new spring of sorrow. But no man can give a sensible account how it shall be worse for a child to die with drowning in half an hour, than to endure a fever of one-and-twenty days. And if my friend lost his head, so he did not lose his constancy and his religion, he died with huge advantage.

Being Childless.

But, by this means, I am left without an heir. Well, suppose that; thou hast no heir, and I have no inheritance; and there are many kings and emperors that have died childless, many royal lines are extinguished: and Augustus Cæsar was forced to adopt his wife's son to inherit all the Roman greatness. And there are many wise persons that never married: and we read nowhere that any of the children of the apostles did survive their fathers: and all that inherit anything of Christ's kingdom, come to it by adoption, not by natural inheritance: and to die without a natural heir is no intolerable evil, since it was sanctified in the person of Jesus, Who died a virgin.

F

Evil or Unfortunate Children.

And by this means we are freed from the greater sorrows of having a fool, a swine, or a goat, to rule after us in our families and yet even this condition admits of comfort. For all the wild Americans are supposed to be the sons of Dodonaim; and the sons of Jacob are now the most scattered and despised people in the whole world. The son of Solomon was but a silly weak man; and the son of Hezekiah was wicked: and all the fools and barbarous people, all the thieves and pirates, all the slaves and miserable men and women of the world, are the sons and daughters of Noah; and we must not look to be exempted from that portion of sorrow which GOD gave to Noah, and Adam, and Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob; I pray GOD send us into the lot of Abraham. But if anything happens worse to us, it is enough for us, that we bear it evenly.

BISHOP JEREMY TAYLOR.

EPITAPH.

Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade,
Death came with friendly care,
The opening bud to heaven conveyed,
And bade it blossom there.

LOVE.

COLERIDGE.

GOD gives us love.

Sometimes to love

He lends us; but when love has grown

To ripeness, that on which it throve

Falls off, and love is left alone.

TENNYSON.

COMMUNION IN SUFFERING WITH OUR

LORD JESUS CHRIST.

1 Pet. iv. 12, 13. "Think it not strange," for it is not. Suit your thoughts to the experience and verdict of all times, and to the warnings that the Spirit of GOD hath given us in the Scriptures, and Our Saviour Himself from His own mouth, and in the example which He showed in His own person. But the point goes higher.

Rejoice." Though we think not the sufferings "strange," yet may we not well think that rule somewhat strange, to rejoice in them? No; it will be found as reasonable as the other, being duly considered; and it rests upon the same ground which will bear both, "Inasmuch as ye are partakers of the sufferings of Christ."

So, then, 1. Consider this twofold connected participation of the sufferings of Christ, and of the after glory. 2. The present joy, even in sufferings, springing from that participation.

I need not tell you that this communion in sufferings is not in point of expiation, or satisfaction to Divine justice; which was the peculiar end of the sufferings of Christ personal, but not of the common sufferings of Christ mystical. "He bore our sins in His own body on the tree;" and in bearing them, took them away: we bear His sufferings, as His body united to Him by His Spirit. Those sufferings which were His personal burden we partake the sweet fruits of; they are accounted ours, and we are acquitted by them : but the endurance of them was His high and incommunicable task, in which none at all were with Him. Our communion in these, as fully completed by Himself in His natural body, is the ground of our comfort and joy in those sufferings that are completed in His mystical body—the Church.

This is indeed our joy, that we have so light a burden, so sweet an exchange; the weight of sin quite taken off our backs, and all bound on His cross only; and our crosses, the badges of our conformity to Him, laid indeed on our shoulders, but the great weight of them likewise held up by His hand, that they oppress us not. These fires of our trial may be corrective, and purgative of the remaining power of sin, and