"The world is yours!"--Is it so, thou Blessed Apostle? Alas! this strange assertion seems not to be confirmed, either by thine own experience, or the experience of thy fellow-labourers; or of any of those, who have since trod in the footsteps of thy Suffering Master. If bonds and imprisonments, if stripes and persecutions of various kinds, if cruel mockings and insults, if outward and inward tribulations might be admitted as proofs of their having the world in their power, these, alas, will not be found wanting. Sad privilege, indeed! Wretched consolation! to be told that misery is our portion, and that distress and affliction are the Christian's birth-right!--Let us, however, endeavour to solve this seeming paradox, and reconcile the Apostle's declaration with the common experience of Christians. Whence was it, O Christian! (for I now appeal to the real sensibilities of every believing soul that has tasted of the Good Word of GOD) whence was it, that thou hast acquired that power and dominion over the world, by which thou canst sustain its adversity and prosperity, its evil and its good, with equal calmness, fortitude, and complacency--for this is that power and dominion, by which alone the world becomes thine! Was it not by those very sufferings, which seem so diametrically opposite to this triumphant state? Thy victory rose from thy defeat; thy consolation, from the depth of thy distress; thy conquest of the world, from its conquest of thee.--Yea, the world furnished thee with arms against itself. Every new affliction gave thee some new acquisition; every sigh, every tear, vanquished some mortal foe. Bonds and imprisonments, scourging and insults, hunger and thirst, cold and nakedness, war, pestilence, and shipwreck, and all the dire vicissitudes which the world can bring upon us, serve no other purpose than to subdue the pride, envy, covetousness, and wrath of our fallen life; to open the eyes of our inward man, and teach us to look upon this world in its proper light, to fly its visionary pleasures, and support with patience its substantial miseries.