plenty, and presses bursting out with new wine, as the rewards of those that honour thee with their substance. I hear of heads anointed with oil, and cups running over. O God, as thou hast a free hand to give, so let us have a free heart to return thee the praise of thy bounty. Those fragments were left behind. I do not see the people, when they had filled their bellies, cramming their pockets, or stuffing their wallets; yet the place was desert, and some of them doubtless had far home. It becomes true disciples to be content with the present, not too solicitous for the future. O Saviour, thou didst not bid us beg bread for to-morrow, but for to-day: not that we should refuse thy bounty when thou pleasest to give, but that we should not distrust thy Providence for the need we may have. Of all the other half was in the remnant. Here was not any morsel or bone that was not worthy to be a relic, every the least parcel whereof was no other than miraculous. All the ancient monuments of God's supernatural power and mercy were in the keeping of Aaron and his sons. There is no servant in the family but should be thriftily careful for his master's profit; but most of all the steward, who is particularly charged with this oversight. Woe be to us, if we care only to gather up our own scraps, with neglect of the precious morsels of our Maker and Redeemer! WATERS. ALL elements are alike to their Maker. He that had well approved his power on the land, will now show it in the air and the waters; he that had preserved the multitude from the peril of hunger in the desert, will now preserve his disciples from the peril of the tempest in the sea. Even these fragments, though but of barley-loaves and fish-bones, may not be CONTEMPLATION VI.—THE WALK UFOn the left in the desert, for the compost of that earth whereon they were increased; but, by our Saviour's holy and just command, are gathered up. The liberal housekeeper of the world will not allow the loss of his orts: the children's bread may not be given to dogs; and if the crumbs fall to their share, it is because their smallness admits not of a collection. If those who out of obedience or due thrift have thought to gather up crumbs, have found them pearls, I wonder not surely, both are alike the good creatures of the same Maker, and both of them may prove equally costly to us in their wilful mispending. But O, what shall we say, that not crusts and crumbs, not loaves and dishes and cups, but whole patrimonies, are idly lavished away, not merely lost-this were more easy-but ill spent in a wicked riot, upon dice, drabs, drunkards. O the fearful account of these unthrifty bailiffs, which shall once be given in to our great Lord and Master, when he shall call us to a strict reckoning of all our talents! He was condemned that increased not the sum concredited to him: what shall become of him that lawlessly impairs it? Who gathered up these fragments, but the twelve apostles, every one his basket full? They were the servitors that set on this banquet; at the command of Christ, they waited on the tables, they took away. It was our Saviour's just care that those offals should not perish; but he well knew that a greater loss depended upon those scraps, a loss of glory to the omnipotent Worker of that miracle. The feeding of the multitude was but the one half of the work, Where do we ever else find any compulsion offered by Christ to his disciples? He was like the good centurion: he said to one, "Go, and he goeth." When he did but call them from their nets, they came; and when he sent them by pairs into the cities and country of Judea, to preach the gospel, they went. There was never errand whereon they went unwillingly; only now he constrained them to depart. We may easily conceive how loath they were to leave him, whether out of love or common civility. Peter's tongue did but (when it was) speak the heart of the rest: " Master, thou knowest that I love thee.' Who could choose but be in love with such a Master? and who can willingly part from what he loves? But had the respects been only common and ordinary, how unfit might it seem to leave a master, now towards night, in a wild place, amongst strangers, unprovided of the means of his passage! Where otherwise, therefore, he needed but to bid, now he constrains: O Saviour, it was ever thy manner to call all men unto thee: "Come to me, all that labour and are heavy laden." When didst thou ever drive any one from thee? Neither had it been so now, but to draw them closer unto thee, whom thou 66 seemedst for the time to abdicate. In the meanwhile, I know not whether more to excuse their unwillingness, or to applaud their obedience. As it shall be fully above, so it was proportionably here below: "In thy presence," O Saviour, "is the fulness of joy." Once, when thou askedst these thy domestics, whether they also