then, notwithstanding your malicious thoughts you have no malice in your heart, Your bad thoughts mark only your malevolence of nature: your good refolutions are the heavenly work of grace upon your affections,

The fame mode of reasoning may be applied to other bad thoughts. The first rise of them in the mind shews only the natural pravity of hu man nature: the kind affections are afterwards introduced by the grace of God,

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XIV.

Ifee the heavens opened. and the Son of Man ftanding on the right hand of God.-Acts, vii. 55.

THE imagination is not always the most use

fully employed in matters of religion. Here it is: the holy martyr, St. Stephen, animates himfelf in the midst of his fufferings by feeing, in a beatific vifion, the happiness that awaited him after death. Instead of letting his mind rest on the cruel fufferings, he underwent, he fixed it, by an ardent act of faith, upon a scene which occupied all his thoughts-he faw heaven opened, and Jefus fitting on the right hand of God.

This account of St. Stephen's martyrdom, feems to be given us as the proper appendage of a ftate of trial: as an incentive to make us bear more properly the different fituations in which it engages us. In fome happy hour, when we are furrounded with the gaieties of the world, and prone to give way to intemperate joy, let us check the delirium. Cheerfulness is the garb

of religion: a gloomy melancholy is religion in mourning, which is a dress it should feldom affume; intemperate joy is religion intoxicated. This world is not meant as a state of enjoyment. When we would indulge our minds, therefore, with real enjoyment, let us banish all the little, felfifli joys of this world, by letting our imagination loose among the glories of eternity; and feeing, with the dying martyr, heaven opened, and Jefus fitting at the right hand of God.

Again, in the hour of distress, when the world fcowls upon us, and all is darkness around, let us endeavour to catch a ray of light through the gloom that furrounds us-let us carry our imagination, on the wings of faith, into the celeftial regions above; and comfort ourselves with the thoughts of feeing heaven opened, and Fefus fitting on the right hand of God.

XV.

The kingdom of heaven is like a net which was caft into the fea, and gathered of every kind.Matt. xiii. 47.

JUST fuch a gathering will there be at the last great day the net will be fpread abroad, and a final feparation made. The name of Christian will then be a name of great confequence and many will endeavour to fhield themselves under it. Let us examine their feveral pretenfions:The first is the nominal chriftian. He has nothing to fay, but that he was born in a chriftian country, and was baptized in the name of Chrift. Of the faith of a Chriftian, he knows little; and of the practice, ftill lefs.

The moral man comes next. He profeffes the Teftament to be a moft excellent fyftem of morals; but he expunges from it the divinity of Chrift-his attonement for fin-the affiftance of the Holy Spirit; and, in fhort, all the comfortable doctrines of chriftianity. Why he acknowledges

ledges his Teftament to be good authority in one cafe, and not in another, is a question which may probably give him fome difficulty in anfwering hereafter. It may, however, rather be doubted, whether his contempt for the doctrines of chriftianity may not fomewhat interfere with his exactness in the practice of it.

man.

Let us next take a view of the self righteous He acknowledges all the doctrines of christianity; but he thinks he has not much occafion for them. Chrift died, he allows, for finners; but he does not conceive himself in that clafs. The little errors of his life are lost in the multitude of his virtues, and he has no fear of appearing in the prefence of God, clothed merely in his own righteousness. It is well for him, if he do not find his mistake hereafter.— How far God's mercy may extend to fuch prefumption, is not for us to fay; but we have no gofpel ground to hope for God's mercy, unless. we believe and truft in the merits of that Redeemer, through whom alone it is promised.

The innocent man is queftioned next. He has no objection to christianity: indeed, he hardly ever thought about it. In a general view, however, he conceives the gospel to be a law against wickedness;

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