nels of conveying thy grace to the foul, may I reverently and humbly fubmit to thy appointments, and, gratefully feek thy favour, in the way which thou haft appointed. To that hallowed and myfterious ordinance, where Jefus the Saviour, difpenfes everlasting falvation, may I bring a heart humbled by thy grace, affections fupremely defirous of the joys of thy love; that thus I may be restored to the reconciled countenance of thee my God, through Jefus Chrift my bleffed Lord and Redeemer. AMEN.

[Then add your usual Evening Devotions.]

Tuesday Morning.

MEDITATION..

MAN IN HIS NATURAL STATE.

THE examination of thy spiritual character and state, in which thou hast been engaged, O my soul, should have occupied thy most anxious thoughts, thy most solicitous and deep attention. Every successive step of the enquiry was calculated to display, in the most tender and engaging colours, the infinite goodness and love of God in all his dispensations towards thee as thy Creator, thy Preserver, thy

everlasting Redeemer. Base and insensible hast thou been, if the lively emotions of gratitude have not been enkindled by the animating review. Base and insensible hast thou been, if the infinite mercies which thou hast reviewed, inflaming every devout and tender affection,, have not been triumphantly celebrated in the ardent burst of praise to the greatest and best of beings, thy Father, Redeemer and God.

Thou hast been exposed to the holy inspection of that God, whose penetrating eye brings to light the secret actions which the deepest shades of darkness covered. The enquiry, in which thou hast been engaged, involves,. in its momentous issue, thy present peace, thy everlasting welfare and salvation. If then the enquiry has been conducted with that awakened and serious solicitude, with that sacred and resolute impartiality, with that scrutinizing and inflexible rigor, which those awful considerations are calculated to excite, thou hast found, O my soul, that thou art guilty, deeply guilty, in the sight of thy almighty and holy Judge. The searching and illuminating beams of the Spirit of God, probing thy inmost thoughts and affections, have disclosed the latent and dreadful depths of thy depravity and guilt. The abasing view of the infection of sin, which like a subtle and paralising poison, diffuses its deadly and corrupting taint through all thy powers and

affections, must have laid prostrate thy towering, claims to spotless purity and undeviating virtue. The view of thy deplorable degeneracy, irresistibly urged on thy reluctant pride, must have prostrated thy aspiring pretensions to that matchless perfection of intellectual faculties, to that unerring rectitude and celestial purity of moral powers, which rendered thee the hallowed boast and delight of thy maker, when, at the first, his inspiring voice arrayed thee in the resplendent glories of his divine, image. Alas! How has the gold become dim! how has the fine gold become changed! the crown has fallen from my head. Woe unto me, for I have sinned!"

66

An understanding once enlivened by the unerring beams of divine light, and drawing the luminous rays of knowledge from the infinite source of truth, is now wrapped in heavy and impervious mists, which blunt and bear down that penetrating vigour, by which, in her state of primeval perfection, she intuitively discerned the glory of God, and attained a full and resplendent knowledge of his laws. Alas! her once noble and lofty powers, now enfeebled and depraved, are the continual sport of resistless prejudice and furious passion which misguide, pervert, and. defeat her most vigorous researches. A will, which once erect and active, followed, with undeviating and certain course, the enlightened dictates of an unclouded understanding,

and centered all her pursuits in God as the final, supreme, and glorious object of her virtuous choice, now prone and corrupt, blindly obeys the dictates of ignoble passions. With bold and fearless presumption, she impiously turns, in rebellion against God, the very energies which she holds dependent on his invigorating power. With intractable and fatal determination, she wilfully chuses those trivial, degrading, and debasing pleasures which are directly opposed to that divine law in which she once placed her supreme perfection and delight. Sublime and elevated affections, which once glowed with lively, ardent, holy, and unceasing love to God the ever-blessed source of excellence and glory, in the fruitions of whose enrapturing smiles, their virtuous. fervors were once rewarded with full, perfect,. and consummate bliss, are now bound in the invincible chains of base and sensual appetite. Depraved and corrupt, they now eagerly fasten their glowing emotions on the vain, perishing and unsatisfying enjoyments of sense; and, with deplorable infatuation, resolutely contemn the enrapturing communion, which it was once their glory to maintain, with the eternal and perfect source of purity and love. Now,. impiously disdaining the hallowed streams of bliss which flow from the light of God's countenance, they basely devote their insatiable ardors to the gratification of those grovelling propensities which ally the celestial and aspit

ing nature of man to the brutes, who, ingloriously sink into the earth from whose degenerate bosom they sprung. O my soul! when I contrast the pure, celestial and resplendent powers, which, in thy primeval state, conformed thee to the image of thy Creator, and admitted thee to the immediate vision, and enjoyment of his love, with the sensual, impure, and corrupting passions by which thou art now enslaved, can I wonder, that, till restored by his grace to the glorious image thou hast forfeited, thou dost groan under the agonizing weight of his displeasure, under his indignant and awful curse.

Abasing to thy towering pride, painful to thy aspiring self-love, O my soul, but irrefragable and certain as the oracles of truth in which it is decisively revealed, as that divine plan of salvation of which it is the conspicuous and essential basis, is the truth, that human nature is degenerate and corrupt. When God viewing man in his fallen state, pronounces, that the imaginations of his heart are evil continually," when the holy Job, borne down by the blaze of divine glory which displayed, in overwhelming colors, the deep corruption of his nature, vents his profound contrition in the affecting exclamation "I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes;" when the holy king of Israel, awakened to remorse at the view of crimes of the deepest dye, which, through the rage of fell lust, he had committed, follows