would depart, it was answered thee by one tongue for all: Master, whither should we go from thee? thou hast the words of eternal life." What a death was it, then, to them to be compelled to leave thee! Sometimes it pleaseth the divine goodness to lay upon his servants such commands as savour of harshness and discomfort, which yet, both in his intention and in the event, are no other than gracious and sovereign. The more difficulty was in the charge, the more praise was in the obedience. I do not hear them stand upon the terms of capitulation | with their Master, nor pleading importunately for their stay; but instantly, upon the command, they yield and go. We are never perfect disciples till we can depart from our reason, from our will; yea, O`Saviour, when thou biddest us, from thyself. Neither will the multitude be gone without a dismission. They had followed him while they were hungry; they will not leave him now they are fed. Fain would they put that honour upon him, which to avoid, he is fain to avoid them; gladly would they pay a kingdom to him, as their shot for their late banquet: he shuns both it and them. O Saviour, when the hour of thy passion was now come, thou couldst offer thyself readily to thine apprehenders; and now, when the glory of the world presses upon thee, thou runnest away from a crown. Was it to teach us, that there is less danger in suffering than in outward prosperity? What do we doat upon that worldly honour which thou heldest worthy of avoidance and contempt? Besides this reservedness, it was devotion that drew Jesus aside: he went alone up to the mountain to pray. Lo, thou, to whom the greatest throng was a solitude, in respect of the fruition of thy Father; thou, who wert incapable of distraction from him with whom thou wert one, wouldst yet so much act man, as to retire for the opportunity of prayer; to teach us, who are nothing but wild thoughts and giddy distractedness, to go aside when we would speak with God. How happy is it for us that thou prayedst! O Saviour, thou prayedst for us, who have not grace enough to pray for ourselves, not worth enough to be accepted when we do pray. Thy prayers, which were most perfect and impetrative, are they by which our weak and unworthy prayers receive both life and favour. And now, how assiduous should we be in our supplications, who are empty of grace, full of wants: when thou who wert a God of all power, prayedst for that which thou couldst command! Therefore do we pray, because thou prayedst: therefore do we expect to be graciously answered in our prayers, because thou didst pray for us here on earth, and now intercedest for us in heaven. The evening was come. The disciples looked long for their Master, and loath they were to have stirred without him: but his command is more than the strongest wind to fill their sails; and they are now gone. Their expectation made not the evening seem so long, as our Saviour's devotion made it seem short to him; he is on the mount, they on the sea; yet, while he was on the mount praying, and lifting up his eyes to his Father, he fails not to cast them about upon his disciples tossed on the waves. Those all-seeing eyes admit of no limits: at once he sees the highest heavens, and the midst of the sea; the glory of his Father, and the misery of his disciples. Whatever prospects present themselves to his view, the distress of his followers is ever most noted. How much more dost thou now, O Saviour, from the height of thy glorious advancement, behold us, thy wretched servants, tossed on the unquiet sea of this world, and beaten with the troublesome and threatening billows of affliction! Thou foresawest their toil and danger ere thou dismissedst them, and purposely sendedst them away that they might be tossed. Thou, that couldst prevent our sufferings by thy power, wilt permit them in thy wisdom, that thou mayest glorify thy mercy in our deliverance, and confirm our faith by the issue of our distresses. How do all things now seem to conspire to the vexing of the poor disciples! The night was sullen and dark, their Master was absent, the sea was boisterous, the winds were high and contrary. Had their Master been with them, howsoever the ele ments had raged, they had been secure e; had their Master been away, yet, if the sea had been quiet, or the winds fair, the passage might have been endured. Now both season, and sea, and wind, and their Master's desertion, had agreed to render them perfectly miserable. Sometimes the Providence of God hath thought good so to order it, that to his best servants there ap peareth no glimpse of comfort, but so absolute vexation, as if heaven and earth had plotted their full affliction. Yea, O Saviour, what a dread night, what a fearful tempest, what an astonishing dereliction was that, wherein thou thyself criedst out 'n the bitterness of thine anguished