VERSE 1.

my prayer.

Have mercy upon me, and hear

CEASE not, most merciful God, to communicate thyself unto me the creature of thy power, and to support my weakness. As for me, I will not cease to implore thine, aid. Continue to behold me with the eyes of thy mercy, O Lord, who art not wont to measure thy favors by the merits but by the necessities of those who pray to thee. Have pity upon my misery; and make me feel still more sensibly, that the loss of every thing which this world affords is as nothing; that we have every thing when we are united to thee, and that we lose nothing really valuable so long as we possess thee.

VERSE 2. O ye sons of men, how long will ye turn my glo, ry into shame? how long will ye love vanity, and seek after leasing?

OYE children of men who run with so much eagerness in pursuit of a good which continually flies from you, and which, were you to obtain it, would but increase your desire for many things more, how long will you suffer your hearts to be seduced by an illusion from which your own experience ought to have freed you? How long will you love your in quietudes and your chains? The happiness you seek is but a heavy burden,, which will oppress you as soon as you attain it. You find your cares increase in proportion as the world heaps its favors upon you; you find new desires succeed to those which have just been gratified. The world may think you happy; but jealousy and envy at the prosperity of oth ers, what is still wanting to gratify your ambition, -the vanity of every thing which you possess, and which, indeed, can never satisfy the boundless desires of a heart which God alone can fill, that disgust and satiety which always follow the possession of

worldly good things, however eagerly they may have been desired,-the voice of conscience which incessantly reproaches you, both for the unjust means by which you attained the object of your desire, and for the criminal use which you make of it,—and even the thought that every thing here is uncertain, that the longest life is but a rapid instant, and that your souls will soon be required of you,-these things together become a secret worm which incessantly preys upon you, and poisons that show of felicity which deceives beholders; but which cannot so far deceive you as to make you really believe yourselves happy. Why, then, do you sacrifice your souls, your eternal salvation, your God, to objects, the false appearance, the vanity, and the nothingness of which you cannot avoid seeing? Be persuaded to love him who alone can give you every thing desirable, and to love whom is itself the greatest happiness which you can enjoy.

VERSE 3. But know that the LORD hath set apart him that is godly for himself; the LORD will hear when I call unto him.

I CAN appeal to myself, O ye children of men, in testimony of what I have said. Since, being in some measure recovered from the error of my ways, and the shameful indulgence of my passions, I have endeavored to conform my life to the holiness of the gospel, from a perfect conformity to which I am, however, still very far, the Lord has wrought in my soul wonders unknown to those who love the world supremely. I have experienced within myself a peace, a joy, a calmness which the world and all its pleasures never could have given me. Men of the world see the wonderful change produced in me, and endeavor to ridicule it; they seek in my weakness, and in the fickleness, of my mind, the reasons of an event which originated only in light descended from on high, and in the power and grace of God.-

The father of mercies did not suffer me to wait long for this signal favor. No sooner had I turned to wards him, no sooner, impressed with a sense of my sins, had I sent forth my cries and prayers to the feet of his throne, than he in mercy came to me. He has consoled my affliction, or rather he has caused me to find ineffable sweetness in the bitterness of my repentance and my grief.

VERSE 4. Stand in awe and sin not commune with your own heart upon your bed and be still.

O YE, who are slaves to the world and to your passions, imitate my example. Be indignant at yourselves for being so long seduced by vain illusions; look with horror upon the shame and indignity of your chains, of which you have formerly made a contemptible boast, but whose weight and infamy you now feel. Forsake the company of those who have seduced you by their persuasions or their base examples; and choose for your companions those whom you have hitherto hated, on account of the good examples which they set before you, or of the benevolent advice which they have given you. Change into a salutary hatred that excessive and ignominious love for the body and worldly objects, which you have hitherto indulged. You will cease to sin, as soon as you shall hate the source and instrument of your sins. But remember, it is not a disgust arising from satiety which constitutes this holy disposition. We may be weary of pleasures, without detesting them as sinful; we may perceive their emptiness, without perceiving their enormity and infamy. Examine your hearts. Satiety may give them a disrelish for sinful pleasures, without their being changed and inclined to holiness. But if the grace of God has produced in you a sincere change; if you are duly sensible of the dishonor done to God by your sinful passions, as well as of the disgrace which they are

calculated to bring upon yourselves, you will then set no bounds to your grief. The day will not be sufficiently long for the bitterness and the abundance of your lamentation; by this your sleep will be suspended during the silence of the night. This peaceful season which you have devoted to dissoluteness and riot, and the repose and darkness of which furnished you with so many opportunities to sin, will in future serve only to give leisure for the more free indulgence of your grief.

VERSE 5. Offer the sacrifices of righteousness, and put your trust in the LORD.

But remember that God is not pleased with an imperfect sacrifice. Give to the Creator your whole hearts, which you have entirely prostituted to the creature. Spare no endeavors to serve him, as you have spared none to serve the world. Place upon the altar an entire victim. Have you been wholly the slaves of Satan for so long a time, and will you now give but the half of yourselves to the Lord, to whom you rightfully belong, and who claims you as his? You will never serve him with pleasure, until you obey him without any reserve. But as soon as you shall have rendered him master of your whole hearts, joy, hope, confidence, will spring up in the bottom of your souls. The remembrance of your sins will not offer itself to you but with the remembrance of that eternal mercy, which has inspired you with repentance and hatred of them: and the more the abyss into which you have been plunged, for so many years, shall appear frightful to you, and without hope of deliverance from it, if you had been left to yourselves, the more sensibly you will feel the merciful kindness of that God whose all-powerful hand has drawn you from the pit. In the history of your sinful wanderings you will read the history of his infinite mercy towards you; and the greater your sense of sin shall

be, the more long-suffering, merciful, and gracious will the Lord appear to you.

VERSE 6. There be many that say, Who will show us any good?

BUT men, intoxicated by their passions, hear with disdain this useful advice. They insultingly say, Where then are that joy, that contentment, and that happiness, which are promised to those who return to the Lord? They would have displayed before their bodily eyes those invisible, spiritual blessings, which the eye hath not seen, the ear hath not heard, and the heart of man hath not conceived. They see nothing but what is gloomy and forbidding in thy service, O God, because they see nothing there to gratify their senses and to flatter their pride. The only felicity which they know and seek is a felicity which continually flies from them; a happiness which they desire incessantly, although they are never able to attain it, and the vain desire of which is the source of their most, cruel chagrins and their most grievous troubles. They perceive every moment, in spite of themselves, that the world cannot make them happy; and yet they will not try the experiment, whether thou art not a sufficient source of happiness. They love a master who makes them miserable, but whose deceitful promises, though they have so often experienced their vanity and falsehood, lighten the actual burden of his yoke; while they have a slavish dread of him in whose service they would know no pain, nor sorrow, nor grief; and whose yoke constitutes all the consolation and happiness of those who take it. upon them.