy you that have got into Christ's fire! happy you that have found his fires in your souls! I believe many souls have: O Lord Jesus Christ, help you to glorify him in whatever fires he shall be pleased to send you, and into whatever furnaces he shall be pleased to put you: we shall then sing "the church triumphant," much better than we sing to-night; we shall see Jesus Christ ready to help us when we are in the furnace: O that this thought may make every poor sinner say, By the help of God, I will be a Christian; by the help of God, if I must burn, it shall be burning with the love of Christ. I will say then, O Lord, glorify thyself by snatching me as a brand from the devil's fire. O that this might be the cry of every heart!

I am going to ask a favour of you to-night which I never did before, and perhaps, may not again for some time: I have had complaints made to me by the persons that take care of the poor, that the poor's stock is very low; though I cannot speak on Sunday night, yet I will speak a word to the poor on Wednesday evening. There are numbers of poor that are ready to perish, and if you drop something to them in love, God will take care to repay you when you come to judgment. We shall not only glorify God by a submission to his will, when he is putting us in the fire, but in doing any good, when we lay all the glory at the foot of Jesus; which God grant for Christ's sake. Amen.

SERMON LXIV.

THE BELOVED OF GOL.

And of Benjamin, he said, The beloved of the Lord shall dwell in safety by him; and the Lord shall cover him all the day long, and he shall dwell between his shoulders.-Deut. xxxiii. 12. OH! what a dismal sight is it, to see an old man with his hoary head grown grey in sin, and hardened in iniquity!

On the other hand, I believe, to all that consider rightly, there is no grander sight almost under the sun, than to see an old grey-headed man keeping up a consistent character; and proving, by his conduct, that "his path, (like that of the just,) is as the shining light, that shineth more and more to the perfect day;" especially when persons have been called to act in a public character; when they have been eminent either for the highness of their station, or for the largeness of their income. It is on this account that I admire old Jacob; how grand he looked when leaning on his staff, with all the composure in the world, under a divine influence, blessing his children standing round him! But, methinks, there is one who was called to act a more public part, namely, Moses, who was honoured of God to be a great legislator, king in Jeshurun, a lawgiver between Judah's feet, as pupils used to be at the feet of their teachers, to receive their instruction; if you have a mind to see how bright he shines, you must read Deut. xxxii. indeed you must read all Deuteronomy, which is nothing but a sermon that Moses, at various times, preached to the children of Israel; and having done preaching, he sang a hymn of his own composing, and that too at a time when he knew, at the very finishing of the song, he should immediately have his soul kissed away, and be called to sing a better song in the kingdom of heaven. A person would need a good deal of composure, a good deal of the Spirit's influences, a large measure of it, cheerfully thus to stand in view of death, just on the very borders of the grave; you see this in chap. xxxii. and here in chap. xxxiii. One would have thought he had said enough, yet he seems as it were not to know how to leave off; he parted from the people blessing them; they had used him ill, they provoked him in the wilderness; he had bore with them many, many long years; sure you would have thought he would have went away in a buff: no, that eminent sun by no means goes down in wrath; his eyes did not so much as wax dim, nor his intellectual powers impair in all that time: he sweetly gives them all a blessing before he goes. If you read this chap. xxxiii. you will find how various, yet special, are the blessings which, in a prophetic strain, he foretells should attend particular persons, or tribes. I have been reading them over, and though I admire them all, I was at a loss which to speak from, till the blessing of Benjamin fixed my attention, not only as sweet, but instructing. "The beloved of the Lord shall dwell in safety, by him; and the Lord shall cover him all the day

long, he shall dwell between his shoulders." This is a blessing indeed, if we look only to the literal interpretation of the words, and a literal commentator can go no further; he must confine them to Benjamin; and will tell us, that this Scripture was fulfilled at the building of the temple. The temple was built upon two hills, one in the tribe of Benjamin, the other in the tribe of Judah; the temple being built there, and Benjamin being placed near it, then Benjamin dwells in safety by the Lord, by having his lot cast near the temple. How often, alas! is it the case, I am sure it is very often the case in London, the nearer the church, the further from God; but some make good use of it, and are glad to get near the church, that they may be nearer God. The temple being placed between two hills, so Benjamin as it were dwells between God's shoulders; so far a literal commentator can go, here he stops: a spiritual commentator, and a spiritual reader, go further; O, says he, this is true, but at the same time this is not the whole truth; and I am persuaded, when a person is helped by the Spirit to read the Scriptures, the declarations that are made, and those particular promises, the true believer applies with great propriety to himself; and therefore I think I may venture to aver, that the blessing which Moses here pronounces upon him in the name of the Lord, belongs to God's people in all ages whatever. God, in his infinite mercy, grant that this blessing may descend upon us and ours, that it may descend to your latest posterity.

