which he strings the bright gems which he so valued and appreciated. But Paul exhorts to thanksgiving, not only for mercies, but for all God sends in his Providence. This teaches us there is no trial so severe in a Christian's experience that there are not in it predominating mercies and blessings. We look, while we suffer, at the dark side, and see nothing but reasons for dissatisfaction, murmuring, and disquiet; but if we change our position and look at the trial at the right angle, and in the right light, we shall see in it little or nothing but overwhelming and unmerited goodness. I have often thought of this, and I was thinking of it specially today, as I recollected how the Lord's Prayer begins. Before you prefer a single petition-before you ask 66 deliverance from evil, or your daily bread-you must first accept, acquiesce in, and give utterance to this blessed idea, this beautiful feeling "Our Father;" and then, when you have thus seen our Father at the fountain and on the throne of all, you are to see every thing in the light of his countenance. The natural way is to look at the affliction, and, if it feels severe, to see God in the light of the affliction, and thus naturally infer and see an offended God. The Christian way is, first to feel our footing in the paternal character of God— to realize the fact that God is our Father-and then to see that every thing derives its tone, its colouring, its importance, because of and from that relationship. Do not look at God in the light of things; but look at things in the light of God, "our Father." Do not judge of God by what happens to you; but judge of what happens to you by what God is-" our Father ;" and then know that all dispensations are but the outward vehicles in which infinitely sweet things are conveyed; and that the most painful are only the disguises of mercies which you see not now, but which you will know byand-by. The early Christians, we read in the Acts of the Apostles, were so thankful a people that they were "continually in the temple praising God." The present dispensation is made up very much of prayer, necessarily and truly so; but the more we can introduce into it praise, the more of heaven we bring into the bosom of earth. Praise is the very air of the blessed, and the ceaseless expression of their loaded hearts, as prayer is the main constituent element of our being upon earth. The early Christians saw in their chequered trials so much of goodness, and, notwithstanding their afflictions, so much of beneficence and love and mercy in God, that, in the severest afflictions, they saw goodness overflowing their sufferings, and a sense of present mercy overwhelming all sense of felt or feared calamity; and in what would have made the world " curse God and die," they saw only new stimulus to praise God and live before him. I need not tell you that, even in the estimate of man, ingratitude is a shameful vice. I know nothing more odious than one who receives benefits from a brother, and has no heart to feel, and no tongue to express his gratitude for them, and no design, or desire, or effort to repay them. So universally is this felt, that few are so hardened as to be ashamed to express their gratitude to their benefactors. How is it then that, if we should pronounce it a disgrace in any man not to thank his benefactor upon earth, we can bear with any one not thanking the greatest of all benefactors, his Benefactor in the skies? How is it that if we are not ashamed to thank our fellowman for the blessings-the earthly blessings-which he is pleased to bestow, we are yet ashamed to thank God for blessings which we can never count, nor comprehend, nor sufficiently thank him for,-conferred upon us, too, in spite of our sinfulness and unworthiness of them? David felt all this; and while |