any discouraged christian; it works to relieve when you need it, and as you need it. When thou passest through fire, and when thou passest through water, then divine power will be with thee; when thou art weak, then thou shalt be strong; when thou art in the furnace, then wil. Christ be there; relieving power shall work opportunely, that is double relief. Thou shalt have an arm stretched out to rescue as soon as set upon; a breast-work raised as soon as shot at. Likewise divine power shall work as you need it; it shall yield as much strength as your burden requires to bear it; as many spirits as your heat and sweating shall waste, it shall be shaped every way to serve your turn; it shall be made to endure fire and water, to go whithersoever you go, and to save itself and you too. When you pass through the water, you shall have a power that can swim, and carry itself and you too through all. Strengthening power shall work still suitable and proportionable to your distress, that what is wanting

in

you shall always be made up by one that stands by. Let lions gape ever so wide, you shall stop their mouths. Let fire be made ever so violent, you shall quench the violence of it. The seasonable and all-sufficient working of divine power, methinks, should take off all fear and objections in christians.

Christians, chide your fears, kill them with faith in this point! they will kill you else, and do you more hurt than the things you fear can possibly do. There is a relieving power subjected to wait upon you, and you are subjected to wait upon it, and your encouragement is certain relief; "They that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength," &c. You have a spring of power running towards you, nothing can dam it up but unbelief, this will make

Samson's hair

a Samson as weak as other men. off, and he is exceedingly weak. If faith in God's power be out, God's people are as fainting and fearing as other men who have no such advantage attending them

God exerciseth strengthening power, and he does it only upon condition of faith, which is as reasonable and as cheap a condition as can be, but the more reasonable the worse, if not observed; most assuredly a man's soul should sink that leans not upon his allowed relief. It is David's expression often, My soul had fainted had I not put forth faith. The soul never sinks, let troubles be ever so weighty, but when it lets go God. Manage faith in that power which is subjected to serve you, and you can never be made miserable.

You which find this strengthening power of Christ working in you, acknowledge your mercy. You are to be file-leaders, to help to guide them that are behind you. Christ bears lambs in his bosom, so must you. Those who cannot relieve themselves, you should. The strong should support the weak. We should comfort others with our comforts; christians should share in one another's sweetest mercies: sweetmeats should be given about. What you have from Heaven some may have from you. Divine power works strengtheningly, sometimes more immediately, sometimes more mediately; the wind blows where it lists, and as it lists it is always welcome to a distressed soul. Sometimes a lame christian hath a staff of support and comfort more immediately out of God's own hand—“ Thy rod and thy staff comfort;" at another time more mediately; he hath a staff, legs, and eyes, lent him by a friend, as Job speaks. Soul-strength, the better used, the

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longer kept; take heed you lose not the great blessing of assisting and strengthening power.

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Want of compassion will endanger the loss of it. Sinning against it, will certainly lose it. I am afraid of this above all. I see christians fall into consumptions apace by fellowship with sin—as weak as water, as if there were no power of God at all in them, which is a most doleful condition. "How weak is thine heart," saith the Lord to the Jews, seeing thou dost all these things, the work of an imperious whorish woman!" Ezek. xvi. 30. So may I say of many christians; how weak are your hearts, seeing you do all these things, play the worldlings, as do others! play the time-servers as do others! You can turn and wind your lives and consciences as you list; ah Lord, what strength of God is in such souls! You have lost assisting power, by your looseness and baseness, you had better have lost your lives, yea, ten thousand lives; you had better have died any death, and never have seen that day nor hour in which you began to decline to sin, to grieve and lose that power and strength of God, which wrought in you.

Unwarranted courses strip the heart of divine strength. Light will have no fellowship with darkness. God doth not strengthen to sin. Man stript of God is exceedingly weak, he runs to any course. When God leaves a man, man becomes a beast. Why you are so easily drawn to sin, you may see by this point-the power of God is gone from your souls; your Delilah hath cut off your strength; your affection to this and that, hath checked, grieved, and killed the working of a lively power.

This heavy stroke, is not a first but a last stroke for thine unruliness. Samson had many brunts

about his Delilah, before tnat deadly brunt that gave him up. Thou hast had other punishments for thy Delilah without, ere it came to this heavy stroke within, hadst thou made a right use of them, this last and deadliest stroke might have been saved. Ah! forsaken souls, it is a thousand pities that things had not been timely looked to, ere they came to such an inward extremity, to such a soul-blow, to such a spirit-wound. Things thus far run, a man recovers not in haste; it may be not again during a man's life, to be as he was, and to enjoy divine power working so lively and sweetly as it did. Repenting and doing a man's first works is a likely way to do well, but whether it shall rise to be as well with the soul as it was, rests wholly upon divine pleasure; what divine engagement the soul can plead for this, would be worth his best search. We find David praying hard for wonted favour, but whether granted is doubtful.

Strengthening power lost, the soul hath lost its soul: the spirit of man hath lost the Spirit of God; God doth not breathe in the heart-the man cannot live, not live a jot better than he does, though reproved by his dearest friends every hour. That which did this great mischief, that which made this soul-death, was no small sin; it must be sought out, and cried out upon above all evils. Blood-guilt, that one sin that killed two, Uriah's body and David's soul. Oh how he cries out against this sin at the throne of grace! This bloody sin that hath killed thy soul, separated between God and thy soul, this must thou with all fervency cry out upon, and with all care renew faith in an everbleeding Saviour; all will be little enough to keep thee from bleeding to death by despair. One thing

is all; if thou canst receive it, O forsaken soul, thou art made. Thou must obey divine injunctions; believe and expect good even in thy bad state. "Let Israel hope in the Lord, for with the Lord there is mercy, and with him is plenteous redemption: and he shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities," Psa. cxxx. 7, 8. A more deserted state than Israel's was and is, cannot be; yet faith and hope are both, by divine command, to be exercised in this forlorn condition, with promise of full mercy; "And he shall redeem Israel from all his iniquity.' Whatsoever thy sin hath been, whatsoever the punishment of thy sin is, hope in the Lord, as the expression here is, that is, trust in Christ, and expect good in this way, and he shall redeem thee from all thine iniquity, even from that iniquity which hath killed the working of God's strengthening and relieving power in thy soul. I judge the expressions of the psalmist to have such wide scope given them of purpose, that any deserted christians whatsoever, might draw relief and support from them.

Power, relieving and strengthening, is sometimes lost, not really, but seemingly, that is, according to a tempted soul's apprehension. This must be looked to so that none judge worse of their condition than it is, or lay load needlessly upon themselves. Power relieving is consistent with power invading and tempting, and yet when this is violent, a poor soul overlooks Him that stands by him, and mourns and prays, as if nothing were his that is God's. God was fain in a temptation to tell the apostle Paul what he enjoyed, which was all the answer he could have. "And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness," 2 Cor. xii. 9. Soul-anguish,