it is as though God had been waiting for an opportunity to shine beautifully on the soul, and Christ had reserved the manifestations of his compassionate care and regard, till their want would be most felt, and therefore also their worth. We need not enlarge upon this.

The experience of the righteous is so decisive in its testimony to the fact of affliction yielding rich spiritual sustenance, that it were but wasting time to employ it on proof. Honey from the rock-yea, the rock may be that which is hewn into a sepulchre, but even then may honey be found in its clefts. They who consign their friends, their children, their kinsmen, to the grave, believers if they be in Him who is "the Resurrection and the Life," "sorrow not even as others which have no hope," but draw sublime consolation from the receptacle in which they deposit their dead. Never have they so much felt the magnificence of the Mediator's triumph, as in surveying the triumph of death. The opened grave is to the eye of the Christian like an avenue, through which he can look into the invisible world, and discern the stupendous results of the victory won by the Captain of his salvation. And if you ask for an explanation of what may often be observed, that mourners seem elevated by acquaintance with death and the grave, as though, in scenes from which nature recoils, they had found the material of high growth in spiritual-mindedness, in consciousness of the saving power of Christ, in admiration of his work, in anticipation of its glorious consummation in their own happy experience, oh, there is nothing to be said but that it is God's ordinary course to discover Himself most to his people, where, on every human calculation, there is least to minis

ter to their joy, and thus to make good the very expressive and comprehensive promise of their not only eating of the increase of the fields, but of their being made "to suck honey from the rock, and oil from the flinty rock."

Such, my brethren, are some of the privileges of true religion. The meaning of our text, as just explained or applied, is much the same as that of a passage in the writings of Hosea: "Behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably unto her and I will give her vineyards from thence." The wilderness is not the place where we should naturally look for vineyards, no more than is the rock for honey. But God promises vineyards from the wilderness, and honey from the rock-indicating, under both figures, that those dispensations which have in them most of the painful and severe, the dreariness of the wilderness and the hardness of the rock, are both designed and adapted to yield to their subjects an abundance of the very choicest of spiritual provision. Yea, you must go to the wilderness for vineyards, and to the rock for honey. Not that there are no vineyards except in the wilderness, and no stores of honey except in the rock. The vine will grow in the sunny vale, and the bee find and deposit her treasures in the luxuriant garden; for religion is adapted as much to prosperity as to adversity. But we take, comparatively, little note of the vine amid a hundred other tokens of fertility, and the honey is perhaps almost untasted where every luscious fruit is offering itself abundantly. worth of the vineyard is felt, when met with in the wilderness, and the honey, to be appreciated, must be found in the rock.

The

Such, then, we repeat it, are some of the privileges of true religion. And perhaps even yet our text may not have been fully expounded. For if, in its primary application to the Jews, it denoted the sustenance to be afforded them in Canaan, as applied to ourselves, it may relate to the provision laid up for us in Heaven, of which Canaan was the type. When God shall have "made us ride on the high places of the earth," and exalted us to his Kingdom above, the promise before us may be always receiving accomplishment. God shall be always communicating supplies from his own fulness, as age after age of expansion or enlargement passes over the redeemed. And these supplies may be still supplies of honey from the rock. There will be no exhaustion of Christ and Redemption. Never shall glorified spirits be weary of searching into the mysteries of grace, or leave those mysteries as thoroughly explored. Keep up, if you will, the metaphor of our text, and eternity shall be spent in contemplating and examining the Rock of ages: every moment shall discover a fresh cleft-the clefts in this rock (most strange, but most true) fitting it to bear up the universe; and every fresh cleft yielding fresh store of honey to satisfy desires which shall but grow with their supply.

But we must leave these contemplations, leave them however with the exclamation of the Prophet-an exclamation perhaps but too suitable to many now present"Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread, and your labour for that which satisfieth not?" Think not, be not so vain as to think, that you can find satisfaction in any finite good. Ye are not to be so

cheated. Your souls are so constituted that they can find

no resting-place except in God, nor that except through Christ. Alas! "man walketh in a vain shadow, and disquieteth himself in vain." "He feedeth on ashes," he pursueth shadows, and, all the while, there is bread which hath come down from Heaven, and everlasting realities solicit his acceptance. Be admonished, then, ye who seek happiness in something short of God, that you seek what is impossible. It is the cavity which might hold a planet seeking to be filled with a sand-grain. But look for happiness in God, and look for it through Christ, and God shall make you here "eat of the increase of the fields," for this may specially mark the believer's portion upon earth; and hereafter shall He satisfy you with "honey from the rock," for this may specially mark his portion through Eternity.

LECTURE III.

Easter.

1 PETER i. 8.

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead."

THERE are many characters under which God may be surveyed by the sinful, but only one under which He may be surveyed without fear. I may think of God as Creator; and very noble is the contemplation, as immensity, with its troop of worlds, opens itself before me, and every where reveals the work of one hand. I may think of God as the moral Governor of the Universe, and then, again, it is a magnificent contemplation, that one Being should be sending out his inspections over whatsoever liveth, and that, neither overcome by magnitude, nor perplexed by multiplicity, He should note every action, and register it for judgment. Or I may survey God in his several attributes; I may consider Him as omnipotent, and marvel at a power to which there is nothing great, and nothing small; I may regard Him as omniscient, and amazement may well possess me, as having "about my path and about my bed" the very Being who is occupying the furthest corners of