that ask, bestow on me thy Holy Spirit; sanctify me wholly, and grant that my whole spirit and soul and body may be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. THE HOLY SCRIPTURES THROUGHOUT. Leviticus generally. Deuteronomy generally. BOOKS ON THIS SUBJECT. Lucas' Practical Holiness Sivewright on Sanctification CHAPTER XIV. ON AFFLICTIONS. 1. The varied afflictions of life.-2. The cause of them.-3. The improvement of them.-4. The healing of them. 1. THE VARIED AFFLICTIONS OF THIS LIFE. To increase that holiness which is requisite for our eternal happiness, we need affliction (Heb. xii. 10.) and daily conflict with our spiritual enemies. There are few subjects that come more home to every bosom than that of affliction. Though in the energy and buoyancy of youth and in the liveliness and joyfulness of fresh hopes, things appear free from sorrow, yet even such have their misgivings, and their seasons of depression. And, without exception, man is born to trouble, as the sparks fly upward. The mercies of God are, indeed, infinitely more numerous. We receive ten thousand mercies for one trial. Every hour and every moment is full of God's goodness; so that the believer can say, How precious are thy thoughts unto me, O God! How great is the sum of them! If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand. Psalm cxxxix. 17. And, indeed, afflictions, rightly viewed and received, are truly to be reckoned among these precious thoughts of God's love to us. Yet very varied and multiplied are the afflictions through which we have to pass. Our BODIES are fearfully and wonderfully made and composed of such numerous parts, and those so exquisitely delicate and sensitive, that they furnish innumerable means and inlets of pleasure, or of pain. Each of the five senses, seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, and smelling, becomes, if diseased or defective, an occasion of suffering. What sorrows and afflictions are connected with blindness and deafness, those labouring under such infirmities well know! The various members of the body may, in a similar manner, from disease or loss, cause us deep suffering. The head-ache, the ear-ache, the tooth-ache, a fit of the stone or of the gout, can disorder the whole frame. Lameness in the feet confines us to our dwelling, and disease in the hands prevents our working. A paralytic stroke disables the whole body. A fever disorders the entire constitution. The most feeble means or instrument employed by God can overwhelm us with dangerous disease and speedy death. The miracle is, not that we have so much sickness, but that amidst so many things exposing us to its loss we are preserved in health. Our MINDS are another fruitful source of affliction. Wonderful is that faculty by which a man thinks and reasons; plans and determines; feels powerful affections, loves and hates, fears and hopes, desires and enjoys. All these duly regulated, are sources of good and means of blessedness. All these unregu lated by God's will are sources of sorrow and affliction, and those even deeper and more difficult to be borne than what affects merely the body. The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity, but a wounded spirit, who can bear? Prov. xviii. 14. Worldly cares and anxieties, disappointed hopes and expectations, mortified pride, neglect, and contempt of our fellowcreatures, their frauds and injuries; the mistakes which we have made, our failures from our own faults and follies, the results of our own selfishness and earthly-mindedness, of our own self-wisdom and self-will, what innumerable sources of bitter affliction are these! Our FAMILIES AND RELATIONS, those chief means of our domestic and most constant and social happiness, become also chief occasions of trial and afflic tion. What anguish rends a parent's heart in the sickness, and danger, and loss, of a beloved child; and what grief a child suffers in the loss of a tender parent! A husband follows the wife of his bosom to the silent sepulchre with a broken heart, and the widow of a departed husband sits in solitary woe. And these are not the greatest of relative sorrows. Many a parent has to say, I had rather have followed my child to the grave, than that he should ruin himself, and dishonour his whole family by such baseness, and extravagance, and wickedness. The higher a man is, and the more he is encircled with the blessings of kindred and friends; the more he is exposed to such sources of sorrow, and he has the oftener to go to the house of mourning, and to weep with them that weep. What family has not also internal disorders; the heads of it, or the inmates in it, or the servants employed by it, either weak or sickly, headstrong or unruly, or, in some other way, causes of affliction to each other! And if we were free from these varied causes of affliction, who can behold THE AFFLICTIONS OF HIS FELLOW MEN without partaking of them in some degree. Not only as Christians, but as belonging to the one family of man, and descended from one common parent, we cannot but have some share in the sufferings of others: if one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it. 1 Cor. xii. 26. We see this most vividly and distinctly in an united family, and among true Christians; but it is in its measure true on a larger scale. There cannot be deep poverty among one class, without its affecting another class; there cannot be war between hostile nations without an increase of general suffering; an infectious disorder cannot spread without all being brought nearer to danger. Thus we have an interest, not only in personal and relative afflictions, but in afflictions generally. And still more, THE SINS OF MEN, as well as his own which will be more distinctly noticed, cause a Christian many a sigh and many a sorrow of which the world is ignorant, because it sees not the sure consequence of sin, and the dishonour it puts upon God, and the evil it brings on the sinner, and on all connected with him. Truly the whole creation thus groaneth and travaileth in pain together. After a striking enumeration of some of the miseries of this life, Bishop Taylor eloquently observes, "If we could from one of the battlements of heaven espy how many men and women at this time lie fainting and dying for want of bread, how many |