soul, "My God! my God! why hast thou forsaken me?" Yet, in all these extremities of misery, our gracious God intends nothing but his greater glory and ours; the triumph of our faith, the crown of our victory. All that longsome and tempestuous night must the disciples wear out in danger and horror, as given over to the winds and waves; but in the fourth watch of the night, when they were wearied out with toils and fears, comes deliverance. At their entrance into the ship, at the -ising of the tempest, at the shutting in of the evening, there was no news of Christ: but when they have been all the night long beaten, not so much with storms and waves, as with their own thoughts, now in the fourth watch, which was near to the morning, Jesus came unto them, and purposely not till then, that he might exercise their patience, that he might inure them to wait upon divine Providence in cases of extremity, that their devotions might be more whetted by delay, that they might give gladder welcome to their deliverance. God, thus thou thinkest fit to do still. We are by turns in our sea; the winds bluster, the billows swell, the night and thy absence heighten our discomfort; thy time and ours is set as yet it is but midnight with us; can we but hold out patiently till the fourth watch, thou wilt surely come and rescue us. O let us not faint under our sorrows, but wear out our three watches of tribulation, with undaunted patience and holy resolution! leave to wonder more at thy passage than at thy coming. Wherefore camest thou but to comfort them? and wherefore, then, wouldst thou pass by them as if thou hadst intended nothing but their dismay? Thine absence could not be so grievous as thy preterition: that might seem justly occasioned; this could not but seem willingly neglective. Our last conflicts have wont ever to be the sorest; as when after some dripping rain it pours down most vehemently, we think the weather is changing to serenity. O Saviour, we may not always measure thy meaning by thy semblance: sometimes what thou most intendest, thou showest least. In our afflictions thou turnest thy back upon us, and hidest thy face from us, when thou most mindest our distresses. So Jonathan shot the arrows beyond David, when he meant them to him: so Joseph calls for Benjamin into bonds, when his heart was bound to him in the strongest affection: so the tender mother makes as if she would give away her crying child, whom she hugs so much closer in her bosom. If thou pass by us while we are struggling with the tempest, we know it is not for want of mercy. Thou canst not neglect us: O let us not distrust thee! What object should have been so pleasing to the eyes of the disciples as their MasOter, and so much the more as he showed his divine power in this miraculous walk? But lo, contrarily, "they are troubled;" not with his presence, but with this form of presence. The supernatural works of God, when we look upon them with our own eyes, are subject to a dangerous misprision. The very sunbeams, to which we are beholden for our sight, if we eye them directly, blind Miserable men! we are ready to suspect truths, to run away from our safety, to be afraid of our comforts, to misknow our best friends. O Saviour, our extremities are the seasons of thine aid. Thou camest at last, but yet so as that there was more dread than joy in thy presence: thy coming was both miraculous and frightful. Thou, God of elements, passedst through the air, walkedst upon the waters. Whether thou meantest to terminate this miracle in thy body, or in the waves which thou troddest upon, whether so lightening the one, that it should make no impression in the liquid waters, or whether so consolidating the other, that the pavemented waves yielded a firm causeway to thy sacred feet to walk on, I neither determine nor inquire: thy silence ruleth mine: thy power was in either miraculous, neither know I in whether to adore it more. But withal, give me us. And why are they thus troubled? "They had thought they had seen a spirit." That there have been such apparitions of spirits, both good and evil, hath ever been a truth undoubtedly received of Pagans, Jews, and Christians; although in the blind times of superstition, there was much collusion mixed with some verities: crafty men, and lying spirits, agreed to abuse the credulous world; but even where there was not truth, yet there was horror. The very good angels were not seen without much fear; their sight was construed to bode death: how much more the evil, which in their very nature are harmful and pernicious! We see not a snake or a toad, without some recoiling of blood, and some sensible reluctation, although those creatures run away from us: | how much more must our hairs stand upright, and our senses boggle, at the sight of a spirit, whose nature and will both are contrary to ours, and