provoke God, when he is already in a way of judgment. And if you are bis own people, and so out of the danger of this last and worst stroke, yet know, you have better mercies to lose than any you have yet lost. Should God cloud your souls with doubts, let loose Satan to buffet you, remove joy and peace from your inner man, how soon would you be convinced that the funeral of your dearest friend is but a trifle to this!

Well, then, whatever God takes, be still thankful for what he leaves. It was the great sin of Israel in the wilderness, that though God had delivered them from their cruel servitude in Egypt, miraculously fed them in the desert, and was leading them on to a land flowing with milk and honey; yet as soon as any want did but begin to pinch them, presently all these mercies were forgotten and slighted. "Would to God," say they, we had died in Egypt." "There is nothing at all beside this manna." Beware of this, O ye mourning and afflicted ones. You see both the sin that is in it, and the danger that a tends it.

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2. And no less sinful are our sorrows, when they so wholly ingulf our hearts, that we either mind not at all, or are little

or nothing sensible of the public evils and calamities which lie upon the church and people of God.

Some Christians have such public spirits, that the church's troubles swallow up their personal troubles. Melancthon seemed to take little notice of the death of his child which he dearly loved, being almost overwhelmed with the miseries lying on the church. And it was a good evidence of the graciousness and publicness of Eli's spirit, who sitting in the gate, anxiously waiting for tidings from the army, when the tidings came that Israel fled before the Philistines, that his two sons, Hophni and Phinehas were dead, and the ark of God was taken, just at the mention of that word, "The ark of God," before he heard out the whole narration, his mind quickly presaged the issue; he sunk down and died, 1 Sam. iv. 17, 18. O, that was the sinking, the killing word! Had the messenger stopt at the death of his two sons, likely enough he had supported that burden; but the loss of the ark was more to him than sons or daughters.

But how few such public spirits appear, even among professors, in this selfish generation! May we not, with the Apostle,

complain, "All seek their own, and not the things that are Jesus Christ's? Few men have any great cares or designs lying beyond the bounds of their own private interests. And what we say of cares is as true of sorrows. If a child die, we are ready to die too, but public calamities pierce us not. How few suffer either their domestic comforts to be swallowed up in the church's troubles, or their domestic troubles to be swallowed up by the church's mercies!

Now, when it is thus with us; when we little regard what mercies or miseries lie upon others, but are wholly intent upon our own afflictions, this is a sinful sorrow, and ought to be sorrowed for.

3. Our sorrows then become sinful and exorbitant when they divert us from, or distract us in, our duties; so that our intercourse with heaven is stopped and interrupted by them.

How long can we sit alone musing upon a dead creature! Here our thoughts easily flow; but how hard is it to fix them upon the living God! When our hearts should be in heaven with our Christ, they are in the grave with our dead. May not many afflicted souls justly complain, that their troubles had

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taken away their Christ from them-I mean as to sweet sensible communion -and laid the dead child in his room? Poor creature, cease to weep any longer for thy dead relation, and weep rather for thy dead heart. Is this thy compliance with God's design in afflicting thee? What, to grow a greater stranger to him than before? Or is this the way to thy cure and comfort in affliction, to refrain prayer, and turn thy back upon God?

Or, if thou darest not wholly neglect thy duty, yet thy affliction spoils the success and comfort of it; thy heart is wandering, dead, distracted in prayer and meditation, so that thou hast no relief or comfort from it. Rouse up thyself, Christian, and consider; this is not right. Surely the rod works not kindly now. What, did thy love to God expire when thy friend expired? Is thy heart as cold in duty as his body is in the grave? Has natural death seized him, and spiritual deadness seized thee? Surely, then, thou hast more reason to lament thy dead heart than thy dead friend. Divert the stream of thy troubles speedily, and labour to recover thyself out of this temper quickly; lest sad experience shortly tell thee, that what thou now mournest for is but

a trifle to what thou shalt mourn for hereafter. To lose the heavenly warmth and spiritual liveliness of thy affections, is undoubtedly a far more considerable loss than to lose the wife of thy bosom, or the sweetest child that ever a tender parent laid in the grave. Reader, if this be thy case, thou hast reason to challenge the first place among the mourners. It is better for thee to bury ten sons, than to remit one degree of love or delight in God. The end of God in smiting was, to win thy heart nearer to him, by removing that which estranged it. How then dost thou cross the very design of God in this dispensation! Must God then lose his delight in thy fellowship, because thou hast lost thine in the creature? Surely, when thy troubles thus accompany thee to thy closet, they are sinful and extravagant troubles.

4. Then you may also conclude your sorrows to be excessive and sinful, when they so overload and oppress your bodies as to endanger your lives, or render them useless and unfit for service.

"Worldly sorrow worketh death,” that is, sorrow after the manner of worldly men. Sorrow in a mere carnal natural way, which is not relieved by any spirit