When the good Providence of GOD, in kind commiseration of your secure and thoughtless state, shall send sorrow and affliction to your houses and to your hearts; when the shaft of anguish shall wound you, either in your own persons, or in the persons of those whom you love; when duty, when affection shall call you to some solemn death-bed scene, where you shall behold expiring life just quivering upon the lips of a dear departing friend or relative; or when your own frail tabernacles shall be shaken by disease, and you shall feel death approaching to take possession of the throne of life; when the counsels of the wise, and the sorrows of the tender-hearted, can stand you in no stead; when the immortal tenant of your earthly mansion is just ready to take his flight, and stands trembling on the confines of a world unknown; at these, or such like awful seasons, those amongst you, who have not heretofore experienced the power of Divine Faith, will then, if ever, be made sensible of your want of it. The visionary scene of earthly bliss will vanish like a morning cloud, and deep heart-felt anguish will wring the soul, and make it feel the full horrors of its bondage. But to those, who have already tasted the comforts of religion, and who have long been groaning for deliverance from the captivity of an evil nature, and an evil world, Faith will open the doors of their prison, let in the Light of Heaven as they are able to bear it, and sweetly sing this song of consolation to their departing spirits: "I will ransom them from death; I will redeem them from the power of the grave. O death! I will be thy plague; O grave! I will be thy destruction." DISCOURSE IX. The Flourishing State of the Regenerate. PSALM i. VER. 3. "HE SHALL BE LIKE A TREE PLANTED BY THE RIVERS OF WATER, THAT BRINGETH FORTH HIS FRUIT IN HIS SEASON: HIS LEAF ALSO SHALL NOT WITHER, AND WHATSOEVER HE DOTH SHALL PROSPER." Whatever seeming inequality there may be in the dispensations of the Almighty, or however partial he may appear to the eye of human reason, in his distribution of spiritual or temporal blessings among the sons of men; it will, nevertheless, be found, at the consummation of the great scheme of Providence; that he has done every thing "in number, weight, and measure;" and that every part and period of the Divine Administration hath been planned by unerring Wisdom, and conducted by universal and impartial Love.