professedly bent to our hurt! But say it had been what they mistook it for, a spirit: why should they fear? Had they well considered, they had soon found, that evil spirits are nevertheless present when they are not seen, and nevertheless harmful or malicious when they are present unseen. Visibility adds nothing to their spite or mischief: and could their eyes have been opened, they had, with Elisha's servant, seen "more with them than agains. them;" a sure, though invisible guard of more powerful spirits, and themselves under the protection of the God of spirits: so as they might have bidden a bold defiance to all the powers of darkness. But, partly their faith was yet but in the bud, and partly the presentation of this dreadful object was sudden, and without the respite of a recollection and settlement of their thoughts. O the weakness of our frail nature, who, in the want of faith, are affrighted with the visible appearance of those adversaries whom we profess daily to resist and vanquish, and with whom we know the decree of God hath matched us in an everlasting conflict! Are not these they that ejected devils by their command? are not these of them that could say, "Master, the evil spirits are subject to us?" Yet now, when they see but an imagined spirit, they fear. What power there is in the eye to betray the heart! While Goliah was mingled with the rest of the Philistine host, Israel camped boldly against them; but when that giant stalks out single between the two armies, and fills and amazes their eyes with his hideous stature, now they run away for fear. Behold, we are committed with legions of evil spirits, and complain not let but one of them give us some visible token of his presence, we shriek and tremble, and are not ourselves. Neither is our weakness more conspicuous than thy mercy, O God, in restraining these spiritual enemies from these dreadful and ghastly representations of themselves to our eyes. Might those infernal spirits have liberty to appear, how and when, and to whom they would, certainly not many would be left in their wits, or in their lives. It is thy power and goodness to frail mankind, that they are kept in their chains, and reserved in the darkness of their own spiritual being, that we may both oppugn and subdue them unseen. But, O the deplorable condition of reprobate souls! If but the imagined sight of one of these spirits of darkness can so daunt the heart of those which are free from their power, what a terror shall it be to live perpetually in the sight, yea, under the torture, of thousands, of legions, of millions of devils! O the madness of wilful sinners, that will needs run themselves headily into so dreadful a damnation ! It was high time for our Saviour to speak: what with the tempest, what with the apparition, the disciples were almost lost with fear. How seasonable are his gracious redresses' Till they were thus affrighted, he would not speak; when they were thus affrighted, he would not hold his peace. If his presence were fearful, yet his word was comfortable: "Be of good cheer, it is I:" Yea, it is his word only which must make his presence both known and comfortable. He was present before: they mistook him and feared: there needs no other erection of their drooping hearts, but " It is I.” It is cordial enough to us, in the worst of our afflictions, to be assured of Christ's presence with us. Say but "It is I," O Saviour, and let evils do their worst; thou needest not say more. Thy voice was evidence enough; so well were thy disciples acquainted with the tongue of thee their Master, that "It is I," was as much as a hundred names. Thou art the good Shepherd: we are not of thy flock, if we know thee not by thy voice from a thousand. Even this one is a great word, yea, an ample style: "It is I." The same tongue that said to Moses, “I am hath sent thee," saith now to the disciples, "It is I;" I your Lord and Master, I the Commander of winds and waters, I the sovereign Lord of heaven and earth, I the God of spirits. Let heaven be but as one scroll, and let it be written all over with titles, they cannot express more than "It is I." O sweet and seasonable word of a gracious Saviour! able to calm all tempests, able to revive all hearts! Say but so to my soul, and in spite of hell, I am safe. No sooner hath Jesus said "I," than Peter answers, "Master." He can instantly name him that did not name himself. Every little hint is enough to faith. The church sees her beloved as well through the lattice, as through the open window. Which of all the followers of Christ gave such pregnant testimonies, upon all occasions, of his faith, of his love to his Master, as Peter? The rest were silent, while he both owned his Master, and craved access to him in that iquid way. Yet what a sensible mixture is here of faith and distrust! It was faith that said, "Master;"it