keep the mind in that spiritual seclusion which is implied in being truly united with God, it is not necessary that we should quit our ordinary duties, and separate from our fellow-men. If the solitary places of forests and mountains are not interdicted, it is certain that they are not absolutely necessary. The man is in the true seclusion, the true spiritual retirement, who is shut up in the inclosures of Providence, with willingness and joy in being so. When we are in harmony with Providence, we are in harmony with God; and harmony with God implies all that seclusion from the world which is necessary. This is the true solitude. In its external forms it may be more or less. It may restrict us to the limits of a sick chamber; it may compress us within the walls of a prison; it may lead us for a time to the most retired and lonely place of meditation and worship; or it may allow us, on the other hand, the widest range of business and intercourse, and mingle us with the largest multitudes of men. But, whether its lines are stricter or more expanded, it is the true solitude, the place of retirement which God has chosen, the select and untrodden hermitage where the soul may find and delight itself with its Beloved.

8. In connection with the general views of this chapter, and the particular suggestions which naturally arise from them, we are reminded of the statements, often occurring in experimental writers, that the truly godly person is exempt from desire. The meaning is, that such a person is exempt from perverted or unholy desire. And the form of expression arises from the fact, that his desires so perfectly harmonize with the divine arrangements, and are so perfectly met in the occurrences of each moment, that he is hardly conscious of their existence. It is the same thing as to be in perfect harmony with Providence.

CHAPTER V.

ON THE WISDOM AND GOOdness of goD, AS DISPLAYED IN HIS PROVIDENTIAL ARRANGEMENTS.

The arrangements of Providence often mysterious. Their wisdom and goodness visible only to the eye of faith. - Illustrations of the subject. Reference to the history of Moses. Illustrations from profane history. - Reference to Bunyan and Milton. - Remarks.

SOME of the views of the last chapter admit of further illustrations. We have seen that the allotments of men in the present life, like things in external and material nature, are exceedingly diversified. And it must be admitted that, to human view, these diversities are oftentimes mysterious. It is not easy for men to see certainly not in all cases the wisdom of that arrangement which makes one poor, and another rich; which confines one to a particular spot, but enlarges and diversifies the habitation of another; which places one on a throne, another in a dungeon. It should not be forgotten, however, that it is God who does it all; and, to the eye of faith, everything which he does is full of wisdom and goodness, however it may appear to those who see only with human wisdom.

2. In one of the retired streets of yonder city there. lives an honest and laborious mechanic. His daily walk is limited by the few rods which separate his house from his workshop. Arrived at his place of labor in the morning, he toils from morning till night within the limited

space of a few feet in circumference. From day to day, and from year to year, the muscles of his arm are lifted at the same anvil, or are turning at the same wheel. An unseen hand, which is acquainted with all localities, has drawn the lines around him, and planted him there for life. He is a prisoner, if we may so express it, in the Lord's captivity. But it would be a sad mistake, if he should suppose that this providential arrangement is instituted without wisdom and without goodness. Though he will probably never wander beyoud those narrow boundaries, yet that place, of all the places in the universe, is the best one for him. We do not say it appears best to human wisdom, which is incapable of judging, but is best in the view of Him who has assigned it. Happy will it be for him if he does not doubt. Believing that He who has given him life has constituted his habitation, let it be his aim to harmonize his feelings with his position, and thus the principle of faith, whatever view the world may take of him, will make him a happy child in his Father's house.

3. In early life I was acquainted with a woman, a resident of the village of my youth, whose memory is recalled by these considerations. In her earlier - I will not say her better-days, she held a leading position in society, to which she seemed to be well entitled by great excellence and intelligence of character, as well as by wealth. In the alternations and reverses of the times, her property was entirely lost; her husband died; all her near relatives died also, or were scattered abroad, and she was left entirely alone. She was supported in her old age at the public expense; but, out of respect to her character, the town authorities permitted her to occupy a single room in the house which she had formerly owned. At the time I became acquainted with her, she

was nearly seventy years of age, and had long been unable to leave her room without assistance. But she was far from supposing that God, in depriving her of friends and property, and in confining her in her old age to these narrow limits, was unkind. Her constant companions were her Bible and a few old books on practical and experimental religion. She had faith. No complaint escaped from her lips. In the walls of her little room she felt herself far more closely and lovingly encircled by the arms of her heavenly Father, than if she had been left in the greatest enlargements of society. A plant in the Lord's garden, closely hemmed in, but diligently nurtured, she resembled that patriarch, who is described as "a fruitful bough, whose branches run over the wall.”

4. The Bible is full of instances and illustrations of the subject. The patriarch Moses, in particular, furnishes us a lesson in relation to it. Such were the arrangements of God's providence, that he found it necessary to quit the aspiring hopes which he had once entertained of being the immediate deliverer of his people, and to flee from the splendid court of Pharaoh into the deserts of Arabia Petræa. For forty years he tended his flocks in the vicinity of Mount Sinai, exchanging the palaces of Egypt for a rude home in the distant and solitary rocks. Undoubtedly it seemed very mysterious to Moses. that he should thus be dealt with. He did not then understand that God, in thus leading him into the wilderness, and making him acquainted with the vast desert. between the Nile and the Red Sea, was preparing him for the dangerous task of being a leader of his people through these very deserts and mountains.

But this was not all. His manners and intellect had been trained in the court of the Pharaohs; but God, who is a greater teacher than kings, saw it necessary

that his spirit should be disciplined and trained in the wilderness. It was there that he learned, more fully than he had ever understood it before, the lesson of a present and special Providence. Taken from the bulrushes and placed in a palace, and then taken from a palace and placed for forty years in a lonely desert, he felt deeply that God selects and arranges the habitations of men; and that it is man's great business, submitting on religious principles to the arrangements of Providence, to harmonize his inward state with his outward situation.

And, besides that, he wanted all this time and all this solitariness of place, in order to break up his early and unfavorable associations, to chasten and subdue his natural pride, and to imbibe that wise and gentle quietude of spirit which is one of the surest signs of a soul that dwells with God.

5. It was in the prisons of Egypt that Joseph received that discipline which fitted him to be the great Egyptian ruler. It was when he was tending his father's flocks in Bethlehem, or when he was driven into mountains and caverns, that the hand and soul of David were trained and strengthened to the great task of holding a nation's sceptre. Daniel was taught of God in the lion's den; and Paul was aided in learning the great lesson of entire dependence, when he could find no escape from persecution, and perhaps from death, but by being let down by a basket over the wall of Damascus.

6. Profane history, also, as well as the Bible, furnishes illustrations of the subject. Along the streets of the city of Bedford, in England, the poor and illiterate preacher, John Bunyan, is conducted to prison. Years roll on; to human appearance all his earthly prospects are cut off; he has no books with the single exception of the Bible