In the first instance, the tendency, _on our own part_, of love to the great and good God will be this, namely, to turn all that befals us to an instrument of good. As, in the healthy body, food of very different descriptions may yet all turn to nourishment, and minister to health and bodily strength; so, in the healthy mind, purified and strengthened by the grace of God's Holy Spirit, every thing that meets it is converted to its advantage, and adds in some way to its improvement and its happiness. There is ever a colour cast upon outward circumstances from the complexion of the inward soul. The vain man, on his part, the ambitious, the sensual, the gainful, well know how to turn all to the advancement of their sinful objects; and no less does the good man turn all to the enlargement of his goodness, and the lover of his God to the increase and exercise of that love. Viewing every thing in the glass, or by the lamp of God's word, he ingeniously, so to speak, finds in every thing a reason for loving and fearing, serving and obeying God. Every event works for his good, because he is resolved it shall do so; and every result satisfies, pleases, rejoices him, because he is persuaded it ought to do so. Loving God, he has a confidence that he is beloved of God; and then, feeling himself in a world made by God, and proceeding forward under his guidance and permission, he never will believe that any thing falls out in it but what is intended to make him both good and happy. Happy then he will be, if God intends he should be so; and holy he will be encouraged to become, under the consciousness that God intends his holiness. Dispositions like these will indeed work for their possessor even upon the hardest materials, and will, by the very force of a new and spiritual nature, convert all into "servants to righteousness unto holiness." Faith will be a hand, bringing together the events of life and the framer and guide of all life and all existence; and the result will be a solemn and heart-satisfying conviction, that "all things work together for good to them that love God."