of care and worldly business. But it is the natural tendency of the truly holy mind, when left to itself, to fall into this state. That is to say, in every object the contemplative man, who cannot be truly contemplative without being truly holy, catches a new glimpse of the Divinity; and has no heart to leave it, until the vicissitudes of Providence call him to other objects where he has new revelations of the divine nature, and new exercises and intimacies of love.

8. To him who has this deeper insight and this higher unity, God breathes in the vernal zephyr, and shines brightly in the summer's sun; he sees him moulding and painting the fruits of autumn, and sending the hoar-frosts and piling up the snows of winter; all inanimate nature is full of him. He sees God, also, . in what is ordinarily called the work of men's hands. It is God that spreads his pillow;-it is God that builds his house; it is God that ploughs his fields; - it is God that sells for him and buys for him; - God gives him pain, and sends him joy, smites him when he is sick, and heals him when he gets well.

And what God does for himself, he does also for others, and for communities. He sees God in all the changes which take place around him. It is God that builds up and puts down, that makes kings and makes subjects, that builds up one nation and destroys another, -that binds the chains of the captive and gives liberty to the free, that makes war and makes peace. All men, and princes, and nations, are in his hands like clay in the hands of the potter. His eternal will, which, in being established on the basis of eternal wisdom and justice, never has changed and never can change, dashes them to pieces, or fashions them to ever

lasting life. All things are his, sin only excepted, and sin is sin, because it is not of God.

9. What blessed results would follow, if all men, arrived at the state of holy contemplation, had that faith which deprives God of form, and displaces him from a particular locality, in order that, being without form, he may attach himself to all forms, and that, being without place, he may be found present in all places. Such a faith, if it would not at once carry us up to the New Jerusalem, would do that which amounts to much the same thing, it would bring the New Jerusalem down to earth, and would expand its golden walls and gates to the limits of the world and of the universe. "And I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of heaven, saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain; for the former things are passed away."

CHAPTER XI.

OF THE SPIRIT AND PRACTICAL COURSE OF THE MAN WHO IS AT REST IN GOD.

The man of inward peace is previously the subject of the same inward contest as others. Some particulars in which he is now at rest.— Effect on his outward appearance. - Such men, more than others, bear the true image of God. Expansion of their feelings. - Practical remarks.

THE religiously quiet man, like other men less advanced in grace, has experienced the sharpness of the inward contest; but God has helped him. Having striven with his corrupt nature, having passed through, as it were, the storms of regeneration, he has at last entered into the haven of inward rest.

Inwardly instructed in the limitations of the human understanding, he rests from reasonings in all cases where reasoning owes homage to faith. God is his reason. Taught by the great Teacher of the soul, that the true end of desires is to be found in the wisdom of the Infinite, he quietly ceases from all those desires which have their origin in a corrupted nature, and finds all his aims and purposes harmonized and fulfilled in the fulfilment of God's purposes. God is his desire. While he condemns sin, he is not impatient with it; but bears with it in the same spirit of calmness that God does; never doubting that, in the great issue of things which is rapidly approaching, the unity and love of God will over

come the divisions and hatreds of Satan. Devoted to the will of God to the extent of his power, and resting firmly upon the promises in unshaken faith, he is exempt alike from the reproofs of conscience and the agitations of fear.

2. A divine peace, of which God alone could be the author, is written upon his heart, his countenance, his actions, his whole life. The outward man is the calm mirror of the man within. He sees the commotions of the world; he beholds the surges and hears the noise of its contentions; but it does not move him from his position; it does not alter the fixedness of his purpose; it does not disturb the peace of his spirit. His countenance, written over with signatures which have their source in the centre of his spirit, shows neither the scowl of anger, nor the distortions of fear. Not that he is indifferent to the strife; but he believes and knows that the God in whom he trusts has power to control it. He sees the calm beyond.

3. Such men, more than any others, bear the image of God; whose mighty power is established and operates in peace and in silence. A perfect being is, by the very fact of his perfection, unalterably tranquil. Jesus Christ, who was God revealed in humanity, and who, therefore, was the model of the perfect man, was a quiet man; he did not attract the world's notice by his noise. On the contrary, the world, disappointed that he came without observation, was attracted to him, contrary to what is usual with it, by the calm but mighty influence of his purity and gentleness. Meek, quiet, loving, doing what the divine order of things called him to do, he gave no occasion for reconsiderations and repentance, but left the evidence of his divinity in the perfection of everything he said and did. And in all cases will it be found, in

the history of all good men of all ages, that the harmony of thought with truth, of feeling with thought, and of conscience with feeling; in other words, the perfect adjustment of character, will find its result and its testimony in inward and outward peace.

4. Happy, then, is the man, of whom it can be said, in the scriptural sense of the terms, he is quiet in spirit;— a state of mind which can exhibit itself in the most trying situations, and with more effect and beauty perhaps than on other occasions. Smite the quietist on one cheek, and he turns the other. Drive him from his home, and the smile of his cheerful heart lights the walls of a cavern or a dungeon. He returns love for hatred, blessing for cursing. When dying by the hand of his enemies, his language is, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."

5. "In quietness," says Isaiah, "shall be strength." The quiet man is necessarily victor, conquering by the force of sentiments which are eternal, and not by the incidents of situation which are perpetually changing. It is not the body which constitutes the man, but the divine principle at the centre. A man is, according to his faith. And the man, who treads the dungeon or the scaffold, with the acquiescent belief that it is the allotment of Providence, is no prisoner, because he has all the freedom which he asks, and can lose nothing by the death which he himself cheerfully welcomes. He conquers by that power to suffer which is given him through faith. And the power, which renders him victorious, gives him divine peace and happiness.

6. It remains only to be added, that the man who rests in God, by having the principles of his nature brought into harmony with the divine nature, cannot be restricted by the limitations of name or country; but has