Observe how wonderfully the persons to whom the blessing is given are characterized : of Benjamin it is said, "The beloved of the Lord;" the beloved of the Lord, pray who are they? Why, the men that the Scriptures always speak of, whose constant uniform character is, they love God in all ages. It is not said, the Presbyterians shall dwell in safety; Moses never heard of a Presbyterian in his life; he never heard of the name: nor is it said, the Independents shall dwell in safety; he never heard of that word: nor is it said the Papists shall dwell in safety; he never heard of Papists, nor of the pope: nor is it said, that the church of England shall dwell in safety; no, neither is it said, that the Methodists shall dwell in safety, though I trust there are a great many good people among these mongrels of the church but it is spoken of all the people of God; God help us all to apply it to ourselves!

Here is a dispute between the Arminians and the Calvinists: ask an Arminian what is meant by " the beloved of the Lord;" Q, say they that are for general redemption, the beloved of the Lord signifies all the men that were ever born into the world; that is a good broad bridge to take them in, but broad bridges are not always the strongest bridges in the world. The Arminians will assert it, that Judas was as much beloved of God as Peter, or any other of the apostles; and those that are not Arminians, but are what you call Quakers, and there are a good many, I believe, among them, that have better hearts than heads; they say, that we are all alike, that we all come into the world with

a seed of grace, and shall be happy according to the improvement of that grace; hence they talk nothing of a Christ without, but within; happy they that experience a Christ within! God's mercy is sure, and over all his works; and in one sense, our Lord Jesus Christ is the Saviour of all men, that is, of all sorts of men; even the wicked are beholden to Jesus Christ, whom they despise, for every worldly comfort they enjoy; in this sense we should learn to love as our Lord, we are told, loved the young man when he saw he had been a harmless and good liver. -But we must go more to what we call Calvinism, what I call Scriptural truth. The love which Jesus Christ bore for the young man, quite differed from that love with which he loved Martha, Mary, and their brother: there was a cargo for you! three in one family; God grant it may be your happy lot and mine! two sisters and one brother, three to entertain Jesus Christ, all in a peculiar manner beloved of the Lord. It is not said of Benjamin, they shall (that is, they that love the Lord) they shall dwell in safety, no; it would not be so strong to them, as to say, "the beloved of the Lord;" for God knows our love is not worth a shilling: all the faith of God's people, says bishop Hall, is but mere infidelity; and all the love of the people of God is but mere hatred, compared with God's love, or that which his law justly requires; therefore it is said, "beloved of the Lord," and that because if ever we love God, he first loved us, which is what Moses' very expression means; as streams flow from the fountain, so they shall return to it. Hence the apostle says, "Knowing your election, brethren, beloved of God." I know very well the Mystics talk of loving God with a love for himself only, without any respect to the creature at all; that is, we must love God without any regard at all for what God has done for us; nay, some go so far as to say, that if we do not so love God, we are not converted, though we have as much grace as we can have; that we do not love God properly till we love him for what he is, not what he has done for us: I verily believe, the angels do not love God in that manner; and we cannot love God till we are made partakers of a divine nature, and have eyes given us to see his glory.

The grand inquiry is then, how shall I know that I am one of the beloved of the Lord? The natural man never minds the love of God; he flatters himself he loves God naturally, that the love of God is a plant that grows in nature's garden; but a spiritual person does not so. What, does the king take notice of me? Does the king look pleasant upon me in a drawing-room? Am I called to wait upon him? Am I beloved of this, and that, and the other person? If I be, let God go, I care not; if I have but the love of this, and that courtier, I care not whether God loves me or no; this will not do for an awakened soul; and therefore the grand inquiry, and one proof of a person's being awakened, is, how shall I know whether God loves me, or not? Why, try; I am persuaded of it, that we may as well know that God loves us, and we love God, as we may know that the sun shines at