But these words are not simply an argument for further help; they are, besides, a free acknowledgment, a pure praise of what has been given. They may be the plea of a beseeching heart, but they are besides the tribute of a grateful heart; and it is in this sense, brethren, that I specially wish you to adopt them to-night, and to make them a thanksgiving to GOD for past mercies reviewed. “With my staff I passed over this Jordan, and now I am become two bands.” Jacob might have found mercies enough to enlist his gratitude in any one year, or circumstance of his exile and pilgrimage, and doubtless he reviewed each and all particularly; but in his speech he comprehended all in a general mention of them, and summed them up, and demonstrated them by pointing to their effect. “Now I am become two bands.” Review your past mercies, consider how GOD has been with you at all times, and has ever been doing you good. Call to mind what progress you have been able to make spiritual or temporal; what success has attended you; what friends have been given you; what dangers you have narrowly escaped; what sicknesses recovered from; what wounds been healed, what troubles overcome, what tears staunched. Have they not caused you, like Jacob, to increase from the solitariness and poverty of that passing over Jordan, to the riches and prosperity of the two bands? Perhaps you say, you cannot trace such progress; you are much the same outwardly and inwardly, as you have been from the time that you can first remember. Then, brethren, you can furnish your own testimony, that GOD has dealt better with you than He did with Jacob, that your first state, your continued state has been all like his last. O discern and bless GOD for those least heeded but greatest mercies, the mercies which come to us at the beginning, and follow us all the days of our life—the continued prosperity of our family, the continued harmony and love, the bread always sure, the right understanding early implanted, the fear of the LORD from our youth. There is a way of travelling in our days which is so smooth, that often we cannot tell that we are moving; and there is a manner of blessing, so uninterrupted, so uniform, so without roughnesses and stoppages and ups and downs, that if we be not on the lookout, we may fancy that we are not blessed at all. Let not this be your case. Do not refuse to be grateful, because all goes well with you, because there is nothing that needs to be supplied, because nothing is taken away from you. Rather, let the measure of your blessedness be also the measure of your praise and the strength of your resolution. “Surely goodness and mercy have followed me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.”