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humble but well meant endeavours in the holy place be repaid with desertion, rejection, reproach, and persecution; these afflictions, however serious in themselves, may yet be supported, with God's help, by "the little ones," if we remember continually our never failing dependence. " God is our hope and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore will we not fear; though the earth be moved, and though the hills be carried into the midst of the sea; though the waters thereof rage and swell, and though the mountains shake with the tempest of the same. The rivers of the flood thereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacle of the Highest" (Ps. xlvi. 1, &c.).

But for the most part congregations, like individuals, die naturally on the retiring of the Spirit by which they were animated and sustained. For when the Spirit has gathered a visible association any where, and made a selection from it of such members as were to be taken for the invisible church, it goes on to form other congregations for the same selection; and as the Spirit departs out of any of them, a mere form or lifeless trunk, the bare semblance of a church only, will remain. In this way too as fast as one congregation or community shall exhibit symptoms of formality, another more free and substantial will start up in the neighbourhood, and divide if not supersede it. Thus the old dispensation first, and then the new, are brought in upon the overthrow of natural religion, in order to restore to man the feeling or apprehension he then lost, and to heaven a lost subject; while, again, under that dispensation, the temple yields to the synagogue; and under this, first the cathedral yields to the parish church, then our parish church to the meeting, perhaps, then one meeting to another, and what these may yield to in time there is no foreseeing, unless it should happen, or have been ordained, for the abandoned places to come round again, and all return to paradise, according to that passage of Isaiah, "For the

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Lord shall comfort Zion: He will comfort all HEr waste PLACES, and he will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord” (Isaiah li. 3)—and according to the apocalyptic similitude of a new heaven and a new earth (Rev. xxi. 1). But whatever form may be taken in future ages by the visible church, the invisible will not be bound to it otherwise than temporally, as the visible is bound to the earth. And pending that final revolution the general cause is not suffered to flag; the disadvantages of every infant church being more than counterbalanced by the choice of the spirit, by which it is properly raised up and called into action, as David says by the same Spirit, "Out of the mouth of very babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies" (Ps. viii. 2): and again the same Spirit by another prophet, "I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground” (Isaiah xliv. 3). Against this regular progression of the Spirit there is no remedy, however it may be desired by those who love his services more than his superintendence. But still, that is, notwithstanding, when a church is profaned by the misconduct of some of the congregation, or even by the misconduct of its minister, (and what church can ever hope to escape entirely from such profanation,) the church should not therefore be forsaken immediately: for who knows WHETHER CHRIST MAY NOT STILL BE IN IT as he was in the temple continually, knowing and declaring as he did at the same time, that its character was sunk to the lowest pitch by the infamous traffic allowed therein: “It is written (said he in the very same temple) my house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made IT a den of thieves" (Matt. xxi. 13)—meaning THE TEMPLE—that they had made the temple A DEN OF THIEVES. It is not until the service has completely degenerated into form, and the body of a church is proved to be lifeless with no hope of reanimation, the only means thereto being obviously withheld, that another place of worship is to be thought

of, and THAT the Holy Ghost will take good order for, as usual. So we need not trouble: for THE CHURCH ITSELF IS NEVER EXTINCT (Matt. xvi. 18).

"The Lord hath said, I will bring my people again, as I did from Basan: mine own will I bring again, as I did sometime from the deep of the sea" (Ps. Ixviii. 22). "And again, when they are minished, and brought low, through oppression, through any plague or trouble; though he suffer them to be evil intreated through tyrants, and let them wander out of the way in the wilderness; yet helpeth he the poor out of misery, and MAKETH HIM HOUSEHOLDS✦ LIKE A FLOCK OF SHEEP" (Ps. cvii. 39-41).

Curate, we may suppose, among others. + Or congregations.

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