wants and straits; so should it be with you. You are yet rolling and tossing upon a tempestuous sea; but your friend is gone into the quiet harbour. Desire rather to be there, than that he were at sea with you again.

11. Consider how vain a thing all your trouble and self-vexation is; it no way betters your case, nor eases your burden.

As a bullock, by wrestling and sweating in the furrow, makes his yoke to be more heavy, and galls his neck and spends his strength the sooner, and in no way helps himself; thus stands the case with thee, if thou be as a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke. What Christ saith of caring, we may say of grieving: "Which of you, by taking thought, can add one cubit to his stature ?" Cares may break our sleep, yea, break our hearts, but they cannot add to our stature, either in a natural or moral sense. So our sorrowing may sooner break our hearts, than the yoke God has laid on you. Alas! what is all this but as a fluttering of a bird in the net, which, instead of freeing, does but the more entangle itself? It was therefore a wise resolution of David, in this very case, when the will of God was sig

nified in the death of his child," But now he is dead, wherefore should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him; but he shall not return to me." Can I bring him back again? No; can no more alter the purpose and work of God, than I can change the seasons of the year, or alter the course of the sun, moon, and stars, or disturb the order of the day and night; which are all unalterably established by a firm constitution and ordinance of heaven. As these seasons cannot be changed by man; so neither can this course and way of his providence be changed. "He is of one mind, and who can turn him? and what his soul desireth, even that he doeth." Indeed, while his pleasure and purpose are unknown to us, there is room for fasting and prayer, to prevent the thing we fear; but when the purpose of God is manifested 'in the issue, and the stroke is given, then it is the vainest thing in the world to fret and vex ourselves, as David's servants thought he would do, as soon as he should hear that the child was dead; but he was wiser than to act so. His tears and cries to God before had the nature and use of means to prevent the affliction; but, when it was come and could not be prevented,

then they were of no use, to no purpose in the world. "Wherefore should I fast?" To what end, use, or purpose will it be now?

Well, then, cast not away your strength and spirits to no advantage; reserve them for future exercise and trials. A time may come, in which you need all the strength you have, and much more, to support greater burdens than this.

12. The Lord is able to restore all your lost comforts in relations double to you, if you meekly submit to him, and patiently wait upon him under the rod.

When Esau had lost his blessing, he said," Hast thou but one blessing, my father? But your Father has more blessings for you than one; his name is the Father of Mercies. He can beget and create as many mercies for you as he pleases. Relations, and the comforts of them, are at his command.

It is but a few months or years past, and these comforts, whose loss you now lament, were not in being; nor did you know whence they should arise to you; yet the Lord gave the word, and commanded them for you; and, if he please, he can make the death of these but like a scythe to the meadow that is mown

down, or a razor to the head that is shaved bare; which, though it lay you under the present trouble and reproach of barrenness, yet does but make way for a double increase, a second spring with advantage. So that even as it was with the captive church, in respect of her special children, in the day of her captivity and reproach, the Lord made up all with advantage to her, even to her own astonishment: "The children which thou shalt have, after thou hast lost the other, shall say again in thine ears, the place is too straight for me; give place to me that I may dwell," Isa. xlix. 20; thus may he deal with you as to your natural children and relations; so that what the man of God said to Amaziah, 2 Chron. xxv. 9, may be applied to the case in hand. "Amaziah said to the man of God, But what shall we do for the hundred talents? And the man of God answered, The Lord is able to give thee much more than this.”

O say not, What shall I do for friends and relations? Death has robbed me of all comfort in them. The Lord is able to give you much more. But then, as ever you expect to see your future blessings multiplied, look to it, and be careful that you neither dishonour God, nor grieve

him, by your unsubmissive and impatient carriage under the present rod.

God took away all Job's children, and that at one stroke, and that stroke immediate and extraordinary, and that when they were grown up, and planted, at least some of them, in distinct families; yea, whilst they were endearing each other by mutual expressions of affection. This must be granted to be an extraordinary trial; yet he meekly receives and patiently bears it from the hand of the Lord.

"You have heard of the patience of Job," says the Apostle James," and have seen the end of the Lord,"-not only the gracious end or intention of the Lord in all his afflictions, but the happy end and issue the Lord gave to all his afflictions, of which you have the account in Job xlii. 10; "The Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before." The number of his children was not double to what he had, as all his other comforts were; but though the Lord only restored the same number to him again that he took away, yet, it is likely the comforts he had in these latter children were double what he had in the former. There is nothing lost by waiting