His lost sheep for three and thirty years with loud and bitter cries, in a way so painful and so thorny, that He spilt His heart's blood, and left His life there. The poor sheep now follows Him through obedience to His commands, or through a desire (though at times but faint) to obey Him, calling upon Him, and beseeching Him earnestly for help. Is it possible that He should now refuse to turn upon it His life-giving look? Will He refuse to give ear to it, and lay it upon His divine Shoulders, rejoicing over it with all His friends, and with the angels of heaven? For if our LORD ceased not to search most diligently and lovingly for the blind and deaf sinner, the lost piece of money in the Gospel, till He found it, how is it possible that He should

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abandon him who as a lost sheep cries and calls upon his Shepherd? And if GOD knocks continually at the heart of man, desiring to enter in and sup there, and to communicate to him His gifts, who can believe that when the heart opens and invites Ilim to enter, He will really become deaf to the invitation, and refuse to come in? The third way of acquiring this holy confidence is to call to mind that truth so plainly taught us in Holy Scripture, that none who have trusted in GOD have ever been confounded. "Our fathers trusted in Thee; they trusted, and Thou didst deliver them; they cried unto Thee, and were delivered; they trusted in Thee, and were not confounded." "In Thee, O LORD, do I put my trust; let me

1 Ps. xxii. 4, 5.

never be confounded." "Israel shall be saved by the LORD with an everlasting salvation; ye shall not be ashamed or confounded world without end."2

The fourth, which will serve at once for the mistrust of self, and of trust in GOD, is this:-Whenever anything occurs to thee to be done, any struggle with self to be undertaken, any victory over self to be attempted, before thou propose or resolve upon it, first think of thine own weakness; next, filled with mistrust of self, turn to the wisdom, the power, the goodness of GOD, and in reliance on these, resolve to labour and fight manfully. Then with these arms in thy hands, and with prayer, fight and labour. Unless thou observe this order,

1 Ps. lxxi. 1; xxxi. 1.

2 Is. xlv. 17.

though thou seem to thyself to be doing everything in reliance upon GOD, thou wilt often find thyself to be mistaken; for so common to man is a presumptuous reliance on self, and so subtle, that it lurks almost always, even under our imagined mistrust of self, and trust we think we have in GOD.1

O LORD, IN THEE HAVE I TRUSTED :

LET ME NEVER BE CONFOUNDED.

The author of the Te Deum again appropriates to his use a verse out of the inspired Scripture. It is the first verse of the thirty-first Psalm, “In Thee, O LORD, have I put my trust : let me never be put to confusion ;" which S. Augustine, arguing from its

1 Lorenzo Scupol. Com. Spir. c. iii.

Hebrew title, applies to CHRIST in His people:-"The Psalmist seemeth to speak of His Passion, in which was fear. Can we understand it well of the fear of CHRIST, as His suffering approached for which He had come into the world? Seeing that He came for that end, how was it that He feared as death approached? If He were so man as not to be GOD, would He not rejoice more in His resurrection than fear in His death? Yet since He deigned to take upon Him the form of a servant, and to clothe Himself in us, He Who did not abhor to take us into Himself hath not abhorred to transform us into Himself, and to speak in our words, that we might speak in His. Here was a marvellous interchange effected, and a divine barter made, and the change is cele