receive the returning sinner. But now, when I feel a desire to return to thee, he paints thee, in secret, to my troubled heart, as an inexorable God. He discovers to me the abomination of my sins, only to conceal from me the infinite treasures of thy mercy, and to keep me under his shameful bondage. He endeavors to persuade me that thou wilt not regard me, that my heinous transgressions have for ever shut thy bowels of compassion against my cries and my tears.

But, Lord, if I have formerly abused thy goodness, by trusting too much to it, so as to persevere with greater tranquillity in iniquity, I will not add this new offence of despairing of it in my repentance. I feel myself, it is true, the weakest, the most frail of all creatures; but art not thou the strength of the weak? What have I to fear for myself, since thou wilt be with me, thou who art my shield and my strength ? Nothing can equal the disgrace and the abasement into which my shameful passions have plunged me. Yet great as is the ignominy with which they might justly cover me before men, that which I bring into thy presence is still more hideous and humiliating. But, O God of majesty! one ray of thy glory will purify this soul of dirt and change it into the lustre of gold. Thou wilt establish me in honor whenever thou shalt ennoble me with the gifts of thy grace, and receive me into the number of thy children, of those who are fellow heirs of an eternal kingdom. I shall enter upon all the august privileges of the Christian; my new and holy life will restore to me, even in the view of men, that honor and those regards of which my sins had deprived me; and thou wilt be my glory as iniquity had been my confusion and my shame.

VERSE 4. I cried unto the LORD with my voice, and he heard me out of his holy hill.

YES, O Lord, my prayers and my cries will ascend to the feet of thy throne; and they will not ascend in vain. Thou art no more upon that terrible mountain, encompassed with lightnings and thunders, which no mortal can approach. I adore thee upon thy holy hill, where, O blessed Redeemer, thou offerest thyself to thy father for me, as my righteousness, my sanctification, and my redemption. Thine arms are incessantly extended to receive sinners who return to thee. It is not then thine infinite mercy which I ought to distrust; it is the sincerity and the perseverance of my repentance. I ought to fear that its greatness does not correspond to the enormity and the multitude of my sins.

VERSE 5. I laid me [down and slept; I awaked, for the LORD sustained me.

GRACIOUS God! what may I not promise myself from thy goodness; since thy powerful and merciful voice has awakened me from that sleep of sin in which I have so long been buried, from that deadly supineness in which my irregularities kept all the powers of my soul? Thy voice has penetrated even to the bottom of the abyss, in which not only I lay without life, but in which noisomeness and infection offered to thy holy eyes nothing but an object most worthy of thy detestation. And yet, O Father of mercies, and God of all consolation, after having often solicited me to return to thee, thou hast at last re-animated this noisome carcase; thou hast breathed a spirit of life into this hideous flesh; thou hast re-established in me the beauty of thine image, the smallest traces of which I had effaced; and thou hast wrested my soul from the power of death and Satan, to put me under the protection of thy mercy.

VERSE 6. I will not be afraid of ten thousands of people, that have set themselves against me round about.

PENETRATED with this confidence, I will not discourage myself at the view of my unnumbered transgressions. I will call them to mind in the bitterness of my heart; but the recollection of them shall awaken my gratitude, my love, my compunction, rather than my fear and my despair. I will despise the derisions, the contemptible censures which my new life will draw upon me, from those who surround me, and who were formerly either the witnesses or the accomplices of my iniquities. Their senseless joys, the emptiness of which I have so many times experienced, their pleasures, their apparent happiness, which were always to me an inexhaustible fund of chagrin and cruel remorse, far from making me disrelish my sorrowful tears and repentance, will render them more sweet and amiable to me. The preference which I have given to thee, O my God, who art most worthy of it, will confound my lukewarmness, and animate my fidelity; and far removed from envying the lot of my former wicked associates, I will not cease to beg of thee, that they may at last be brought to experience the happiness of those who love and serve thee.

VERSE 7. Arise, O LORD; save me, O my God for thou hast smitten all mine enemies upon the cheek bone; thou hast broken the teeth of the ungodly.

ARISE then, great God, and finish the work of my salvation, by not permitting those to perish, whom I may have drawn into sin by my solicitation or example. I shall not think myself restored to favor with thee, while I see the bitter fruits and terrible consequences of my sins remaining in them. Since thou hast been able to break the hardness of my heart, I am persuaded that every thing is possible to the power ૨

of thy grace. Thou canst humble, when it shall please thee, those sinners who now appear so proud and bold in sin; and in whose happiness I cannot but feel interested, though my renewed life has stirred them up against me; and though they endeavor, but in vain, to shake my resolutions, and to draw me again into their sinful ways, by their satirical or allur ing conversation.

VERSE 8. Salvation belongeth unto the LORD: thy blessing is upon thy people.

THOU, Almighty God, canst save those, in whom every hope of salvation appears to be extinguished. Thou art pleased to work these wonders in the most hardened sinners, to the end that man may attribute nothing to himself, and that all the glory of his salvation may be given to thy grace. All the spiritual blessings which thou conferrest upon thy people, originate in the immense treasures of thy love; they are the unmerited gifts of thine infinite mercy.

PSALM IV.

Reflections of a pious soul when under trouble from the loss of worldly enjoyments.

VERSE 1. Hear me when I call, O God of my righteousness; thou hast enlarged me when I was in distress ;

N vain, O my God, have I daily protested to thee that I regarded the world and all its glory as a mass of dirt; and that thou alone couldst satisfy a soul which had the happiness of possessing thee. I knew not my own heart; I deceived myself. I was still held, by a thousand secret and insensible ties, to this deceitful world which I thought I despised. I still loved its possessions and its honors, which, like smoke, may be dissipated in an instant. But the deep distress into which the loss of worldly good things has thrown me has at last discovered to me those sinful dispositions, which I concealed from myself; but which thou hast for a long time seen in the bottom of my heart. A severe blow was necessary to awaken me from my dangerous, spiritual slumber. Thou, great God, hast struck this merciful blow; and now, fortified and enlightened by thy grace, I am more sensibly affected with shame for my error and my unfaithfulness, than with grief for my worldly misfortunes. Thou wouldst be my all, my only resource; therefore, as soon as I turned towards thee, in the bitterness of my heart, and called upon thee, thou didst not listen to the demands of justice, which required that as I had sought vain supports, foreign from thee, thou shouldst abandon me to myself; but, O thou God of goodness! thou didst come quickly to my relief; and a ray of joy and light immediately dissipated the dark melancholy of my heart, and enlarged me when I was in distress.