The discovery of your weakness and emptiness, is an evidence of God's love; and while it is ground for humiliation, it is also of thanksgiving. When it pleases God to fill this void with his grace, it is cause of thankfulness; but if we realized at all times this fullness, we should be in danger of appropriating the grace of God to ourselves. Thus, our times of desolation are necessary, and we should accept them joyfully, as a portion of the bread our father gives us. Yours in tender sympathy. SELF-ABANDONMENT. The death of self is not accomplished at once. It is for some time a living death. Its opposite, spiritual life, is represented by Ezekiel's vision of the dry bones. First, the bones were rejoined; afterwards covered with sinews; then the flesh appeared; and finally, the spirit of the Lord animated them. When the soul begins to incline towards God, it finds many obstructions; but in proportion as we yield to the will of God, these obstructions are removed. The following simile will help to illustrate my idea. The rivers empty themselves into the sea; before they lose themselves there. Wave by wave following its course, seems to urge onward the river, to lose itself in the sea. God imparts to the soul some waves of pure love, to urge on the soul to himself; but as the river does not lose itself in the sea, until its own waters are exhausted, so the soul reaches God, and loses itself in God, only when the means of supply from self are at an end. As the waves, which are precipitated into the sea, roll many times before they are lost in the sea, so the soul undergoes many changes, before it is received into God. The results of self-crucifixion are happy, because God then becomes all to the soul. We lose self, and substitute God in its place. We take away the finite, and receive the Infinite. This is blessed. NO DEPENDENCE ON INSTRUMENTS.