was distrust, as some have construed it, that said, "If it be thou." It was faith that said, " Bid me come to thee;" implying that his word could as well enable as command; it was faith that durst step down upon that watery pavement; it was distrust, that upon the sight of a mighty wind feared; it was faith, that he walked; it was distrust that he sunk; it was faith that said, "Lord, save me!" O the imperfect composition of the best saint upon earth, as far from pure faith as from mere infidelity! If there be pure earth in the centre, all upward is mixed with the other elements: contrarily, pure grace is above in the glorified spirits; all below is mixed with infirmity, with corruption. Our best is but as the air, which never was, never can be | at once fully enlightened; neither is there in the same region one constant state of light. It shall once be noon with us, when we shall have nothing but bright beams of glory now it is but the dawning, wherein it is hard to say whether there be more light than darkness. We are now fair as he moon, which hath some spots in her greatest beauty; we shall be pure as the sun, whose face is all bright and glorious. Ever since the time that Adam set his tooth in the apple, till our mouth be full of mould, it never was, it never can be other with us. Far be it from us to settle willingly upon the dregs of our infidelity! far be it from us to be disheartened with the sense of our defects and imperfections! "We believe, Lord, help our unbelief." While I find some disputing the lawfulness of Peter's suit, others quarrelling his "If it be thou," let me be taken up with wonder at the faith, the fervour, the heroical valour of this prime apostle, that durst say, Bid me come to thee upon the waters." He might have suspected that the voice of his Master might have been as easily imitated by that imagined spirit as his person; he might have feared the blustering tempest, the threatening billows, the yielding nature of that devouring element: but, as despising all these thoughts of misdoubt, such is his desire to be near his Master, that he says, "Bid me come to thee upon the waters." He says not, Come thou to me this had been Christ's act, and not his. Neither doth he say, Let me come to thee: this had been his act, and not Christ's. Neither doth he say, Pray that I may come to thee, as if this act had been out of the power of either but, "Bid me come to thee." I know thou canst command both the waves and me: me to be so light, that I shall not bruise the moist surface of the waves; the waves to be so solid, that they shall not yield to my weight: "All things obey thee: Bid me come to thee upon the waters." It was a bold spirit that could wish it, more bold that could act it. No sooner hath our Saviour said, "Come," than he sets his foot upon the unquiet sea, not fearing either the softness or the roughness of that uncouth passage. We are wont to wonder at the courage of that daring man who first committed himself to the sea in a frail bark, though he had the strength of an oaken plank to secure him: how valiant must we needs grant him to be, that durst set his foot upon the bare sea, and shift his paces! Well did Peter know, that he who bade him, could uphold him; and therefore he both sues to be bidden, and ventures to be upholden. True faith tasks itself with difficulties, neither can be dismayed with the conceits of ordinary impossibilities: it is not the scattering of straws, or casting of mole-hills, whereby the virtue of it is described, but removing of mountains: like some courageous leader, it desires the honour of a danger, and sues for the first onset: whereas, the worldly heart freezes in a lazy or cowardly fear, and only casts for safety and ease. Peter sues, Jesus bids. Rather will he work miracles, than disappoint the suit of a faithful man. How easily might our Saviour have turned over this strange request of his bold disciple, and have said, What my omnipotence can do is no rule for thy weakness: it is no less than presumption in a mere man, to hope to imitate the miraculous works of God and man. Stay thou in the ship, and wonder, contenting thyself in this, that thou hast a Master to whom the land and water is alike. Yet I hear not a check, but a call, "Come." The suit of ambition is suddenly quashed in the mother of the Zebedees. The suits of revenge prove no better in the mouth of the two fiery disciples. But a suit of faith, though high, and seemingly unfit for us, he hath no power to deny. How much less, O Saviour, wilt thou stick at those things which lie in the very road of our Christianity! Never man said, Bid me come to thee in the. way of thy commandments, whom thou didst not both bid and enable to come. True faith rests not in great and good desires, but acts and executes accordingly. Peter doth not wish to go, and yet stand |