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Whilst

works faith is made perfect. therefore by prayer and supplication you seek for an increase of the love of God, and the patience of Christ, keep your eye ever fixed on practical obedience as your mark, and on Christ as your example. But remember, that as in the vegetable kingdom, trees and plants require light and air, heat and moisture, to make them thrive, just so it is in the spiritual system also in order to the growth of piety in your hearts, it is necessary that you should come out and be separate from the world, that you should live and walk with God, that you should cultivate the spirit of prayer, and abide as it were in the very light of the heavenly city: thus will your hearts be prepared to receive the influences of the Spirit, which in answer to prayer shall descend upon your souls like the early rain, or the refreshing dew; so that your light shall rise in obscurity; your darkness shall be as the noon-day: you shall be like a watered garden, and like a well of water, whose waters fail not. Wherefore, we would pray for you, brethren, and exhort you to pray for your

selves, that the Lord the Spirit may in all things direct and rule your hearts; especially that he would direct your hearts into the love of God and into the patience of Christ. May he count you worthy of this calling, and fulfil in you all the good pleasure of his goodness, and the work of faith with power; that the name of our Lord Jesus Christ may be glorified in you, and ye in him, according to the grace of our God, and the Lord Jesus Christ,

SERMON XV.

THE RESTORATION OF THE JEWS, AND THE CONVERSION OF THE HEATHEN WORLD ̧ IN THE LATTER DAYS.

ISAIAH XXXV. 1, 2.

The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose. It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and singing: the glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it, the excellency of Carmel and Sharon, they shall see the glory of the Lord, and the excellency of our God.

IN the page of prophecy Jehovah speaks to us out of the thick darkness; for here, in an especial manner, clouds and darkness are round about him. And it is probable, that the clouds of obscurity

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in which the prophecies are enveloped, notwithstanding they may occasionally be intercepted by beams of light breaking forth as it were from the Sun of Rightteousness, will only be removed progressively and gradually, as in the fulness of times the various events predicted shall successively transpire. This consideration should by no means discourage the humble and diligent study of the prophecies, which is neither an unlawful or unprofitable employment; but it should teach us, ever to enter upon it with childlike teachableness, and simple reliance on divine direction-with a chastened imagination and becoming reverence, setting aside every thing approaching to a spirit of presumptuous inquiry or needless conjecture; and avoiding too minute an investigation of the time when certain events will be accomplished, or of the particular circumstances of their fulfilment. "Such secret things as unfulfilled prophecies," says Mr. Faber,

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belong unto the Lord our God: and it is a vain waste of time to weary ourselves with conjectures respecting the

precise mode of their accomplishment. Upon these points, when we go beyond what is written, we exceed our commission and it has almost invariably been found, that a commentator who attempted to show how a prophecy was about to be fulfilled, was by the event convicted of error. We may safely and positively declare what will come to pass-and we may even say how it will come to pass, so long as we resolutely confine ourselves to the explicit declarations of Scripture; but to point out the manner in which an event will be accomplished, any further than the word of God has revealed the manner of it, is to pry too curiously into what he hath purposely concealed, and to aim at becoming prophets, instead of contenting ourselves with being humble and fallible expositors of prophecy. What the Bible hath declared, that we may, without hesitation, declare: beyond this, all is mere conjecture."

With such views and in such a spirit may we now proceed to the consideration of the prophecy contained in the passage just read.

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